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I think he means there must be an element of mysticism to religion to make it successful. The human mind is perfectly capable of attaching complicated meanings to what should be kept simple. Evolution, so to speak, rips that veil away from the world and makes everything clear again. No wonder religions feel hostile towards it for it makes their role superfluous. If you can explain the processes of life in terms of empirical data, what do you need the supernatural for? That's where Darwin undermined the traditional explanations for how life adapts on the planet and religion hasn't managed to recover that former authority it once commanded.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

"If you can explain the processes of life in terms of empirical data, what do you need the supernatural for? "

But that could only be accomplished to a certain extent, wouldn't it.

Even if scientists could prove, without a doubt, that all life evolved from a chemical reaction, wouldn't that still leave the question of how the chemicals came to be in the first place?

I don't see any incompatiblity with evolution and natural selection, and religion. But the 'big bang' question still remains because it leaves the question of what happened before that occurred and what made it occur to begin with.

JMHO

The human mind is perfectly capable of attaching complicated meanings to what should be kept simple.

And the mystery of life explained as the coming together of large numbers of amino acids and proteins, plenty of time, and random organization, which is about as likely as billions of monkeys typing away on typewriters eventually producing a dictionary, is SIMPLE???

Give me a break.

If you can explain the processes of life in terms of empirical data, what do you need the supernatural for?

Where is the data?

FWIW. Long long ago we discovered how to make fire, by striking flint, or by rubbing wood together producing. That is no small accomplishment!!!

Much much later, we discovered gunpowder, and made guns and cannons.

Point being, IMO, I don't see an evolution of the mind, considering those examples. In fact, I think the former discovery is greater than the latter. Just maybe, our minds have not evolving as Darwin sugggests.

Theories must be able to be proven or disproven. When you can take a theory and apply it to any group of objects whether they are animals or cars or the objects on your desk at work and still not be able to prove or disprove it, it is meaningless. Carbon based life forms have to share similarities in chemical composition or they would not be able to consume eachother and convert the prey to energy. Any given chemical will only react with certain other chemicals. This means that all sustainable life forms on the planet would have to be made up of the same building blocks. This doesn't mean that that they weren't created at some point by something we don't understand, in fact it requires it. To state that the universe rapidly expanded from a concentrated mass of energy that was always in existence is at least as incomplete and intellectually dishonest as the Adam and Eve rib fable. Scientists love to compare modern science to 2000 year old interpretations of the Universe from the religious perspective. Why is it that the theory of Evolution can evolve just a little bit every time something doesn't quite match up, but religion is not afforded the same chance to develop with our expanded understanding of our Universe? I think you would agree that 2000 year old science was a little more primitive than today's so why would it be any different with religion?