Robin Holliday wrote: "Yet no wheels or propellers exist in the animal kingdom. The Darwinian explanation for this is perfect: it is impossible to evolve a wheel by stages, because only a whole wheel has function."
But wheels and propellers do exist. The bacterial flagellum consists of a rotary motor driving a propeller.

Excellent article Robin! The god/gods of the gaps will continue, because people don't bother to inform themselves about what is already known, just perhaps not to them.

I tolerate their believing whatever they want, to help them cope with life, reduce anxiety etc. What I don't accept is their intolerance of others and their trying to force their agenda and claimed morality onto me, especially through Govt laws. That smacks of religious tyranny!

We need freedom of religion, but we also need freedom from religion.

Haxley,
yes, a randy little Rotifer a-revving through the water, snuffling through its food supply just hundred micron size - it shares with us a common ancestor. Now that would cause surprise
to the intelligent designers who would close our prying eyes.

The other mistake that Faith based people make is that some the idea of whether there is a god or not is anymore a rational area of debate then if the Easter bunny exist of if there is fairies at the bottom of your garden. To an atheist they all don’t exist for the same reason on proof. An agnostic is not laying a each way bet they generally “believe” in the super natural they just don’t believe in any particular fantasy. Religious truly scare me because not only do they believe in something that they can’t see, cant touch and can’t hear they actually try to convince other people that they flights of fantasy are real. The only difference between a cult, a sect and the “true path” is the number of devotees. Why should we take Christians, Jews, Muslims or Buddhist any more seriously they say the Raelians or other New age stuff. As your religious text become less and less relevant to all but the most devote (let’s faces it great swaths of the bible are simply ignored even by the church) something less dogmatic and more adaptable needs to take it’s place.

All this blather is unnecessary. It involves taking the theists seriously, simply because of historical precedence in enculturation. The priorities should be reversed, with the religiously inclined obliged to prove their assumptions. Of course they can't: they believe because they have been brought up to believe, and they function in societies where indications of belief are virtually demanded. It always baffles me that otherwise apparently intelligent individuals blindly spend their lives within a little cocoon of inherited notions which they have been assured represent central truth. Next door, in other cultures. other intelligent individuals are following the same course, but with radically different religious notions and rites, also represented as absolute truth.
Since the emergence of mankind an astonishing panoply of gods, demons, spirits, and the like have been invented, out of ignorance and fear (and hope), to "explain" the world and offer "salvation". There has never been any lack of prophets to do the inventing and provide back-up tales "sanctifying" the spirits. But why do we, in a scientific age when we understand a great deal about the universe, and have appropriate investigative techniques, go on giving any credence to this antique hogwash? We should no longer dignify it by pretending to discuss it, so reversing the demands of reason. Religions are conceptual systems built on what is inherently irrational, propped up by social habituation. Why is that hard to see?

Robin,
I loved your last line:
"Finally, it is often pointed out that religious scientists exist. It seems that these are individuals who can in some way compartmentalise contradictory viewpoints, but this is an ability that I for one find extremely hard to understand."

Guess why it is extremely hard for you to understand.
Take a wild stab in the dark. Throw a dart at the wall.
They don't exist that's why.
Scientific evidence proves they don't exist. The religious don't believe in science. So you are not a scientist. Don't worry about it. Be a priest.