General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Could you vote for a Democrat who didn't accept evolution? [View all]HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Religion doesn't absolutely require a supernatural creator, religions could be limited to systems of cultural beliefs that guide ethics, transitional rituals with life events, and various forms of support that tend to the various challenges of life.
Religions that use a God Of The Gaps to fill in a missing understanding about the empirical world are pretty much always at risk of a collision course with gap ending scientific understanding. But all such religions don't have scriptures or mythic traditions that are deemed literal and unchangeable words of god.
Moreover, adherents of religion may have personal beliefs and the capacity to make non-fundamentalist accomodation that facilitate belief in a creator and evolution. The basic positions are that evolution doesn't conflict with the allegorical roots of creation, that god did it but used evolution, and that god did it and did it in a way that looks just like evolution
I've known many PhD's in various biological fields that belonged to and were active in Christian denominations, at least 3 of whom were leaders in their congregations. Some found an apologist' position in between, and some accepted the value of membership in a religious congregation as sufficient to make membership worth more than making evolution a deal breaker.