Actually, being a scientific theory, Darwin's theory never said anything one way or another about God. God is outside the realm of science. It is fundamentalist religious people and atheists who interpret evolution as being inconsistent with God. Atheists already do not believe in God, so evolution really hasn't done anything but confirm that belief. I fail to see why fundamentalists are so threatened by a theory which makes no mention of God. If you built a robot which was designed to build a machine that produced an inovative new product, did you not invent something? Who deserves the patent? The robot? The machine? I don't think you could argue anything other than that you invented the new product. Similarly, if God created the universe using the big bang as a tool and then allowed it to proceed according to the laws of nature He established, then who created the universe? The big bang? No, God did. Similarly, if the universe proceeded in such a way as to make inevitable the development of life and then life evolved according to the theory of evolution, who created humans? Evolution? No, again God is the creator. It is even possible to reconcile the six day timeline in Genesis with the big bang theory and evolution given a proper understanding of the nature of time. Time is a relative quantity. The duration measured by an observer depends on the reference frame of that observer. It is entirely possible that a duration of six 24-hour days measured from the reference frame of the universe immediately after the big bang is equivalent to a duration of tens of billions of years as measured from our current reference frame. So which is the correct time? Both! That's what relatvity tells us. The first thing God created in the Genesis account is light. The only thing present in the milliseconds after the big bang was light. There are other parallels, but I am not enough of an expert on the science or the Scripture to fully deal with them. The point is that there is no threat to a belief in God coming from science.
Thanks for you analysis, but I never said that science was a threat to God--I am a scientist!
I understand your point of view, and I agree with most of it. And you are correct inthat "Origin of Species" does not specifically contradict God or Genesis. But "Decent of Man" does in my view. It makes the claim that humans evolved from apes over a long period of time--with slow and gradual change. That my friend contradicts Genesis--and I don't want to hear this "your some dumb hick who takes Genesis literally" talk that liberals use.
Also, I am glad that you and many others on this forum believe that God could have used any means to create the universe, but there are volumes of books (in the science section of the bookstore or library) that use evolution to try and disprove God. Books like "The Blind Watchmaker" and many others use Darwinism to express their atheism. And guess what, these writers are scientists--biologist in most cases.
There are several experts out there in several different fields of hard-science who have major issues with macro-evolution. Give one of them a read and you will see that this is not just a bunch of "Fundamentalist" rather, it is real scientist with real problems with a broken theory.
Here is a list of a few good writers on the subject:
1. Jonathan Wells--Dr. of Molecular and cell biology from Berkely--focus on vertebrate embryology and evolution. His books are titled "Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism" and "Icons of Evolution" this one came out in 200 and is an excellent book.
2. Stephen C. Meyer--this guy has written a ton of books "Darwinism, Design, and Public Education," "Science Faith and Intelligent Design," and "Four Views; The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intellegent Creator."
Then there are tons of guys in cosmology and other fields of science, but I guess we are mostly talking about biology here, I will stick to that. but if you would like a list of more scientists, feel free to ask.
Also, a good book, that is easy to read is Lee Strobel's "Case for a Creator." Lee is a journalist who goes around and interviews many of the top scientists who are skeptical of Darwinism. He asks the tought questions, and in most cases, gets a satisfactory answer. This one is a good entertaining and educational book.