What good is atheism?

[Kingpin]

I won't parrot what others have already pointed out, but I do want to point out one quick thing from your original OP.  Your point #1 about how atheism leads to the advancement of science is just absurd.  You do realize that the founders of Modern Science like Newton, Kepler and Galileo were all believers (Deists) right?  As a matter of fact Newton wrote his Principa Mathematica so "others may believe".  Other great minds like Einstein were also Deists.  C.S. Lewis wrote that "men became scientific because they expected law in nature.  They expected law in nature because they believed in a law giver."

These brilliant minds were not "religious" per se, but they were definitely not atheists.

First off, I dunno why you'd quote C.S Lewis: he's not a scientist, just one of those very willing to make fallacious statements to favor his pet religion. What he says on this issue isn't important.

That said, "atheism leads to the advancement of science," is not the same thing as "you need to be an atheist to be a scientist." The former is true, while the latter is not: even theist scientists absolutely need to be atheists in their work. Why? Because one needs to be limited to only what can be detected and demonstrated when doing science. A scientist who'll seriously consider "hmm, maybe god intervened with this experiment because he wanted me to get the wrong result, so..." isn't going to get very far, and attempting to publish that result will result in quizzical looks at best, because if it's not demonstrable and replicable, it's not very good as an experiment.

Newton may have listed his beliefs as his motivation to do science, but for any of the good results he got he could never have listed his beliefs in practice. Each of those great believing scientists never allowed their faith to enter into their work, and that's sort of the point; attempting to inject religion as it is now into science is purely antithetical to the scientific endeavor.

I agree with this Esquilax but I was taking his statement as meaning only atheists can be scientists.  God has nothing to do with scientific advancement, the issue is irrelevant to the study.  If what he meant by his statement is that one cannot interject their beliefs on God to coincide with scientific study to hinder its advancement, then I agree.  But if he meant, one must be an atheist to contribute to the advancement of science, then I stick to my absurdity claim.