Despite evolution, it is still wrong to call humans for animals. Being call an animal is commonly used as an insult, and it is a great barrier for many to overcome and abandon a religion when those pesky atheists keeps insisting on calling one an animal. Many people therefore retain the belief of some sort of something somewhere because they feel that they are not animals, and in extreme cases evolution is denied for this simple reason.
Why it is insult to be called an animal and which role religion played in it is irrelevant. Because the difference between humans and the rest of animal kingdom is big and observable by all, namely the difference in intellect, and this unique human trait intuitively make us separate "them" (stupid animals) from "us" intelligent humans.
Because we have as "intelligent" humans a tendency to separate "us" from "them" and every time one have to face "us" being not all that different from "them" after all it creates a problem.
Today we are not able to overcome the racial barriers, we still view each other as "us" and "them" and not "we the people", not even that even within same country there are always "us" and "them", it is everywhere. And when we are not able to overcome it between us humans where the difference is so small, how can we expect people to relate to the "animals" as "us" and not "them" when the difference is so great?
Perhaps one day we will reach the level when we accept our selfs as animals to our selfs, will feel unity with the earth from which we came, and live in some new age paradise, but until then it is better to tell people that we evolved to "human". I.e. keep the separation between different kinds of animals, so that this feeling of "us" agains "them" is preserved until the facts sink in.
Simply put, this is the transitional form from "creatures of god" to "animals", which is currently the missing.
This though, as written earlier does not justify any behavior with motivation "we are just animals" because you are the animal with a brain capable of more then other animals. As an ape does't think "i am just an animal" and then go an drown in the nearest lake trying to act like a fish. So should you not think "I am just an animal" and go acting like an ape in the streets.
// End of rambling
