H-m-m-m, I read Weinberg's statement like Fatalis did.
When Weinberg starts out by saying,
"It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence," it's hard not to come to the conclusion that he's trying to debunk the existence of a Creator.
Weinberg says he doesn't see any need for God by looking at science. Well that's a dopey statement.
Is science is a God-neutral endeavor or not?
He states that he has not seen a need for God, yet by making that statement he implies that he would know what that "need" would look like, if he saw it.
So far nobody has been able to tell me what such evidence would look like.
I know why however, hee hee.
Hard not to? In all candor, I can't make the stretch at all, even if I try. That you find it effortless amazes me. It most certainly is not obvious to me that anything in the natural universe is designed. That's true whether or not there's a creator--and I believe there is one.
When Weinberg says that it used to be obvious, what he means is that we used to be so ignorant, everything looked like magic. We know better, now. If you insist that there's magic there, it must hide in the gaps in our knowledge, but those gaps continue to shrink. (Personally, I don't think God hides in the gaps. I think God lies in plain sight in the impersonal (universal-impartial) laws themselves. It's not the stuff we can't explain that demonstrates God: it's the stuff we can explain.)
Weinberg says he doesn't see any need for God by looking at science. Well that's a dopey statement.
Well, if that's what he's saying, don't blame Weinberg for the dopery, blame Laplace. When Napoleon took exception to his treatise on celestial mechanics because it didn't invoke God to move the spheres, Laplace replied that he had no need of that hypothesis to explain the motions. Well, he didn't!
Is science is a God-neutral endeavor or not?
It is in general, but it can't be held responsible for the demise of any specific belief. If someone's religion vitally depends upon the world being flat, and science discovers that it is not flat, there's really no point in crying foul. The universe is the way that it is, and not how we would wish it to be.