Without a HUGE amount of doublethink (hypocrisy), religion and science are completely at odds with each other.

They both claim to inform us as to the nature of reality but their claims are contradictory. For example, science has well-established the age of the universe as being in the billions of years, but religion puts that age at about 6000. It cannot be both.

Former Secretary of the Interior James Watt said that we had to hurry up and use up all our natural resources, because Jesus was returning soon, and He'd be pissed if we wasted any by not exploiting them fully. Ludicrous, of course, but also perfectly in line with a non-hypocritical reading of Scripture. A Christian who accepts scientific findings must make a mind-boggling number of cheats and compromises in what she thinks and believes - it is not surprising that an honest Christian, struggling with this knowledge, finds her head spinning.

A Christian geologist, for another example, would be utterly helpless in finding oil deposits without information derived from Physics, Evolutionary Biology, and a host of other disciplines at odds with religious teachings. Prayer won't help you find oil, but Darwin will. Hell, you can't even draw a circle without disproving the scriptures that set the value of Pi as 3.

Jesus may love prostitutes, tax-collectors, and you, but he HATES hypocrisy and hypocrites, and on that last bit we agree.

On the day when the thousands of competing, mutually-exclusive religions unite and reach agreement on teachings that do not contradict the facts of the real physical world, then they will be worthy of scientific consideration. Until then, they have the same value as fairy tales: good for comforting the fears of children, and not much else.