I fail to see how "evolution leaves no room for any beliefs commonly associated with religion in this country" (or any country for that matter).

For the record, I used to be a Catholic priest, one trained in Rome at that, and never had any problem with evolution. Yes, I used to believe that the world was created by God. And as part of that belief, I simply believed that the world was created in the simplest form possible and that evolution was part of that creation.

The biblical story of creation is actually two separate stories written by two different authors. Biblical scholars refer to one of them as the Yahwist, the other as the Elohist. That is because in the original Hebrew text one calls God Yahweh, the other Elohim. This indicates they lived in two different periods of the evolution (no pun intended) of Hebrew religious thought.

The final editor of the book of Genesis simply did not want to decide which story was "right" or "wrong". Obviously, he did not take either story literally, they were simply stories whose purpose was not to teach physics or any kind of literal history in modern sense. Their purpose was to instill the following religious message to the reader:

The stories did not mean to say how God created the universe, only that he did. That is why the editor of the book of Genesis had no reason to pick one story over the other. He included both, placing them one after another.

If taken as infallible historical truth, the two stories contradict each other. When taken as symbolic stories whose only purpose is to impart a religious truth (or a belief that it is a truth), then there is positively no contradiction between the two stories. Obviously, the editor could see the contradictions in the literal text and it did not bother him. That's not because he was dumb (hey, he could read and write, something few could in those days), but because he did not perceive them as literal history.

Indeed, virtually no one takes those stories literally, not the Jews, not the Catholics, not the Orthodox, not the Protestants. The only exception are the fundamentalists. Of course, they don't study the original Hebrew texts (and Aramaic and Greek for other books), they only use the fairly poor translation commissioned by King James, so they cannot see the subtle distinctions. But no serious Scripture scholar takes those texts as literal historical truths.

That said, it may be true that evolution leaves no room for the beliefs associated with some religions in this country, but certainly not with any beliefs.

As long as I'm on the topic, it is only the fundamentalists who believe the Bible was written by God. The Catholics and most other Christians believe it was inspired by God. That belief includes the conviction that God protected the authors (of whom there were many) from making any errors in the matters of faith and faith only, but not in other matters (physics, history, etc).

The Bible neither teaches evolution nor denies it. It teaches that God created the Universe, but it does not teach the details of how that happened (hey, none of those who wrote the Bible were there to witness it!). So, it is perfectly conceivable to believe that God created evolution.

For what it's worth, back when I was still a Catholic and believed in creation, I found the idea of the God who created a world that evolves much more appealing than that of a God who just made a world incapable of evolution. And trust me, I took my religion very seriously (and still do even if it is a different religion now).