I am thoroughly convinced that the common allegation that science is only a hindrance to faith is due exclusively to the type of "public relations" atheism has enjoyed since 1925.  Because of the bad face put on religion, we are now under the impression imposed by naturalists sitting at the helm of academia that to be religious is to be uneducated or anti-intellectual.  But the reality is radically different than this perception.

Prior to Isaac Newton, it was anticipated that there would be fixed laws that would be discovered since God would have created a world governed by His will.  Such motivation was perhaps derived from such biblical antecedents as the following:

And if the universe is designed (as the Scriptures teach repeatedly) than we should expect a consistency of those laws that govern nature.  It wasn't until the rise of the naturalists during the Enlightenment period when we would begin to think about nature in naturalistic terms.  But the avenue science has taken today confirms a great many truths already upheld by the Christian faith.  For example (and perhaps most profound) is the affirmation in science that the universe began to exist (in confirmation of Genesis 1:1).  This simple and widely-accepted claim was resisted by scientists who became aware that an absolute origin of the universe "smacks of divine intervention" (S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 46).  Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow of NASA's Goddard Institute once remarked, "What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation" (Until the Sun Dies, 1977).

In more recent times, we are witnessing a resurgence of design theory in examining the astrophysical and biological origins of both the universe and human life.  These remarkable discoveries and research fields are time and again demonstrating how the universe must be fine-tuned to support life on this planet and how complex the cell is in its inner-workings.  Contrary to atheistic expectations (that the universe isn't as unlikely as we think and that human life is just one trajectory among many possibilities), the odds of a universe like ours to be fashioned and fine-tuned to the exact specifications necessary to sustain human life is so incredible that our minds cannot grasp the significance of such numbers.  The idea that life is an accident is receiving less and less support the more we study initial conditions.  This is why naturalistic scientists are opting for a "many worlds" hypothesis - it's a way to acknowledge that the fine-tuning of the universe requires an explanation without actually pointing to God.  But, at the end of the day, it is pure metaphysical speculation and quite fanciful (if not novel).

The final assessment?  Science is undoubtedly a friend to religion!