sleeping late or watching the rugby

In case it wasn't obvious: I was joking. (I, for one, spend very little of my time at orgies and baby-killing parties.)

three entirely opposing positions

I think actually both views are right. I mean, (1) there is definitely a spectrum there (there is no god - there is a god, who set up the universe and has left it alone since then - there is a god, who mostly leaves the universe alone but sometimes gets involved in subtle ways like inspiring people to do good - there is a god, who mostly leaves the universe alone but sometimes tweaks evolution a bit to arrange for the emergence of a species capable of loving relationship with him - there is a god, who made a world in which life evolves precisely so that he could steer that process in all kinds of ways, which he does - there is a god, whose influence on the variety of life on earth mostly operates through evolution but who also sometimes makes more dramatic changes - there is a god, who directly created lots of different kinds of living thing but who has let them evolve since then, which is responsible for much small-scale variation - there is a god, who created every species separately in recent history, and evolution is just a lie) but (2) the gap between theism and atheism is a particularly big one, and so is the gap between "life is old and basically has common ancestry" and "life is recent and involves lots of special creation" and (3) I'm sure quite a lot of people do flip from near one end to near the other when they change their minds about what gods, if any, exist.

these stats

I worry that they'd be hard to disentangle from other things (e.g., wealthier versus poorer areas, which would affect education and what kinds of jobs people do and so forth; socially entrenched attitudes to academic learning; etc.). I'd guess that (1) there are indeed fewer, and worse, scientists from areas with a lot of young-earth creationism but (2) this doesn't really tell us much about direct influence of science on religion or vice versa, because of all those other factors. There are some US government statistics that might tell you some of what you want to know.

[EDITED to add: If anyone has a clue why this was downvoted, I'd be very interested. It seems so obviously innocuous that I suspect it's VoiceOfRa doing his thing again, but maybe I'm being stupid in some way I'm unable to see.]