[Culture_Vulture]

Like the majority of my peer group, I'm in the evolution camp. But that doesn't automatically put me in the atheist camp either.

The way I see it, creationism vs. evolution and religion vs. atheism are not mutually exclusive of one another--not theoretically speaking of course, but in more pragmatic terms. That's why you'd have practicing, faithful religious folks who believe whole-heartedly in evolution, and even some non-religious individuals who believe in all kinds of random, remotely scientific-sounding fringe theory about the origins of the universe.


IMO (and I know a few philosophy majors who are in agree with such a view), science and religion should just lay off of each other. Easier said then done, of course--I remember when they tried to implement creationism as an alternate theory to evolution (to be taught simultaneously in an unbiased fashion) into grade school curricula in the States a few years back. That turned out to be quite disastrous iirc.



P.S. Not that I'm not all in for diversity of opinions on discussions like these, but labeling religion as things like "ways to control the masses", "hope", "dogmatic" is, at least in my opinion, reverting us back primitive squabbles over the demarcation of science.
Not to say that these arguments are not viable answers in themselves, but to state these assumptions (and I would say to a certain extent, even to bring them up at all, because they're generally assumed to be implicitly understood) just weakens one's argument by a dozen notches.