So long as science and religion are forthright about their successes, they need not conflict. Our scientific description of the formation and evolution of the Universe, and the formation and evolution of life within it, reduces to the following:

from S. Harris, http://www.physics.uci.edu/~jeff/

So we have to admit that there are some pretty important areas that science cannot explain. Still, there are areas that science has become very good at explaining too, like how the variety of life forms we observe developed.

A general principle should be that neither field of thought should try to explain things that are better understood using the other thought approach. In fact, a similar rule had been adopted by the Church during Galileo's time, but it failed to work in his case because the change in approach he proposed was too great, plus he was a very difficult customer. Thus, if religion does not try to do the job of science, where we have good solid explanations, then science should admit that there are big issues (such as the four miracles in the illustration above) where there remains room for alternative explanations.