Since evolutionary theory does not actually rule out God, there is plenty of room for believers to believe in both. It’s important to realize that there’s a big different between not including God and actually postulating his non-existence.

This is really no different from any other scientific theory, in this respect. None of Newton’s or Einstein’s theories include God either. Why get so bent out of shape when Darwin’s theory follows precisely the same principle?

This is how all of science works…starting from a state of minimum assumptions, then postulating as little as possible to reach an empirically testable explanation. God has not been included because His presence is not empirically testable (so far), and thus wouldn’t provide additional predictive power to theories.

The fact is that it just isn’t scientifically USEFUL to explicitly include nor exclude God from any given theory. Either way, it adds no predictive power to the theory, so why bother making a statement either way? It just doesn’t help, in a scientific sense.

One clarification on Tyler’s statement above. Science is not the pursuit of “provable” knowledge since science can not actually “prove” anything. It can merely state what is likely true (very likely; almost certain) based on the evidence. But I think this is what he mean’t anyways based on his qualification that “Evolution is as good as it gets (for now)” .. which I absolutely agree with.

Steve: Link fixed - BD

I haven’t paid attention to the current athiest/believer debates because I think some of it is social/political reaction.

While I fully appreciate there are athiest scientists that have ‘brought’ their belief system into what should remain a scientific debate, I tend to fall into the last two categories of Protestant believers Stackhouse mentions.
My lack of interest in Dawking et al might not be reasonable since I haven’t paid attention, I see Richard Dawkins as a Kenneth Ham counterpoint.:^)

Didn’t we as a society go through this kind of public back and forth with Madeline Murray O’Hare?

I think the important thing to remember in this whole debate is the pursuit of science is the pursuit of provable knowledge. Evolution is as good as it gets (for now), and there’s little room for God in there, so why get Him involved?