Max, i do not think you can make a sharp distinction between religion and science - except perhaps at the level of how both are practiced . Both science and religion rely upon and try to answer ceratin philosophical questions that cannot be reduced to mere empirical facts.
That is evident in the debate of evolution vs. creationism. These two positions are not mutually exclusive, and there have been very successful attempts to interpret evolution in the the spirit of creationism. A good example is the French priest-anthropologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who essentially married the old arguments for god's existence as outlined by Thomas Aquinas with the fossil evidence revelealing evolutionary progress.
One of the Aquinas's arguments goes as follows: there is a hierarchy of perfection observed in the world, certain forms of being are more perfect than other forms, etc. - that hierarchy cannot go ad infinitum, so it must end with the supreme being, such that there is no being more perfect than it. What de Chardin saw in the fossil record was a segment of that "hierarchy of perfection" from lower to higher life forms. When fitted into Aquinas's conceptual framework, evolution could be interpreted as empirical evidence of god's existence. De Chardin added a diachronic (temporal) aspect of it a la Hegel - i.e. the process of creation/perfection taking place over time (i.e. being evolutionary), as well as eschatological one: humans occupy a special place in the evolutionary process - they mark a point where evolution enters a new dimension leading to a direct union with god (this sounded like pantheism, so the roman catholic church banned his teachings).
Now, the point of this discussion is that both creationism and evolutionism are philosophical positions, or rather interpretative schemata of empirical evidence, that are neither mutually exclusive, nor being able to be decided by empirical evidence alone. But that is NOT the issue in the current debate of teaching evolutionism or creationism. That debate is not about interpetation of factual evidence and the relationship between facts and theory - but about raw political power, pure and simple.
The religious right wants to demonstrate its political power over the rival factions in a symbolic way. The only way is to leave a unque hallmark on the political landscape, a mark noone else would leave. That mark is the imposition of creationism in its most cretinuos form - because no one else in his right mind would advocate such a preposterous position.
Creationism plays exactly the same role as tags (graffiti) play in inner cities - they are unique markers of the power of gangs that clam their jurisdiction over certain territory. The more arbitrary and idiotic the sign - the better, because it leaves no doubts that it was placed there by nothing else but the sheer power of the gang. Thus, creationism a la Teilhard de Chardin which reconciles fossil evidence with theological arguments will not do the trick - because it may create an impression of a geniune philsophical position accepted on its intellectual merits. Raw creationism taken verbatim from the bible is so idiotic that no sane person would accept it as an even remotely legitimate point of view. That makes it a perfect shibboleth for the religious right - if they can paint that graffiti on the school wall in the broad daylight - they can do so only because they have raw power, not because there are any merits to what they propose.
In response to Charles B. who asks
"So what are you saying ? All of this religious maneuvering amounts to some fascist danger in America ? Isn't that intellectual campus , bullshit and chickenlittlism ?"
Charles, I never argued that there are no proto-fascist forces in this country. Religious right is a case in point. But for the proto or crypto fascit forces becoming a full blown fascism - one essential ingredient is needed - they must control the state - and i do not see that happening in this country any time soon. Without the power of the state, or even fighting the power of the state as these folks often do - religious right might be at best a powerful lobby - but that is a far cry from a totalitarian fascist regime.
On the other hand, many symbol manipulators on the left side of the political spectrum use the religious right as a bogey man to peddle their own intellectual products and influence. A typical example of that is the outrcry crated by school shootings. These isolated incidents (tragic but politically inconsequential outbursts of individual madness) are often trasformed into "evidence" signalling the end of the civilized world as we know it - caiptalism's decay, fascit takeover, the satanic influence of the gun, etc. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this variety of the left's intellectual production is a close relative of tabloids and 'end-of-the-world stories.
wojtek