Recent western Atheism began as a rejection of the Christian concept of God. Of course Atheists aren't alone here. Other religions like Islam also reject the Christian concept of God. But Atheists don't think deeply about this and don't understand the different ways to think of God.
Saying that one doesn't believe in something whose meaning isn't defined is somewhat absurd. But this is what Atheists do. Those who understand religion generally accept that God isn't fully understandable but has certain characteristics. This means that any definition of God that includes these characteristics is a form of monotheism. The basic characteristics of God are these: God is the cause of everything. God is one. God is all powerful. God is uniquely worthy of worship.
Now I will present a definition of God for science. I will define God as the aggregate forces of nature, both known forces and unknown forces. And I will show that this definition has the monotheistic attributes of God that I listed, and that one must believe in a God with these attributes in order to be a scientist.
Scientists must believe that everything that happens is a result of the forces of nature. Science is based on this assumption. And with my definition of God, this means that God causes everything because God is the primary force of nature.
Scientists must believe in inductive reasoning which is based on the assumption that the world is consistent across space and time. This consistency implies that the underlying forces are consistent which means that God is consistent which implies that God is one. Only a monotheist like Isaac Newton could have connected a falling apple to the movement of the planets.
God being all powerful means that God can cause miracles even if they aren't likely. Science only recently accepted this idea based on quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics says that everything is probabilistic (nothing is deterministic) which effectively means that anything is possible, including miracles, without violating the laws of science, and this implies that God is all powerful.
Worship is an expression of submission. What should scientists submit to? Within science, scientists should only submit to experimental results or other concrete real world evidence. In other words, only submit to the direct results of the forces of nature, meaning God. Submission to anything else, like popular trends or the opinions of powerful people just ruins science. And unfortunately we see this clearly today. Science has been ruined by the loss of religion in the West which has caused science to become corrupt and ineffective. So it would be of great benefit for scientists to regularly worship God as a reminder that in their scientific work they should submit to nothing but God.
Based on this, it should be no surprise that the founder of experimental science,
Ibn al-Haytham, and the greatest scientist, Isaac Newton, were both monotheists. In fact all major scientific advances were produced on monotheistic culture. Many significant scientists in the last century considered themselves to be atheists, but I would argue that they mislabeled themselves and that they were really implicit monotheists. Most of these scientists believed in some underlying unifying force in the universe. They just lacked the religion knowledge to identify this as God. But these scientists absorbed their worldview from the surrounding culture which was Christian. Today this is no longer possible since modern culture is no longer Christian and is instead effectively idolatrous. Idolaters are not capable of science because they submit to man-made things (ideas) instead of submitting to God (the results of reality). This is why science has died in the West.
The characteristics of God that I enumerated are those relevant to science. Different monotheistic religions add additional characteristics to God. One can be a good scientist within any of these monotheistic religions. But one cannot be a good scientist without at least accepting God with the characteristics that I enumerated here.
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