That argument holds no water, because those people lived in an era when those who professed unbelief were actively persecuted. Atheism wasn't an option back then. Despite this, a vast majority of the progenitors of the scientific method did express their unbelief in a personal, intervening, omnibenevolent god; they were deists, at worst.
But, to quote Hitchens again, even if they all were devoutly religious people, it still wouldn't make any difference. Religion was our first attempt in many fields of study, and at making sense of reality. But because it was our first, it was also our worst:
“It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites. We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons, and djinns were hovering in the air about us. We imagined that thunder and lightning were portentous. It has taken us a long time to shrug off this heavy coat of ignorance and fear, and every time we do there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to put it back on again.”
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