Evolution is the idea that life came from non-living things and that it grew more and more complicated and that it is through this process and natural selection the species currently on earth appeared. Controversially for Christians it teaches that man and ape had a common ancestor. Evolution is a theory but science terms many proven things as theories. Evolution is proven. Science calls proven things theories for science has to commit itself to whatever evidence says meaning it opposes dogma and the idea of scientific orthodoxy. It has to be very open-minded. In this sense, science and religious dogmatism are incompatible. A genuine religionist cannot be an honest scientist for science is antithetical to dogmatism.
People speak of scientific orthodoxy. This is incorrect. Scientists accuse renegade scientists who hawk bizarre theories of ignoring the evidence - that is not enforcing an orthodoxy but objecting to distortion or ignorance of the evidence.
Evolution emerged as a major theory through Charles Darwin. Religion at the time taught that people and animals were created directly by the action of God.
Evolution is an attempt to explain life and the complexity of life without God. It denies that there is any plan in nature. It simply says that change happens and just happens. If life can be explained by evolution then there is no need for God. Actually to start claiming that God is behind evolution would be silly. It would deny the fact that science says evolution just happened.
Religion ignores that and pretends that evolution requires the guidance of a God more than the old theory that God simply made all life. Or they suppose that it requires it at least as much. This is a denial that anything can be a refutation of God and is an extremely arrogant and stubborn claim. To say evolution requires God is to say that it shows the signs of being the work of God. This is a scientific idea. It is making God a hypothesis. But God can never be a scientific hypothesis. You can't find God in a test tube. You can't see him in a telescope. You can't detect the presence of God through scientific investigation.
If Christians wish to say that science and faith in God are different things and that God is not a scientific hypothesis, they have to say they assume there is a God despite there being no sign of him in creation. Those who say that there are signs of design will have to say that the designer may be a great being but not necessarily a god.
Fundamentalist Christianity pretends that it opposes belief in evolution and belief in Darwinism for they imply that survival of the fittest is and should be the law. The Fundies say that evolution destroys morality and particularly it attacks the Christian doctrine of charity that you should esteem others as much as yourself and not be trying to defeat them to be top person. They are right. But the problem is that even if evolution and Darwinism is untrue, it remains true that we live in a survival of the fittest world. So it makes no difference.
It would be better to believe that it just happened that survival of the fittest is the law of life. That would imply that you don't have to approve of it. To believe that a God who is all-good set it up implies that you do have to approve of it.
It is thought by some that survival of the fittest does not mean that the strongest and the most intelligent will get the upper hand. They think it means that it is those who are the best at adapting to change that survive and get the upper hand. But true strength and intelligence involve adapting to change so we are still saying that only the strongest and the smartest should survive. Evolution might need us to behave as if we are God. Evolution endangers belief in God. Belief in evolution is suited to the idea that God does not really exist and that he is just a human idea. He is not real.
If the law of survival of the fittest just happened, you don't have to approve of it. If God created the law and you take it to imply that you possibly have to approve then you are really welcoming evil. Belief in God condones evil. Unbelief abhors the evil. Even to suggest the possibility of approving is diabolical. Yet if you believe in God you would have to go much further than that and bless the evil! Are you trying to console the sufferer? Are you not like the lick who when a child is molested by her father would tell her, "But no matter how it seems he loves you really!"? Shove your consolation!
Fundamentalist Christianity does not really care what damage if any belief in evolution does. What it really cares about is stopping people from seeing that its ridiculous Bible is full of lies.
The Bible says that Adam was made from the dust.
Evolution says there was no first man but loads of men who were evolved from ape like creatures.
The rationalisers or excuse-makers say that Adam was made from the dust indirectly. His ancestors were made from the dust and eventually through evolution they produced the first man! The simplest interpretation of the text is the right one. The man was directly made from dust.
The Bible says that God made Adam sleep and when he was asleep he took a rib from him and turned it into a woman Eve. This contradicts the evolutionary idea that men and women evolved together.
Theologians point to the absurdities and errors in the story of the creation of life in the Bible and argue then that the story was never meant to be taken literally! Of course it was! It was written in an age that had silly religious stories. To argue that a religious text proven to be false must be true but metaphorical is just more religious excuse making. It means that there is more belief in making excuses than in the text! If fundamentalists today can take the creation stories literally, how much more could the authors have done so all those centuries ago?
Theologians hide the discrepancy between their Bible and science by making out that the Bible is not a scientific textbook but a religious one. But just because the Bible never mentions experiments or never uses scientific terminology does not mean it cannot think of itself as science!
Evolution is incompatible with the Bible and the concept of God has no relevance to it.