>>Hardly a ringing endorsement. And as Jerry Coyne admitted: “Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism, and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel. This is why, as a tactical matter, groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim that religion and science do not conflict.” <<
One person does not speak for science. And there is no conflict.
>>The Darwinists really don’t want to say out loud that Darwinism is atheistic at its core. <<
No, all of science, including the many disciplines involved in TToE, is areligious. By definition, science investigates natural phenomenon using tools that do not depend on the supernatural.
If there really were no conflict Darwinists would not be struggling so hard to to THE authority on all things that make a human, origin, psychology, morality, even the the tendency of humans to worship.
Darwinists are no more immune to this tendency to worship something, someone than anyone else and so it's not surprising that Darwinism has been elevated to a religious dogma.
That is why there is conflict and it won't be defined away anymore than the conflicts between other religious can be defined away.
Atheistic religion? Yes, since anything that functions as a religion and is treated as such is religion. It's not in the eye of the beholder but in the eye of the practitioner.