Atheism has recently reasserted itself into the public consciousness through a bellicose flurry of books - Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion(2006); Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon(2006); and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything(2007) are a few examples - with an effect on the religious world not unlike that of Hitler's forces smashing through the Allied lines in the Ardennes during the famous Battle of the Bulge.
In its scientific form this atheism can be described as "metaphysical naturalism" and views science as the only pathway to knowledge. Faith, on the other hand, can only produce belief. Knowledge, being scientifically verifiable produces certainty, while faith/belief, which is by nature unverifiable, is uncertain at best, delusional at worse. While this dichotomy makes for powerful rhetoric, it does not seem to hold up to scrutiny. On the contrary, faith makes up a huge part of that knowledge which science claims to produce.
