I do think that many scientists ARE indeed materialists, or least recognize a very bright line between the natural world and the metaphysical.

When religious people worry that science attacks the core of their beliefs, I do think that they have a justification for this. Science does indeed follow materialist principles when searching for naturalistic explanations of phenomena.

This is all fine and uncontroversial when you explain the motion of waves, or the reason why weather patterns exist, and so on. But when it infringes on something that people seem to hold dear, like the origins of life, then it becomes an attack, even if it wasnt meant to be.

While science does not, and never can, disprove the existence of a creator or a divinity, it certainly disproves many of the principles and stories told in creation myths and so on, such as Genesis. We know now that the story of creation in Genesis is untrue, plain and simple. It just didn't happen that way.

Catholics for instance claim to able to reconcile this, and say the Biblical stories arent to be taken literally. Where you run into trouble is with the fundamentalists, usually American protestants, who demand that you believe everything in the bible, and they have the nerve to say that Catholics arent true Christians.. apparently Jesus was an American Baptist!

However, it seems that ultimately there are two kinds of religious thought; one that adapts and is malleable, and one that demands absolute certainty and unchanging faith. As they say, the tree that bends in the wind doesnt break.

As yet we still know so little about about the Universe that we dont even understand the exact mechanics of the subatomic particles, let alone the origins of the Universe. The demand for certainty in life, the need for absolute truth, is evidence of a lack of imagination and moral courage.