I'm a bit concerned that there's a blurring here between science and atheism.
Science is a process for discerning the underlying causes and mechanisms of repeatable phenomena (see my first post).
Atheism is either a rejection of or simply nonacceptance of the idea of gods (sometimes extended to nonacceptance of non theistic religions, but that's splitting hairs). This often leads to materialism which is the idea that the only things that exist are in the material world.
The OP here blended the two concepts into scientific materialism.
Science does not depend on materialsm. Repeatable external spiritual phenomena could be as accessible to the scientific method as any material phenomenon.
There is a strong overlap between scientists and atheists but it is certainly not 100% on either side.
If we look at the two most famous atheists of our time: Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens the former is a scientist, the latter was a writer and journalist.
If you listen to either of them speak, they're both very materialist, but at the same time both are/ were strongly moved by and open to the same mental phenomena that are often associated with a more spiritual mindset. Hitchens often objected to the idea that an atheist is cut off from the numinous.
The fight between religion and science these days was, bluntly, started on the religious side (not all religions, just some sects of some religioins) with an insistence on inerrancy in sources, and a demand that whatever is discerned about the world must fit the teachings they wanted given.
Most scientists were and are content to do their work trying to understand the universe. They only started producing combatants like Dawkins because they were being attacked.
Francis Collins who was head of the Human Genome project and is now head of the NIH is a geneticist and evangelical christian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins
He is not mentioned much by the religion side of this argument because he doesn't fit the image of the evil scientist trying to destroy the works of God.