Scientism

From a really wonderful little book; well written and enlightening:

In order to understand early modern natural philosophy, it is necessary to break free of several common modern assumptions and prejudices. First, virtually everyone in Europe, certainly every scientific thinker mentioned in this book, was a believing and practising Christian. The notion that scientific study, modern or otherwise, requires an atheistic—or what is euphemistically called a “sceptical”—viewpoint is a 20th-century myth proposed by those who wish science itself to be a religion (usually with themselves as its priestly hierarchy).

—Lawrence Principe, The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction