A Voice from the Past - Chesterton

Of course the real truth is that science has introduced no new principle into the matter at all. A man can be a Christian to the end of the world, for the simple reason that a man could have been an Atheist from the beginning of it. The materialism of things is on the face of things; it does not require any science to find it out. A man who has lived and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you like. That is Atheism if you like. If mankind has believed in spite of that, it can believe in spite of anything. But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of all the worms who eat him, or the names of all the parts of him that they eat, is to a thoughtful mind somewhat difficult to discover.

G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, All Things Considered, Science and Religion, (Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.net, 2004)

Is there a tendency to assume that because science can explain the details of a thing, it makes a difference in the certainty of the thing itself? Is this a reasonable assumption?