I love this topic. Stick a quarter in me and I can go on for hours.
Science and faith do not have to be at odds. Science and faith are both absolute and come from absolute sources. God can do what He wants, how He wants, when He wants. That is how I reconcile things science to things faith.
Science, though, will always be in conflict with religion, because religion is not absolute. It comes from man and is really a means for a few to control the many (just like politics). Just look at wars and crimes against humanity in todays world that have religion as their source…Not God.
Religious folks make me nervous with their effort to separate people based upon their belief systems. For example, believing God created the universe and looking to science to understand it is not only okay, but healthy. In fact, I believe that God created the natural laws to provide a foundation for the rest of his creation, and He loves us for trying to understand these natural laws. Unfortunately, religious folks, both theists and scientists, who vilify others with a different world view, control the dialog. This is dangerous.
Consider the dark ages. The Catholic Church squelched all scientific endeavors. Some of science’s great minds were put to death for saying the world was round and earth was not the center of the universe. This lasted 700-800 years from the collapse of the Roman Empire. It took humanity another 500 years after that to catch up to where we were in scientific understanding at the time of Christ. In other words we lost nearly 1300 years of scientific and cultural advancement. All due to religion, not faith.
The scary part is not the debate between science and religion. The scary thing is how many people reject someone saying “let’s look at the facts”, but accepts someone saying “forget the facts, believe what I tell you”. This is the basis of the conflict between science and religion. It is also the basis of conflict between cultural advancement and cultural stagnation. The argument has nothing to do with faith. Faith is a personal thing, not a corporate thing.