That has been the orthodox position since at least Augustine ... and probably prior to Augustine as well, but he's the one who formally wrote it down. Atheists who don't acknowledge this are simply jousting with strawmen, which is in fact what most of them do.
Science was instead philosophy in Augustine’s day—not quite the same. The atheists’ strawmen are stereotypes, which if you fit one aspect of it then you do all the others in their minds, though that’s rarely if ever the case. It just makes their world easier to understand so that they can dismiss all else. The watch maker, for example, makes the watch so that he doesn’t have to personally move the second hand every second. It moves by itself using mechanisms created by the maker. Does this mean the maker doesn’t exist? No, but for those who are uncomfortable thinking of anything greater than the watch, it’s a convenient thing to believe.