Alright now, I've been waiting for this for some while. Thanks CapHap for starting a thread on this topic
To make a start:
One thing that seems to bother me is the conception some people seem to hold that evolutionists (just a label for the sake of convenience; I count myself as one of them) seem to 'believe' in evolution, while creationists seem to 'believe' in, well, creation by God as told in the Bible.
While I'm comfortable with the latter, the first conception is simply not true. Almost every evolutionists I know doesn't believe in the Theory of Evolution. It is simply a theory, amongst many, many others, which seems to offer the most plausible explanation of how different species have evolved over the course of time. Thus, the quality of belief, if you will, is a wholly different one that that of religion. We think it's the most probable - if a theory comes along that explains things in a better and more plausible way along with sufficient evidence, I'm perfectly willing to accept a new theory, and if something better than that theory is formulated, I will proceed likewise. Theories change with evidence and evolve over time, and I'm sure as time goes by, the current Theory of Evolution will witness some refinements or alterations in important aspects. The Theory of Evolution is not, nor was it ever intended, to be a substitute for religion (and if it were, it would have but one single creed as its whole content). It is rather a chapter far from being closed.
Creationism, on the other hand, is based on the Bible, which has been canonized almost two millenia ago and hasn't changed much over the course of time, except from translations and interpretations (though of course, the former always includes the latter to some extent). These interpretations however are the very things that make all the difference.
Speaking as a student of linguistics, the whole area of hermeneutics has caught my interest long ago. To put it simply, there are no positive terms in language, by which I mean that no word has a meaning in itself, but always and only in opposition to other words. Derrida goes a step further and says that even this relative, contextual meaning cannot ever be pinpointed but remains elusive (for which concept he coined the word 'différance',
here is a link for anyone interested, but beware, it's a fairly long read). To me it makes it very plausible that we simply cannot interpret the Bible, or any text for that matter, in a literal way.
The question is now: But why should we interpret the Bible in the first place?
The answer is: The meaning of every text is only established via an interaction with the reader. People don't simply read the Bible, they draw conclusions from it. But in order to draw conclusions from a text, you must have questions to the text in the first place which you seek to see answered by it. It again relates to the whole concept of hermeneutics - different people have a different background and ask different questions, and therefore cannot but understand a text in ways different from each other. Of course, this does not mean that every person's reading of the Bible is so vastly different from any other person's that it can no longer be communicated. In fact, most people have similar views, and in the field of religion, this is what some might call 'mainstream religion' or orthodoxy (as denoted by the word kat-holos as in Catholic, meaning 'that which is at the basis of everything'). But the watchword here is 'similar', not 'identical', and even one's own interpretation changes over the course of time.
I do not deride creationists as being stupid, ignorant or simple minded, and I resent evolutionists who do so (Hello Condello). It's especially a problem because it sometimes seems to reduce a person that often have immensely complex and sophisticated ideas to one single concept - "You're a creationist."
Needless to say, I can have issues with all sorts of people. That is the case whenever someone holds a certain belief (in a very broad sense and not restricted to religion) in an unreflected, simplistic way and does not allow the other person to justify him or herself. Closed-mindedness, in one word.
Religious belief always requires a 'leap of faith', and that leap always requires an individual choice. And as long as that that person does not try to impose their views onto my own, it needs to be respected.