system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
why are so many popular scientists staunch materialists/physicalist/naturalists?

I've noticed a lot of modern and popular scientists seem to be hardcore materialists and I'm using materialist synonymously with naturalism and physicalism. The modern scientists I'm referring to are those like Sean Carroll, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Sam Harris etc.
gpt
One thing to note is that your sample isn't very representative. You only have four people, and only two of them are actually scientists. All of them are popularizers of atheism. It's no surprise that they are "hardcore" naturalists. They promote naturalism in opposition to the supernaturalism of theism. You can't really learn anything about scientists in general from that sample.

That being said, although scientists may or may not be "hardcore materialists", most scientists are naturalists. Naturalism has proven to be an effective paradigm for scientific research.