quote:
If the churchs allow their followers to be mislead by the fundamentalists ideas and misleading pronouncements they are left unprepared if they finally do get exposed to the truth about evolutionary theory. At that time if they have allowed thier faith to get to closly tied to a "literalist" (of course, not really literal though) interpreation of the bible then their faith is at risk. When someone finds they have been lied to about one thing they may let the suspicion unfairly carry over into other aspects of what they have been taught.
This is true. There are many former fundamentalists (I am one) who renounced Chritianity completely when they realized that a literal reading of Genesis is contrary to basic facts and logic. The lieralist position is that it is impossible to truly maintain one's faith in Christianity without believing the Bible is to be read literally; this can become so ingrained in one's beliefs that, indeed, when it becomes impossible to believe that everything in the Bible is inerrant one loses one faith completely.
I am always surprised to run into Catholics, Presbyterians, and others who are staunch creationists despite the fact that the main governing bodies of their denominations accept evolution as the current scientific explanation of origins. Since creationism itself is a religious doctrine that is contrary to the official positions of many denominations, I don't think that it would be out of place for those denominations to explain this very carefully in their Sunday school classes.
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