No, they can't, or at least not of the Dawkins or Gould variety.
[You:] No, they can't, or at least not of the Dawkins or Gould variety.
I have often, in these crevo threads, criticized Dawkins for practicing theology without a license. Gould, although himself an atheist, also wrote that evolution is not inconsistent with religious faith.
Simon Conway-Morris, one of the evolutionary biologists whose work on the Burgess Shale fossils Gould summarizes in Wonderful Life, is a Christian, and has written on evolution from a Christian viewpoint in his book The Crucible of Creation.