Desert,
Before you stated this:
4. Evolution was birthed by man's need to explain the wonder of ourselves and our surroundings in the absence of a designer. It's the foundation of humanistic, materialistic thought. There is a lot riding on it, and the huge secular "science" industry will do anything to support it and defend it, even in the face of huge problems or holes in the evidence. But they must support it, because if it dies, there isn't much to take its place: we're then down to aliens or God.
A couple things here, even if we had solid evidence of a designer, it still would behoove science to figure out how we came about, in scientific terms, if possible... especially if the book that is considered the "Word of God" is extremely inconsistent and seemingly-ludicrous at times. Further, you state it like the default statement of fact or reality that "we have a designer," yet this is an unproven assertion, and one that varies in detail over billions of people world-wide. If something is unproven, or doesn't even have a well-laid-out theory behind it, then it is scientists job to make whatever objective use of it as they can, or discard it as just another statement of the infinite that are of no use.
Also, you're using the word "materialistic," which I'd assume you're using this definition:
"the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications."
If you observe some of the most crazy scientific discussions on what we don't know about the universe, they are quite humble about it. In one of the documentaries on Netflix I mentioned, NdT gets to a point where he is basically admitting that there is a ton of mystery left to discover in how things work on a quantum level, and beyond. What he does NOT do, is simply assume that this is where God & Heaven exist and turn his brain off, which, unfortunately, even Isaac Newton did, at the expense of his work. NdT basically said that matter might not even actually exist... everything we think we know about energy and matter could be operating on completely different level.
And if this all turns out to be the heavens, short of some obviously-omnipotent being saying "stop here, you ware doing too much," why should science stop trying to discover? Why SHOULD they try to listen to religious folks who have gotten SO much wrong and simply ask us to take what they say on faith. Could you imagine how screwed up of a world we would be living in if we just "took everything on faith?"
If there was a workable theory that aliens created the universe, scientists would LOVE to figure out the who/what/where/when/why of it all. If there is a workable theory that God did it, they'll probably want to understand the plane of existence God exists on. The problem is, they need actual EVIDENCE, and an actual WORKABLE THEORY on the matter. They don't want to present this. They want the standard to be not only a belief in a God, but a belief in a God as described in
certain subjectively-desirable parts of the Bible and followed-up with a given perspective by a given church, and anyone who doesn't work to Hear the Word of God via that church is "rejecting Christ," and trying to explain things that have already been "explained."
"Taking things on faith" would universally fail on epic proportions. I can't believe that a God who refuses to reveal himself in anythings close to an obvious way to billions of people would want us to simply "take it on faith" when someone comes up to us and tells us what "the truth" is with no evidence. That's how animals work. Their "trust" mechanism is built on instinct and nothing else. Humans have been given a unique gift of reasoning to combat our faulty emotional signals (when they are faulty... sometimes they are not), and if God exists, unless he's playing some sick game, I can't imagine he'd play the same game as all the other religious leaders who are (apparently) practicing the WRONG religion, and would say "just take it on faith."
"Oh, and the punishment for being wrong is eternal damnation in hell if you die."
It makes no reasonable sense, whatsoever. Nothing that the skeptics like doodle, PS, and myself have read over pages and pages of religious discussion seems to have brought us closer to understanding how to find God (or have him find us). Scientists would gladly accept the existence of God or aliens that brought about our existence, and if/when they see real evidence of it, I am confident enough of them will be intrigued to discover new frontiers.
Perhaps a lot of my skepticism over all of this is because I've seen it before. My brother was more-or-less an atheist, but a very "spiritual" person (more-so in a nauseating way than a good way... sorry to speak ill of him). He is/was a pretty smart guy. He talked to me about how
skeptical he was of anyone that thought they KNEW the details of the universe, but how CONVINCED he was when he left. I was glued to him! His implication was that they had given him the proof he needed to believe in Christianity. He then went on and on trying to describe the nature of the sacrifice that Christ made. For like an hour. How He, as the Son of God, absorbed all of our sins through himself during Crucifixion, or something like this. Admittedly, assuming that what he was saying was TRUE, Christ certainly did sacrifice on an unbelievable scale. Even if he's not the son of God, he was a great man, and certainly suffered far more than anyone should at the hand of another. But my brother didn't mention one bit of evidence. Not one bit of proof, even though he had set the lack of proof/evidence up as the entire reason for wanting to share with me what he experienced.
After hearing all of this, I asked him, "so what did you actually learn about the EVIDENCE that any of this is actually true." He then spent about 10 seconds referring to historical record within the Bible. He really didn't care about evidence any more. He just wanted to tell me how much Christ had sacrificed. I was pretty blown away at his shift in perspective. Perhaps he was really touched by God. I, however, wasn't.
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."
- Thomas Paine
---> I'm approaching round body, vestigial limbs and absolutely enormous brain territory; I can hardly hold my head upright, thanks be to God that my skull was able to expand to 5X the normal volume - size does matter. And, my religious preferences are evolving over the years. 
Nah, we're just Dawks-siders.