Interesting enough, I pulled this from the talk.origins site. While there is a rebuttal on the page St. Dawkins, it doesn't actually address the implications, nor the significance behind St. Dawkin's statement. This fact betrays an intellectual dishonesty:
"Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" (Dawkins 1986, 6)..
Now, this statement can be vociferously denied, or hand waved at, but since this was made by the person holding the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, one must bring into question the motivations seen in the recent fandango.
What is at the heart of the matter is that a local school district is being sued in Federal court, all polemics about 'destroying science' or 'ape worship' aside. The real danger here is IMHO a parallel to what happened in Russia, regarding Lysenkoism--a questionable science at the time that was co-opted by the State to promulgate a political philosophy. After all, if State policies can be backed by a consensus of scientists, who can argue? ( not to mention, the purging of other scientists who argued against. Of course, if one's life is threatened, it is pretty easy to join the 'consensus' ). This event resulted in killing millions of people through famine.
What one does, however, with the paradigm is what determines whether a person practices "religion". It is entirely possible that a scientist can keep his pursuit of empirical knowledge totally separate from his religion, or lack of religion. It is also possible that he can exercise some of the less favorable traits of religion (which non-religious persons invariably use to attack religion) in pursuing his science. He can become dogmatic. He can argue from faith, unsupported by evidence. He can seek support among like-minded scientists when his position is challenged, instead of facing the challenge and defeating it with superior evidence and logic. It seems that among religious people and scientists, the first to resort to dogma appear to be the less well prepared to argue based on the merit of their ideas.
What is important to distinguish in calling evolutionism "religion" is how the belief set dictates behavior. Being an "intellectually fulfilled athiest" due to Darwin smacks of using the implications of science to inform meditations of the eternal, the first cause, etc. To the extent that evolutionists assert dogma and respond to queries with answers that sound like evolutionist versions of "Blasphemer!" they are religious. Period.
That said, I don't think the majority of scientists practice a religion called evolutionism. Most of the people who argue for evolution are very sharp, and have valid, well-reasoned ideas. But the periphery is made up of a lot of folks who argue for evolution because it is what they were taught in school. They went on to do other things in life, not science. But like Dawkins, evolution allowed them to be fulfilled. It contributed to their world view, and now, when that is challenged, they don't have the knowledge of science to fall back on and thus fall into the trap of practicing blind evolutionism. Just like religious fanatics who quote the bible to argue against evolution, these evolutionists have nothing to add to the argument.
I've now discussed evolution and ID with folks on both side of the spectrum. By far, the scientists have been far more polite and educated, and have offered the best retorts. I have learned a lot from them, and I am grateful for their measured responses. The others--well, the best they have to offer is the tried and true: "Blasphemer!" They may have reinforced their own world view, for the time being. But they haven't modified mine.