Has Science done away with a need for God?

[Alex K]

Apart from splitting hairs about the definition of God etc., though, I think we can safely say that there are several important thinkers in history who would have been full blown atheists if the had known what we know today about evolution by natural selection. For example, I recall Voltaire saying in his philosophical dictionary that he cannot reject God because of the apparent design in nature. I take this as an admission that he would favour being an atheist if that issue had been taken care of. I guess the same would have pushed more than one Deist among the US' founding fathers.


edit:

Voltaire repeatedly talks about the moral dangers of atheism - however, I cannot believe that he was so shallow a thinker that he would seriously argue that atheism must be false because he dislikes the (imagined) consequences.

"The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability. "

"Let us add especially that there are less atheists to-day than ever, since philosophers have recognized that there is no being vegetating without germ, no germ without a plan, etc. and that wheat comes in no wise from putrefaction."

The only real argument against atheism I recall him making was the one from design.