My Knowledge as a Result of Science

       As a senior in college contemplating the future beyond the classroom I have looked back on multiple occasions to find that there was thing that has shaped my perception of the world and created my scheme of knowledge more than anything else -- religion. That doesn't sound very pertinent to our discussion, but it is in the sense that religion has given me something to question. As an atheist I have taken the position that there is some logical explanation to existence, and I have always counted on science to fuel my credibility as a non-believer. However, without religion I would not be as invested and tangled with science.
       I could generalize this as a need for evidence, and a need for reason. My specific desire for science to provide the evidence of the lack of a god started around my junior year in high school. I had long been absent from any church services or gatherings at this point, and my connections with a god had been all but severed. I began to look for reasons to feel this way, and my motivation at this point was purely based on spiting religion. I began to form my perception of the world based on purely logical calculations and explanations, and it was because a virgin birth simply did not suffice as the means by which my being generally came into existence. Religion gave me a spring board into science, it gave me a reason to become involved with science.
        I use this example because the religion I know and have come to dislike was taught to me in the institution of Knox's Presbyterian Church. On a personal level, this was the bond between politics and science that is pertinent to our discussion. The discourse that I gathered from that church seemed illogical, it seemed eerily similar to stories of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. My role in the political world -- by a role in the political world I am implying a relationship with the world that is central to my morality and the discourse that I share with others -- that would have been shaped by that sort of discourse had I absorbed it would have resulted in a disinterest in reason and logic, and therefore my relationship with science would be altered significantly. The alteration would not necessarily take place in how invested I would be in science, but more so the motivation for being involved with science.
        In conclusion, the point I am trying to make is that science is important to me, but only so far as it provides evidence. This might offend some, and I truly might be a poser in a sense, but the politics and discourse of religion has only merely spiked my interest in science providing evidence. That is, I am not interested in practicing science, I am interested in consuming it as a discourse. Science is something I use for my subjective, non-believing perception of the world.