The theory of evolution is compatible with mainstream religion

Modern mainstream theological thought is not compatible with evolution. Not simply inconsistent with the Genesis' literal account but evolution itself is undermining to the core claims religions mainstream religions make. 1) You are special. 2) God created life (with or without evolution). 3) Perfect/Good creation. A good understanding of evolution is deadly to these claims. Denial to these claims is deadly to religion. A) Evolution does not hold that you are special. One of the defining understandings of religious thought is that humans are the divine end product of a divine process and that the creation of you, is a special creation. Much thought is devoted to the idea that the universe was created specifically for humanity. This is not the case. Evolution holds that we are simply a result, rather than a predefined result. Rather than a sentient species of chimpanzee becoming dominate, anything could have happened. Developments could have allowed plants to use the waste oxygen they produce and prevent all aerobic species from developing. Evolution isn't random or chance, rather it is better described as shuffling a deck of cards and getting some result. However, looking at this result and claiming that it is special or more special than the nearly infinite number of other possible products is flat-out wrong. If the process was started over again the odds of our existence a second time would be so close to nothing as to be unworthy of mention. In short, evolution holds that you aren't special, you're just lucky. This does not reveal some divine plan at work in the universe; it destroys that picture. B) God did not create life. God does not guide life. God does not do anything in the biological science. Most likely God does not exist. Regardless of the proposition of God, evolution only requires imperfect replication, we demonstratively have this. The question of the compatibility of evolution and religion isn't whether God the Create negates the possibility that evolution happened. Rather, does evolution contradict the notion of God the Creator? As broad as the theme of modern theology that "you are special" is to the idea that God created life. However, we understand the process of evolution and, as observed, it clearly does function in the world as we see it. With simple processes it easily can create all the complexity and order we see around us in the world today. "From a simple beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."- As Darwin wrote at the end of The Origin of Species. Evolution undermines the idea and purpose of God. We understand from our study of the natural world, that we are a part of the natural world and that natural forces are sufficient to create these "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful." This understanding is intrinsically contradictory to the idea of God to which most theists subscribe. With a proper understanding of the theory of evolution and the implications thereof, one hardly has a need for this God figure. Even with all the power in the universe, science is reducing this God of the Gaps into the deist God (first mover, then does nothing) after all. By removing the peg of creating life, God becomes a shallow idea. With a materialistic explanation of the complexities of life God explains nothing. I maintain that theists would be uncomfortable and find their understandings of God to be incompatible with a deist God. Mainstream religions do not find comfort in the idea of a shrinking God, explaining less and less about the universe. There is a true need in mainstream religion to have God at the bottom of things, rather than as a secondary unneeded notion. C) The natural world is not benevolent. It is not good. It is not perfect. It is not kind. The originator of the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin wrote to his friend Asa Grey, "With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [wasps] with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed." The natural world isn't a pretty utopia as it is made out to be. 99% of all species which have ever lived are dead. Evolution builds amazing and wondrous structures of the natural world on the corpses of those with a slightly inferior edge in the fight for survival. The natural world allows for outright disturbing things such as one blue-footed booby chick pecking the brains out of a second chick in order to get more resources. Most theists would find this to be contrary to the typical concept of a perfect and good God lovingly creating all life. To evolution, this behavior is not only to be keenly observed it is to be understood as in the best interests of the wasp or surviving chick. Charles Darwin, like many afterwards, eventually lost his faith in God. And though it was the death of his daughter which finally broke his faith. His understandings of the chance happenings of the world and his understanding of evolution allowed him to easily break free. Richard Dawkins in the Blind Watchmaker wrote: "An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." If one takes a look at the statistics you'll find that very few biologists believe in God. Further, you will find that belief in evolution is negatively correlated with belief in God. --- I hold that a good understanding of the theory of evolution is devastating to mainstream religious thought. 1) Evolution holds that you are an unlikely chance occurrence (not to say evolution is chance just that the specific result 'you' is). A core religious claim is that you are a special intended result of God. 2) Evolution explains the natural world. God explains the natural world. This is a clear conflict. 3) Evolution holds that the misery in the world is an expected part of the world. Mainstream religious view of God is that good and God's creation should also be good. However, as Murphy's law states: Nature is a mother... 4) Although, the typical accusations that evolution is an atheistic religion are wrong and biased, they do have a grain of truth to them. Paley's argument that the intricacy of the natural world leads one to the conclusion that just as watches are made by watchmakers, nature is made by a nature-maker God, is the strongest argument for God to ever have existed; evolution utterly and completely demolished it. 5) Statistics strongly hold that understanding of evolution are inversely correlated with religion. One could hold a vague idea of God in the pantheistic sense that the universe and phenomenon in the universe was 'God' or that a general non-religious form of undiscovered God exists. And as evolution demonstratively exists this would be a compatible notion. However, God as envisioned by the masses is not compatible with evolution as properly understood and any God which is compatible with evolution is a sorry hollow shell of a deity.