No, Boyle (1627–1691) was not an atheist. He was a very devout Protestant and wrote at length about how science and religion could be reconciled. His main publications on this subject were The Christian Virtuoso (1660) and A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things (1688). However, in his Disquisition, he argued that, in everyday work, a scientist should only consider the primary qualities of particles. He meant by this that a scientist, unlike everyone else, would not focus on colors, sounds, textures, and smells.