Most atheists I have interacted with are people who are angry with God. With them, it’s not a matter of whether He exists or not. If God did exist, they would spend their time wishing Him away.
It is the sign of a closed mind, that cannot accept the new conclusion when a more encompassing theory is introduced. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “settled science”, that even the most well-reasoned and supported hypothesis is subject to review and critical analysis, and should be considered with doubt in mind. Meanwhile, once some theorem has been articulated, nothing at all prevents that partial analysis from being applied in engineering terms, and therefore of practical use for human understanding of the Universe.
Otherwise we would still be living in trees and grazing off the casual fruits discovered by accident while swinging from limb to limb of those trees. Curiosity is a precious commodity.