I see where you are coming from now, Chuck. You said:
Religion IS inherently unscientific. Religion is above science, apart from it. Science can never approach religion and remain science. Science is concerned with the physical aspects of the natural world, religion is the human interpretation of the spiritual world. The two exist on incompatible planes, unrelated, apart. Science is a tool to understand mechanics, religion is a tool to understand the soul.
To me, science and religion are not that different. Both are tools to discover "truth". I do not believe that there is one truth for science and another truth for religion. I do generally believe that (as someone posted here) the religion answers "why" and the science answers "how", but to my mind, that does not preclude the two from mingling. It seems to me that a scientist who believes in God, but chooses to ignore that set of data when making interpretations is not using all the pieces of the puzzle available to him or her when trying to decide what the picture is supposed to look like. Therefore, I would consider myself unwise to accept everything proposed by the current theory of evolution. Again, that is a totally separate issue from what should be taught in public schools. I am a strong believer in democracy and allowing local people to decide what is best rather than the federal government, but I think it would be unwise to introduce a fundamentally religious concept as part of a science class. Aaron