You have to click through Salon’s annoying "ad", but this article is very worthwhile.  It’s an interview with Francis Collins, the former head of the Human Genome Project (which attempts to map the DNA of humans).

A man of science and a former atheist, Collins discusses his religious views.  He seems to sit comfortably within both realms, although to do so he cannot accept literal interpretation of the Bible:

Collins:  If you look at the history of the intelligent design movement, which is now only 15 or 16 years old, you will see that it was a direct response to claims coming from people like [biologist Richard] Dawkins [who argued that the theory of evolution leads to atheism]. They could not leave this claim unchallenged — that evolution alone can explain all of life’s complexity. It sounded like a godless outcome.

Salon: So, one response then is simply to dismiss evolution — to say it doesn’t hold up as science.

Collins: I think that’s what many well-intentioned, sincere believers have done. The shelves of many evangelicals are full of books that point out the flaws in evolution, discuss it only as a theory, and almost imply that there’s a conspiracy here to avoid the fact that evolution is actually flawed. All of those books, unfortunately, are based upon conclusions that no reasonable biologist would now accept. Evolution is about as solid a theory as one will ever see.

Salon: Obviously, you’re saying you should not read the Bible literally, especially the story of Genesis.

Collins: That also seems very threatening to many believers who have been led to believe that if you start watering down any part of the Bible, including a literal interpretation of Genesis One, then pretty soon you’ll lose your faith and you won’t believe that Christ died and was resurrected. But you cannot claim that the earth is less than 10,000 years old unless you’re ready to reject all of the fundamental findings of geology, cosmology, physics, chemistry and biology. You really have to throw out all of the sciences in order to draw that conclusion.

I think Collins hits this square on the head.  If you take the position that the Bible is the literal scientific truth and hang all your religious beliefs on that single thread, then your entire belief system collapses when faced with cold hard verifiable and replicatable truth. 

Science and God are not incompatable; in fact, they go hand-in-hand — science is merely the language we use to understand, and then explain, God’s creation.  I don’t understand why so many people of faith are so frightened of that.