First, we should examine what religion has given us, then examine what science has. Now, I want to make it clear that I am looking for OBJECTIVE benefits, not "but if there weren't Christianity, the world would be in chaos" nonsense which in fact adds nothing to the debate.
Technology is the direct result of science. Science is all about inquiring into the way the universe works, not saying "god dunnit". Indeed, the entire premise of irreducible complexity, one of Intelligent Design (ID)'s cornerstone argument (which is quite easily disproved), is to first state that the universe is too unlikely to occur by chance. They see no alternative to chance, and simply jump to ID.
Scientifically, the belief in God is a hypothesis, not a theory, since there are criteria belief in God does not meet, such as testability. The God hypothesis, however, creates more problems than it solves. The
Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit explains that the belief in a god as the creator of the universe forms an infinite regress. This relies on the legitimate question of "Where did God come from?". By the way, this question is legitimate, because it is completely within the laws of logic. Once you have identified that god's creator (God B), you must determine the origin of God B. This pattern continues ad infinitum. Since all creators are assumed to be at least as complex as their creations, the complexity must also increase, starting from the type of complexity capable of creating a universe like ours. So God must have formed from another process than creation, for the above reasoning. Which choice should we choose: pure chance (of a vastly more complex being than ourselves, which means it becomes unfathomably improbable), or by evolution? I would say that it is vastly more likely that life on Earth evolved from prokaryotic cells, which came from simpler proteins.
Of course, it is important to note that evolution only explains the
diversity of life, not its origins. If you want that, ask a biochemist.
One who has taken a close look at the anthropic principle, an argument commonly used to argue
for the presence of a deity, is actually suggests quite the contrary. The anthropic principle says that if the universe were a horrible, vicious soup of stars and gamma rays and asteroids, there would be no life. Because there would be no life, no intelligence would exist within the life, and, Wallah!, nobody would observe it. By this reasoning, the only universes observable from within are those which support life, and so we should
not be surprised to be living in a habitable universe. ID proponents will look at the universe and say "My, how complex it is! I cannot imagine another way life could be (argument from lack of imagination), and so the universe must be fine tuned! And who better to do the fine tuning than Yahweh (only because most ID proponents are Christian)!".
Scientists have found about six "settings" the universe must have or it would be vastly different. The strength of gravity, the strong force, etc. all determine whether the universe will be habitable. Some scientists say the six are linked together, and so they must be this way. Regardless, it is likely (but admittedly not for sure only because such a simulation is far far far beyond today's computational capacity) that the numbers were formed during the big bang. Like an accordion, the universe might condense again, and reform the numbers. Another theory, the multiverse or "megaverse" theory, suggest near infinite universes are present, each with different conditions. The anthropic principle, like evolution, work off of the variance in order to explain the world naturalistically. God Hypotheses, however, having no evidence, rely on social proof, like teaching in Sunday school.
