It's a conflation that is all but impossible to avoid. Name the science that posits the existence of deity in this era, or even allows for the possibility of a deity. It certainly isn't evolutionary theory. All causes must be naturalistic and therefore material. I've actually had FReepers inform me, in all sincerity, that science cannot allow for a deity of any sort.
That is the materialism to which I referred, and I'm sure it's something you've encountered and perhaps even championed yourself.
And, yet, MOST do. Only literalist creationists and militant atheists seem to find it "all but impossible".
Name the science that posits the existence of deity in this era, or even allows for the possibility of a deity.
There's the box, right there. You, along with "scientific" atheists, leap to the conclusion that because science does not affirmatively allow for a deity, that it thereby disallows (denies the "possibility" of) a deity.
This expands and aggrandizes science far beyond its practical application and intended aims.
I've actually had FReepers inform me, in all sincerity, that science cannot allow for a deity of any sort.
Exactly. Science cannot allow nor disallow. You just insist on hearing only part of the answer.
That is the materialism to which I referred, and I'm sure it's something you've encountered and perhaps even championed yourself.
I am more or less a philosophical naturalist. I do happen to believe that the universe itself is, most likely, a seamless web of natural cause and effect. The aspects of reality that involve God I presume to extend beyond this "web," and to be the ultimate cause of it, but without disturbing its coherency.
But, to the extent I would "champion" philosophical naturalism, I would do that separately from defending or promoting science.
They are not the same things. Not even remotely, in my view, as indistinguishable as they appear to you.
Science does require a few "philosophical" presuppositions, but in the nature of the enterprise they must be the minimal set which allow science to "work."
In fact these presuppositions are in truth "operational," rather than genuinely "philosophical," assumptions; that is they are adopted only for the purpose of doing science.
So when, for instance, science presupposes the universality of natural law, it is not a grand declaration of what MUST be accepted as true of all reality, independent of science itself; but merely as what must be presupposed of phenomena when and where we choose to apply scientific explanation. It only becomes a universal philosophy to the extent you believe science is universally competent, an attitude rejected not only by most in the general public, but by most scientists as well.
BTW, because they are adopted only operationally, these presuppositions are subject to change, when and where that is required by genuinely successful scientific theories. For instance it was once a presupposition of science that force could only be transmitted by the physical impact of material bodies. For this reason Newton's law of universal gravitation was initially derided as an "occult" theory, rather than a scientific one, because it asserted that force could be transmitted by immaterial fields, without physical contact between bodies.
Problem was, for the materialists, that Newton's law of gravity worked, and worked extremely well, as science. Therefore the presuppositions where changed to accommodate the theory, rather than the reverse.
BTW, this is why it is pointless for creationists to whine about the "naturalistic" presuppositions of science which supposedly exclude them. As hopeless as the task may appear to me and other skeptics, it is nevertheless the case that they could, in principle, compel the modification of those presuppositions by construction and successfuly (ah, there's the rub!) constructing and applying a "creationistic" theory that really worked as science.