Abhay Parekh at 3Quarks asks a very interesting question: Why don't more people believe in evolution?
Abhay argues that the real sticking point is not religious dogma, per se, but rather a more general reluctance to acknowledge the degree to which life is shaped by chance.
Abhay emphasizes people's discomfort with uncertainty, contingency, and unpredictability. Evolution does have these implications, and no doubt some people are bothered by them. As Abhay notes, human beings tend to struggle with probabalistic reasoning at the best of times.
However, I think what people are really resisting is not so much chance as disenchantment.
Mostly, evolution makes people uncomfortable because it explains how life could have emerged without any external purpose or design. Evolutionary explanations are threatening to people who assume that naturalistic explanations undercut meaning in life. If we assume that we were designed by some creator, it follows that our existence has at least some built-in purpose. At the very least, we could say that we were designed by someone for some reason. It wouldn't necessarily follow that we were designed for any good reason, of course.
As a matter of public relations, it's probably wise to stress that evolution and religion don't usually conflict. That's true, at least on a very superficial level. Many world religions endorse the modern scientific account of the origin of species, and most others give adherents the option of believing in evolution without committing heresy. However, at a deeper level, there is residual tension. For example, the argument from design begins to seem superfluous once you accept evolution. So, while literal conflicts between religious faith and biology are relatively rare, there's also a sense in which evolutionary thinking is a "universal solvent" that threatens some aspects of of a religious outlook.
Evolution will continue to be controversial as long as people believe that naturalism threatens meaning. I don't know how proponents of evolution can begin to make people feel more comfortable with the naturalistic worldview.
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