Evolution does not necessarily refute Religion

Ok, this maybe as pointless as some say, but since I am up for a challenge, I am going to try it anyway. First off, in your resolution you state that Evolution does not refute religion. By exactly what religion are you going by? Evolution in and of itself could be a religion. When looking at what you want to debate, and without bringing bible quotes into this, it really depends upon what religion your looking at. Some religions take the bible seriously. Going off of this, you would have to say that evolution does indeed refute religion because you have not specified what religion, therefore it can and it does. Secondly, evolution is a theory. By definition a theory is the branch of a science or art that deals with its principles or methods; it is also defined as a guess or conjecture, also defined as a contemplation or speculation. Evolution is purely based on science. Therefore, the very idea of something based on science is completly out of touch with something is based on faith and things that you cannot see. By definition, merely just for point and case, faith means having a belief that is not based on proof. If evolution is a science based theory based on proof and faith is something is NOT based on proof, then therefore it goes against religion and the foundation on which religion was built. Third, Evolution is a theory, a concept, a paradigm. Not dissimilar to many religions, it's a matter of personal choice. Teach/Inform people that those things exist and let them make up their own minds about it for themselves; Just as they would with any religion. People who don't believe in a god don't really want their kids learning about the theory of Intelligent Design taught to their kids in school. When looking at this theory, this is a faith-based theory with no scientific evidence to back it up. It would be silly to look at such a theory and say that Intelligent Design does not refute Evolution, so how is it any different when looking at Evolution and religion? Lastly, evolution can and does go against the religions of people. You never state that I have to argue that evolution goes against any one particular religion. For years people have been trying to keep things such as evolution from being taught to their children in schools. Why? For one simple reason: It goes against what the parents and the religion of the child are teaching. The debate over evolution has never only been about the theory, it has been about religion, because there are several religions out there that teach things OTHER than evolution and with children sitting in their classrooms learning about evolution over creationism or creationism over something else, seems to many American people and to the parents and pastors, ect. to be VERY counter-productive. Going off this, lets look at some statistics. According to the most recent Gallup poll on the subject (2004), 45 percent of Americans believe God created human beings in their present form 10,000 years ago, while another 38 percent believe that God directed the process of evolution. Only 13 percent accept the prevailing scientific view of evolution as an unguided, random process. Looking at these numbers, it can clearly be seen that the bible has no need to be quoted when it is marked so that we can plainly see that there has to be some line when you have such a huge number difference. In a 1993 survey that was taken it was found that in the United States, 63 percent of the public believed in God and 35 percent believed in evolution. There are obviously more people who believe in a God and his creation, then naturalistic evolution. How can that NOT offend people and begin to refute religion? I can see no possible way that it can't. In Conclusion, it can be proven that evolution DOES refute religion. I strongly urge the people watching this debate to look at such points. How is it that one can still come to a conclusion that states that evolution can go hand in hand with religion. If it were meant to be that way, then the debates over teaching such theories to children in schools would not be an issue to make headlines in the newspapers, if evolution didn't refute religion then we would have to classify evolution as a religion in and of itself, and also if evolution does not refute religion then by definition theory and faith need to be changed. We need to stop and think, we need to realize that we cannot deny that evolution threatens religion, and we can no longer pretend that it does not.