As much as those who love to think of a chasm separating the worlds of faith and science (note I don't use the word 'religion' for I understand religion to be man's ultimate rebellion against God in that it replaces relationship with unattainable states bounded by rules which serve only to condemn) from either side, I can only (once more) point out that this is a construct rather than reality!
Thomas Huxley never used the words, 'You' have killed God,' when Darwin showed him his work regarding evolution; neither did he consider science and faith (he called it 'religion' - it was what they called it then!) to be in conflict. In fact in his own words we find (thanks to Bob fore the quote):
“The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious - fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension”.
Darwin feared ridicule from his peers more than any issues with the Church and only published when another (Alfred Russell Wallace) was about to publish what was basically the same work as him (and there was much to be gleaned from others besides).
Darwin was struck hard by the loss of his beloved Annie, but he didn't die an embittered atheist and in fact died thinking his theory (never quite made it to hypothesis or law ;-) ) supported the concept of a creator God.
Seems that once again all sides are sorely treated and truth is once more the casualty!
Pax
*'The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature' in Science and Hebrew Tradition.
London: Macmillan, 1904 pp.160-161
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