Religion vs. Science: Do we have to choose?

I have been watching a lot of videos on YouTube lately. I have been watching a lot of videos with the arguments of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. I say Intelligent Design because that is what the "agnostic" term is for Creationism and that is what they want to call it. If that is what they want to call it, so be it, I'll play along.

I should point out that I am a big believer in science. I am not a believer in a specific God. Especially a God that has an inherent interest in the affairs of Man. I tend to believe that if there is a God(s), he/she/it is at best an interested observer. He doesn't have a particular interest in any particular one of us, anymore than a child would take a particular interest in a specific ant in his ant farm. He is likely to be more interested in the interactions among the ants, but the fate of any specific one is not really important to him. The concept of a specific God that takes and interest in the people of the Earth in the traditional sense is usually presented as benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. I just find too many contradictions in the actions, or lack of actions for that to make any sense to me. I am not going to get into details. That's not really what this post is about. This is really just to give you an idea of my perspective so that you might be able to appreciate where I am coming from. So let's not get into a "Is there a God" debate. There is no way convince a non-believer there is and a believer that there is not.

What I am interested in is that it seems that in the posts that I have watched on YouTube, there seems to be a war brewing. Evolutionists seem to think that IDists are trying to use the schools to teach religion violating the separation of church and state. IDists seem to think that Evolutionists are trying to lead people away from God for whatever nefarious reason. Andit seems that with relatively little exception, that you have to choose one or the other. There seems to be no common ground.

I guess I can't understand why it is that the two have to be mutually exclusive. Evolution doesn't purport to explain the beginning of the universe. It just claims to explain how life got to its current state. I've watched video upon video laying out each side's position. I think there is some pretty substantial evidence that Evolution is correct. I don't see much evidence from the ID side of the house that is compelling from a scientific perspective. This would be fine if it was still Creationism, but Creationism is not allowed to be taught in schools because it is clearly religious and the separation of church and state prevents a specific religion from being promoted by government institutions. So Intelligent Design was created by taking Creationism and removing the word "God" and replacing it with "Intelligent Designer". This in theory makes it palatable to school systems because it does not promote a religion. But try to suggest that an alien was the intelligent designer to a proponent of this particular theory and see what they say. Since ID is proposed as a scientific theory, it doesn't get the pass that a religious idea gets. At least not from me. For a scientific theory to be considered valid, the scientist has to make observations, create hypotheses, design tests to validate the hypotheses and then present his data to the community where it can be debated and discussed. Evolution has had 150 years to people collecting data and testing hypotheses and it has built a track record of finding things that can be used to fill holes in expected ways to get from one organism to another. Yes there are some gaps, but if I had a nickle for every gap human beings have had in their knowledge and has later been filled, I would be sitting on a beach in Maui sipping a friggin' Mai Tai. However, I don't see anything in the ID camp that is testable. It all comes down to "since we don't know, it must be %insert intelligent designer here%." If that isn't faith, I don't know what is. And I am not saying there is anything wrong with faith. Faith is fine. It's fine in a church. It is fine in your home. It is fine in a philosophy class. It is fine in a number of settings. A science classroom however, is not one of them.

The same thing happens with the Big Bang vs Genesis. What was before the Big Bang? Who knows? Scientists don't. Some people have some notions, but nothing that is universally accepted. Nothing that is really beyond the hypothesis phase. They have some notions of things they would expect to find if it is true and they are designing tests to see if they can find these things. What is dark matter? No idea. Might not even be matter. Dark energy? Clueless. Could just be we have gravity wrong. Lots of ideas. Not a single answer. But there is some inherent testability. With "God did it", how do you test that? You can't. It's the very definition of faith. Again, I would never deny someone their faith. You have a right to believe whatever you want, but the science classroom is not the place for it.

I don't even know what to say about Old Earth vs. New Earth. Again, I'm not sure I understand why this is such a problem. I mean, I guess if you take a literal interpretation of the Bible, and you add up the ages of all of the patriarchs and you get that 6,000 year number I can see it being difficult to accept a 4.6 billion year old Earth. But if you have even a slightly less than literal interpretation of the Bible, why is 4.6 billion years so evil? The arguments I've seen are all very hand-wavy at best. The only thing that had any sort of proof for a young Earth, involved demonstrating that human and dinosaur footprints were found near each other in some locations and some rock wall paintings of things that looked kind of like dinosaurs. At least they are trying to post some evidence. This almost would not offend me if it were taught in schools. There's some evidence at least. Something other than "we don't know so it must be %insert deity of choice%". I don't think it would stand up too well in a room full of paleontologists, geologists, cosmologists, etc, but hey, it's something.

So here is the question I put forth.

In YOUR view, are science and religion simply incompatible? Is it one or the other? Is there room for both in a person's life?

Please feel free to comment below. As always, be civil. I am happy to have your opinions, and I am happy to see differing opinions, but no personal attacks. If name calling starts, comments will be closed. And remember. No is there, isn't there a God(s). The question is if there is room for both religion and science in a person's life? Does it have to be one or the other?