Atheism Undermines Knowledge

[Esquilax]

My thesis focuses very narrowly on a problem of epistemology. Which is this. Can an atheist apply inductive reasoning without tacitly appealing to formal and final causes?

I guess my question to you in return is this: what makes you think that appealing to formal and final causes is inconsistent with atheism?

Seriously: atheism deals solely with disbelief in theistic claims, nothing more. It's an answer to a proposition about gods, not creators in general, and certainly not supernatural or extra-universal forces. One can be an atheist without denying the existence of anything, other than the specific gods laid out by the religions of the world; "Sure, there may be a creator, but so far you haven't proved that it's yours," is the only atheistic claim, so to speak. Other than that, we can, and do, believe in pretty much anything.

Being an atheist doesn't mean one must be a materialist, nor even entirely rational. It just means we don't think churches have demonstrated they have all the answers.