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"It most certainly does."

No, science cannot deal with untestable assumptions. By definition. Otherwise, it would be a useless epistemological tool. Anything and everything could be called *scientific* if you could include untestable claims. It's understandable why you wish to change the definition of science, since your claims aren't testable. You are desperate to have your claims be called science, because you know that that will make your claims sound more prestigious. Yet you despise what science really is. If right wing post-modernists (as opposed to the more well known left wing types) like you succeed though, science will have the same connotations as *unfounded guess* and will have the same prestige as astrology and ESP. The prestige you wish to expropriate will have been destroyed. It will be a Pyrrhic victory.

"The claim that "science can only observe natural phenomena" is an untestable assumption in and of itself."

No it isn't. It's a fact. It's tested every time someone tries to introduce a non-natural, non-observable subject into science. Since these subjects can't be tested, and testing is a fundamental part of what science is, the proposition that science can only observe natural phenomena is supported each time this happens.

"Or how do you propose to scientifically test that assumption?"

It's a metaphysical reality. Science, by definition, does not deal with the untestable. No matter what you WISH science to be.

It has become clear that you neither know the definition of science nor its limitations. Science must begin with untestable assumptions. In certain fields it makes testable claims, but it seldom, if ever, arrives at objective proofs. Testable claims are not what define science, but are only a small part of it. Likewise, science cannot take place with only theories and data. It must also have shaping principles. In your case one of them happens to be non-theism, but non-thesim is not testable. By your own requirements for science you have negated the capacity to honestly engage in it yourself.

You say that the statement "science can only observe natural phenomenon" is a "fact," but you have not proposed a way to test that very statement. You just stomp your feet and insist it is a "fact," but it is a fact only in your head. It reveals precisely what your biases are, and also explains why you give credence to philosophies that call themselves science.

Your notion of what constitutes science is as old and subject to error as that of Francis Bacon.