What is so ironic is that a theistic worldview is open to a wider range of empirical and historical possibilities than an atheistic worldview is. It is obviously far better to assume that God did create and ask how to best model the creation than it is to assume that He played no role whatsoever in the history of life on Earth. At the very least, all scientists need to be honest agnostics. The bottom line is the same. Scientists need to be open to the empirical possibility that nature is fundamentally discontinuous.
Philosophical naturalism requires that nature be fully continuous.
The history of life must be represented by a tree. All life must have a common ancestor. All genetic change must ultimately be the result of purely unguided, materialistic processes. Theism, on the other hand, is much less restraining. Life may be either continuous or discontinuous.