The scientists who formed modern scientific thought believed in a God having particular characteristics, namely being "loving." By "loving," they understood that He must govern the universe in accordance with laws, because the absence of law would be anarchy, which would be unloving. Moreover, they believed that the laws must be understandable and discoverable by people, because the institution of laws that were not understandable and/or not discoverable would be tyranny.
All reasoning starts from assumptions. At its heart, science does depart from these assumptions. Absent them, why would one think that any scientific discoveries would hold true for more than one experiment? If the universe were governed by pure chaos, studying it would be useless. What would be to say that the sun would come up tomorrow? What would be to say that tomorrow we would not all fly out into space due to sudden, unexpected gravity failure? What would be to say that power plants, operating on established principles of power generation, would not become dysfunctional on a moment's notice?
Atheist scientists have, in fact, more faith than the religious. They believe firmly that the universe will continue to run in accordance with some kind of orderly principles. The religious, instead, believe that God might at any point change the rules, thus causing an "Apocalypse," an end of all things as we know them, a falling apart.
Why do atheist scientists have such a childlike faith that things will be orderly and follow scientific principles?
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