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Most of us didn't set out to eliminate deities. We just noticed they never appear. I doubt Pinker or Wilson set out to construct an atheistic system; they're just used to eliminating unnecessary entities from their model.

"Deities" don't appear in science; and it's not science's job to find them. And it's not necessary for a scientist to have an opinion in the matter one way or the other. However, I can think of dozens of scientists who believe in God and it doesn't seem to detract from their work.

In fact, "a religious attitude" seemed to help Einstein:

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.

Actually, Professor, this is how I feel about the matter myself.

As for Pinker and Wilson, I just can't shake the impression that the reason they bump off God is to reduced the universe to manageable proportions. They can't "get at God," so they aver they can explain everything without Him. But if you will allow this: IF there is a God (and I, of course am convinced there is), THEN any account of reality whatsoever, scientific or philosophical, that denies this will not be the whole truth. Indeed, it might actually be an outright falsification of reality.

At the same time, no scientist ought to be theologizing: that belongs to religious people and philosophers. But because something does not fall within the purview of science does not mean that something does not and cannot exist.

. And it's not necessary for a scientist to have an opinion in the matter one way or the other...At the same time, no scientist ought to be theologizing: that belongs to religious people and philosophers.

Scientists frequently do have opinions on the matter. They're allowed. And they're also allowed to bring their knowledge of the universe, gleaned from science, to bear on philosophy, and to have the opinion that theology is an empty and anachronistic pursuit.