Science is the search for natural explanations for the things we observe. It doesn't use the supernatural as its starting point to explain phenomena.
Why? Occam's razor. If you don't need to invoke magic, the supernatural, or anything else ad hoc to explain something, then you don't. There's no need to invoke God, gods, or magic to explain lightning storms when we understand static electricity. The same applies for astronomy, geology, and biology.
This line of argument doesn't require atheism, it just means not invoking God's design when simple physics and chemistry suffice. I don't know if you're Catholic or not, but both Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II seem(ed) to agree that you can accept scientific, material explanations for things and still believe in God.
“Why? Occam’s razor. If you don’t need to invoke magic, the supernatural, or anything else ad hoc to explain something, then you don’t. There’s no need to invoke God, gods, or magic to explain lightning storms when we understand static electricity. The same applies for astronomy, geology, and biology.”
This is true, however if you think about it a bit more philosophically, the adoption of naturalism can create a blind spot for science. As you say, if you don’t need to look at the supernatural to find an explanation, then you don’t. However, science has had such success never looking to the supernatural, that it is now just a given. There will never be any consideration given as to whether a supernatural cause might be a factor as to why science cannot explain any given phenomenon. Naturalistic scientists simply couldn’t propose such a thing and be taken seriously.
So that is at least a theoretical flaw of strict naturalism; it becomes a self-fulfilling mandate.
You (the Pope, and whoever else) are limiting your understanding by the very idea that you must operate based on “what you observe” all the while failing to take in the totality of “what you observe”. You see design. You see order. You see the miraculous. Yet, you see no hand, no purpose, no Creator in all this. All because the scientific theory requires that you start with a “No God” basis because you cannot observe God. Yet matter exists and there is no accounting for its origins. How do you account for this? Matter is not self-creating. Therefore, if matter (the first material) exists, and matter is not self-creating, then matter has come forth from that which is not matter (non-material—spiritual)
The scientific mind is of the material world; God is of the spiritual world (consider 1Cor. 2). How can you (or anyone else) ever hope to see (observe) the workings of God in creation when you are starting from the position that all things material must have material beginnings?
You claim “Occam’s razor” as if this [mere] man’s challenge is somehow satisfactory when it comes to discovering/explaining the origins of all things. How simplistic to invest your entire belief system in something so trivializing as to limit what can be considered. Isn’t it ironic that the scientific mind strives and strives to formulate limitless theories concerning origins, mutations of species, etc. when the “simplest” idea (Occam’s razor, no) is that a creation riddled with absolute design and order has emanated from a “creative force” full of design and order - God.
No. It is the scientific mind, hard at work to posit postulates and theories, ever-working to develop new insights and new ideas, working over-time all in an attempt to rise up and say, “No God!” (see Ps. 14)