My main problem with many atheists (though certainly not all) is that many of them treat science as if it's some sort of ideological belief system rather than what it's actually supposed to be: an objective system of methodology for determining the validity of a certain hypotheses or theory. This particular camp of atheist also tend to believe that science has the last word on everything, and anything that modern science cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they will assume out of hand to be absolutely untrue rather than keeping an open mind about it and simply being skeptical. Further, they will often adopt a position that is the exact opposite extreme of a "true believer," thereby becoming a mindless debunker in place of reasonable skepticism.
In fact, the type of belief system that this category of atheist often adopt and push on others is often referred to as scientism, which is defined as treating science as if it's some type of ideological belief system, i.e., a system based on faith, where anything it cannot prove or disprove at this stage of scientific development must be completely untrue. Further, to this particular stripe of atheist, anything that can be remotely associated with religion must be treated as totally irrational by scientists and they are strongly pressured by atheists both within and outside of the scientific field into making any sort of attempt to prove or disprove the validity of such phenomena out of fear that they may indeed find some evidence for it and therefore (in the eyes of those who practice scientism) risk validating religion, which they loathe and believe to be the major cause of all the problems in the world today.
This faction of atheists seem to totally overlook the fact that if scientists of the future manage to find evidence for (as an example) the survival of human consciousness after the death of the physical body in some alternate level or frontier of existence, that would not only open the door towards answering one of the most important unsolved questions that human beings have about the universe and their place within it (which is what science is supposed to do in the first place), but it would also remove the concept of the afterlife from being seen as being under the exclusive domain of religion and officially pull it into the realm of science. If the latter occurred, this would actually serve to invalidate rather than validate religion, because now many people would turn to science rather than religion as the system that people turn to for answers to this particular question.
Many atheists in this camp frequently say things to the effect of, "Believe me, I would love to believe that human consciousness survives after the death of the physical body, but science has found no evidence for it and it's not science's job to find answers to things like that anyway; the concept of the afterlife should be left to the realms of religion and philosophy, not science. And the only reason people ever turn to religion and believe in an afterlife in the first place is because they fear death and have to give themselves some comfort that their consciousness will continue to survive in some mythical idyllic realm." As I am forced to remind the atheists that often say variations of the aforementioned comment, nothing that may possibly be a legitimate aspect of the universe, let alone some of the most important questions that human beings have about the nature of the universe and their place in it, should be considered outside the purview of scientific inquiry. Demanding otherwise is stripping science of its very purpose and trying to place limits on what scientists should be inquiring about for strictly political and ideological reasons. If the science of the future could answer some of these questions, or at least find good evidence in that direction, people in large numbers would likely abandon turning to religion for these answers and instead turn to science. These atheists, of course, fear the exact opposite will occur, hence their political motivations for insisting that science should adamantly refuse to answer certain questions that atheists of this camp insist should be left to religion and philosophy alone to discuss. This they don't mind, of course, since religion is based on faith and thus will not make any attempt to find evidence for their beliefs, and philosophy is intended for the mere discussion of certain subjects and not for proving any particular point of view beyond any doubt, so atheists believe that the notorious "bullshit" factor of philosophical discussion of these particular topics (and all other topics) will never receive serious credence from "rational" people anyway.
For anyone who doubts this, I highly recommend reading Robert Monroe's three fascinating books, Journeys Out of the Body, Far Journeys, and Ultimate Journey, where his alleged sojourns with astral projection caused him to ultimately abandon all religion and instead turn to the hope that science in the future would seek to prove the existence of the alternate levels of human consciousness that he encountered while "out of body" and never for one second implied that people should take the existence of what we often call the "soul" (a word he disliked using due to its connotations) and the afterlife realms on blind faith alone. It should also be noted that Monroe was never a religious man in the first place and always considered himself a rational man with a high degree of respect for science, so his claimed sojourns in the OBE state were never influenced by any particular religious beliefs, he was critical of what was often said about the soul and the afterlife in the Bible and mainstream religious beliefs (and even sarcastically titled one of the chapters in his first book something along the lines of, "'Cause the Bible Tells Us So..."), and he diligently attempted to analyze his claimed experiences in a scientific manner. He even went so far in his last book to proclaim that he believed that religious beliefs and faith rather than turning to science for the answers to these very important questions about the full spectrum of human existence and our place in the universe stifles the progress of human consciousness and understanding. So much for the fear of atheists that the discovery of a vehicle for the survival of human consciousness in alternate levels of existence following the death of the physical body (along with other questions about the universe that atheists insist should only be discussed by theologians and philosophers and not scientists, except to deride as "irrational") will cause people to flock to organized religion in droves and start believing the many ignorant things that organized religious people often admittedly say about matters of moralism, God's will, etc., instead of turning to science for the answers.
