In a previous post I wrote about the different assumptions that Christians and atheists make concerning the nature of reality. Strictly speaking, atheism does not any assumptions – it is simply a rejection of theism. However, it seems fair to say that most atheists at least make the following assumption:

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Atheists assume that the natural world exists (obviously) and that, as far as we know from the available evidence, this is all that exists.

What about science? Atheism is often associated with science and the scientific method because many atheists point to science as the best method of gaining knowledge about our reality. As a response, some theists, as a last ditch attempt to level the playing field, insist that science is equally as faith-based as religion in regards to its assumptions.

Dr. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, wrote a nice response to this question over at the James Randi forums (thanks to  LarianLeQuella over at AtheistSpot for the link). The whole post is worth reading, but here is a small excerpt that I would like to pass along:

“The scientific method makes one assumption, and one assumption only: the Universe obeys a set of rules. That’s it. There is one corollary, and that is that if the Universe follows these rules, then those rules can be deduced by observing the way Universe behaves. This follows naturally; if it obeys the rules, then the rules must be revealed by that behavior.”