Thank you for the thoughtful comment, Howard. Your approach to this topic is really quite refreshing and intriguing. :)

I absolutely love the way you bring religion and human evolution together into a sort of symbiotic relationship. I agree with most everything you’ve said here; in fact, one of the defenses of religion I sometimes fall back on is that the development of religious faith may have very well been an evolutionary necessity, though your explanation is much better than anything I’ve ever come up with.

You’ve got two very important components of the human experience — one that satisfies our spiritual needs (faith) and one that satisfies our practical needs (science) — that often seem to be at odds with each other. But they’re also both essential to the qualities of life for billions of people around the world, and I don’t think we can turn our backs on either one. So perhaps the conflict between religion and science is really just our way of forcing a reconciliation between the two and subsequently pushing our evolution forward. That seems to be the implication, at least to me.