Science can be seen as being like a mine. Once you know there's something worth mining, you have a reason to set up a mine, but if you don't expect to find anything, it's just a waste of time and resources. Today, atheists can spend a lot of time in our metaphorical mine, and when they resurface, they can be carrying just as many useful resources as Christians can. But science itself is not a mine that was built by atheists. Atheism has no foundation for science. Neither do other religions, in fact.
It is not a coincidence that the scientific revolution was pioneered almost exclusively by Christians and pseudo-Christians. Science is just the logical conclusion of the Christian faith. As Loren Eilsley pointed out, "The philosophy of experimental science…began its discoveries and made use of its methods in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a creator who did not act upon whim nor interfere with the forces He had set in operation… It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption." (1)
The assumption that we are dealing with a rational universe controlled by a creator who doesn't act on a whim or interfere with the forces He's set in operation is not something you will find in most religions. Allah brags about being the "greatest of deceivers" (2), so science would be illogical in his world because anything we discover could be a divine fraud. Zeus and his gang are just as capricious (not to mention finite) as the human beings who invented them, so if they were real, the universe would be impossible to study because it would be chaotic. If Evolution were true, it wouldn't matter if the universe did behave in an orderly fashion, our brains would be worth little more than the brain of a bonobo, so science still wouldn't be a logical conclusion.
But the Biblical God is unique in that the very nature of His message, and the authentication thereof, assumes a natural world. Miracles, a vital part of the Christian faith, are an exception that proves the rule. Miracles are a suspension of natural law, and you cannot suspend natural law if there is no natural law. The clear teachings of the Bible made it possible for science to be a mine of knowledge for us today. Christians knew there was gold to be dug up, and so they started digging, and so everyone else followed suit. If you like science, God says "you're welcome".
References
Eiseley, Loren. - Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men who Discovered It, Doubleday, Anchor, New York, 1961
Qur'an 3:54; 8:30