It wasn't always so. This type of thinking did not start occuring until the Rennaissance, when man became the measure of all things (rationalism) and the particulars (all physical things) were divorced from God as if the two have no relationship with each other whatsoever. You are exactly right though - the attitude that God is not needed is atheistic in its presuppositions.
Your problem seems to be the methodological naturalism used by scientists (even by those who believe in a god).
There are those who call themselves Christians who, for some irreconcilable reasons, choose to believe in evolution, and I love to talk to those types because evolution is not compatible with Christianity, and it can be demonstrated easily enough.
Science deals only with the natural world, the supernatural (if something liek this exists) is beyond its scope. So if you drag the supernatural into science you're no longer doing science.
Science deals with the ordered universe as God made it. God made it ordered so we could live and function in it. The two (God and physical laws) are not mutually exclusive as naturalists would have everyone believe. Newton was a theist who believed in the supernatural but was able to come up with calculus and other important discoveries. Conversely, it would logically follow that an atheist would pressuppose chaos, not order as Newton did. Just because someone believes in the supernatural does not require that person to come up with a supernatural explanation - such people like myself recognize that God made the ordered universe such as it is. How is this in any way incompatible with true scientific discovery? It is a non-rational leap to presuppose that natural laws (speed of gravity, of light, Hubble constant, laws of motion, and on and on) just sprang into being by chance+time+matter+energy, isn't it?
Yupp, that's the time when science took off and advanced exponentially to what we know today. One of the main reason why science was so successful in the west is the fact that we learned to separate science from the supernatural, something that hasn't occurred in the rest of the world. Some days ago someone posted an article about science in the Muslim world and why it didn't make the same progress as in the West but stagnated and even declined from a once higher state.
The point is they didn't make that separation but allowed the supernatural to creep in their explanations (i.e. so Allah wills).
Here is a quote from Arthur N. Strahler where he explains better than I could why science and the supernatural don't mix:
Supernatural forces, if they exist, cannot be observed, measured, or recorded by the procedures of science - that's simply what the word "supernatural" means. There can be no limit to the kinds and shapes of supernatural forces and forms the human mind is capable of conjuring up from "nowhere." Scientists therefore have no alternative but to ignore "claims" of the existence of supernatural forces and causes. This exclusion is a basic position that must be stoutly adhered to by scientists or their entire system of processing information will collapse. To put it another way, if science must include a supernatural realm, it will be forced into a game where there are no rules. Without rules, no scientific observation, explanation, or prediction can enjoy a high probability of being a correct picture of the real world.There are those who call themselves Christians who, for some irreconcilable reasons, choose to believe in evolution, and I love to talk to those types because evolution is not compatible with Christianity, and it can be demonstrated easily enough.
Since I'm not a Christian I can't comment on this but I know many Christians who don't have a problem with the Theory of Evolution (including the pope).
Science deals with the ordered universe as God made it. God made it ordered so we could live and function in it.
Science deals with the universe as we observe it, whether a god made it or not. And just because we think it is ordered doesn't mean that it had to be created by a god. You don't know what a universe might look like which had not been created by a god and as long as you can't provide at least one of these uncreated universes to compare it with our universe the claim that ours was created by a supernatural being is unsupported and neither the order we observe is an argument for it being created by a god nor the chaos we also observe is an argument against a creator.
Also, what makes you think that conclusions you draw from observations within our universe can be applied to a universe as a whole?
The two (God and physical laws) are not mutually exclusive as naturalists would have everyone believe.
Maybe there are some naturalists who want to make you believe this but there are also a lot of naturalists (some even on this board) who don't say that a god is incompatible with physical laws.
Newton was a theist who believed in the supernatural but was able to come up with calculus and other important discoveries. Conversely, it would logically follow that an atheist would pressuppose chaos, not order as Newton did.
Ad what makes you believe this? Why is it logical that an atheist presupposes chaos? I for one don't.
An atheist can also claim that the universe shows order because there are no gods who meddle with it.
Just because someone believes in the supernatural does not require that person to come up with a supernatural explanation - such people like myself recognize that God made the ordered universe such as it is. How is this in any way incompatible with true scientific discovery?
And that's what I said. You can be a Christian (or otherwise religious person) and still use methodological naturalism when doing science.
It is a non-rational leap to presuppose that natural laws (speed of gravity, of light, Hubble constant, laws of motion, and on and on) just sprang into being by chance+time+matter+energy, isn't it?
And why is it non-rational? What observation (within our universe, or can you see beyond our universe?) has led you to the insight that our universe shows these properties because it has been created by a god? Why can't it show the same properties without being created? What mechanism prevents an uncreated universe to be the same as a created one?