Does Science Lead to Atheism?

In an interview with philosopher of science Stephen Meyer some interesting statistics were cited.

Meyer noted that:

65% of professing atheists say that the findings of science make belief in God less probable. For agnostics, that number is in the 40s. 43% say that the findings of science make God less plausible.

And when we gave people a list of factors that were relevant in their decision to reject belief in God, the idea of undirected evolution was cited by 65% of the people who no longer believed in God, more than the number of people who cited pain, suffering, or disease.

Perhaps we might agree that if it could be shown that the universe was infinitely old and had no beginning, if it could be shown that the astonishing precision of the parameters, particles, force strengths, and constants that comprise the fabric of the universe were somehow necessitated by the Big Bang so that they couldn't be otherwise than what they are, if it could be shown that life could plausibly have emerged from non-life through purely natural processes unaided by intelligent agency, then the atheist might have some epistemic justification for his/her rejection of theism.

God might be seen, scientifically at least, as a superfluous hypothesis.

As things stand today, however, all cosmogenic theories posit a beginning to the universe and thus suggest a transcendent cause of the universe.

Also, no evidence exists for any explanation of the astronomical improbabilities of a universe emerging by chance with just the exact values for the forces, constants, subatomic particle properties, etc. that are necessary for a life-sustaining universe.

Moreover, no plausible explanation exists for how the enormous amounts of information required for the first living cell to appear could've come about through any purposeless, unguided process.

Thus, the hypothesis that the universe and life are the product of intentional, intelligent agency is at least as plausible, given the science that we have today, as the hypothesis that it's all a grand fluke.

Indeed, the fact that both fine-tuning and information are always, in our experience, the product of a mind, the existence of both of these in our universe points makes their origin in a mind an even more plausible hypothesis.

I wonder how many of those 65% of non-theists who believed that undirected evolution makes theism untenable are really aware of the science.

I wonder, too, how many of those who know the science still refuse to accept its implications because they simply don't want theism to be true.

A quote from philosopher Thomas Nagel comes to mind. Nagel wrote in his book The Last Word:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

For men like Nagel, belief in God is not a matter of evidence, it's a matter of one's will.