Ironically, the best way for human society to eliminate all religion from the face of the globe in the future is to do the exact opposite of what this particular camp of atheists are trying to do, which is to have science attempt to answer these important questions about humanity's place in the universe so that people will turn to science and abandon religion. Science may not be able to do this with its present level of technology, but that doesn't mean it cannot develop such means in the future, and until that day people should remain reasonably skeptical about such phenomena rather than denounce the possibility of its validity in some form or other out of hand, because doing so is displaying ignorance on the same level as the fundamentalist members of organized religion, albeit in the opposite direction. The attempts by these atheists to eliminate religion in the world by brutally deriding it as totally bereft of any positive points whatsoever (even though it does undoubtably cause a lot of problems in the world today under the current system) and denouncing all people who adhere to religious beliefs as "irrational" (no matter how much respect members of alternative religious systems like Wicca may routinely display for science and the scientific method) is extremely unlikely to succeed, because this tactic will still leave these important questions about the universe unanswered for too many people in the world. Insisting that science is inimical to answering these questions just doesn't cut water with the many people who consider these questions to be legitimate, because the truth of the matter is, these questions are very important to humans as a species to inquire about. Religion in its various incarnations is not going to go away as long as these questions remain unanswered no matter how much atheists of certain camps attempt to demonize it and criticize people for asking these very valid questions about the universe and humanity's place in it (i.e., "Since we can't prove these things today, science should never try to do so at any point between now and the future, and these questions are better left to theologians and philosophers to discuss anyway, so let's stop asking them outside of church and philosophical seminars on existentialism and related topics, okay?"). My message to those particular atheists who are using this typical tactic to remove religion from the world...lot's of luck!
Before ending this diatribe of mine, I would like to point out that I believe that all atheists are entirely justified in criticizing the aspects of organized religion that attempt to twist the legitimate questions I mentioned above into excuses for imposing certain moralism-derived beliefs on all of society (e.g., trying to impose certain social roles on males and females in society, de-emphasizing the equality of females and their right to control over their own bodies, interfering in the right of people to practice mutually consensual sex in a recreational fashion, denying women the right to avoid getting pregnant by the use of contraceptives that have been scientifically proven to be effective on the moralizing grounds that recreational sex is wrong and doing anything to prevent getting impregnated is a "sin" since it's against their beliefs to willfully prevent birth, to deny young girls access to a vaccine that may reduce their chances of acquiring a virus that can cause cervical cancer on the moralistic grounds that this may result in their becoming more inclined to engage in recreational sexual activity as they grow older), or to discourage people from rational discourse in general, to deny the validity of scientifically sound theories like evolution, to attempt to affect social policy and the legal system by inculcating their belief systems into them (see all of the above), by attempting to force their kids to attend church services with them if the kids do not want to attend, etc. Please note that my critique on these atheists is not their many legitimate complaints about what many (though certainly not all) people in organized religions do and believe on a moralizing level (as I share and frequently echo these criticisms myself, and loudly at that), but rather with their absolute refusal to consider some of the main questions about the universe and hunanity's place in it that are currently asked by religion and philosophy alone today, and for insisting that these are not legitimate questions for science to tackle in the future out of a misguided and entirely political concern that such questions may risk validating religion and religious beliefs in countless numbers of people if science ever found any real evidence to support these questions. And any atheist of this particular stripe who insists that the above is not the main reason why they demand that science stays as far away from these questions as possible, let me be the first to tell you that they are full of more horse excrement than the Augean Stables.