"In such a situation, how would faith stand up to it?"
Faith stands up to it quite easily. In fact, if look at science overall, particularly the discoveries in quantum physics such as entanglement, links between consciousness and matter, fundamentals of all things being information (In the beginning was the Word), the Big Bang, etc,....you actually find science confirms the basic biblical view of reality, and incidentally the view of reality found in many spiritual traditions. The old Newtonian paradigm is falling. It's probably incorrect, for example, to claim that the energy of thoughts are different than the energy that forms the core of physical things. It's all more or less energy, and it all interacts. "You reap what you sow" is an old saying that science is beginning to develop a factual basis for demonstrating.
So what about evolution and the creation story?
Well, first off, to think the theory of common descent which is what people are thinking of disproves the Bible is to assume that the past is static. Personally, I think that is a huge and erroneous assumption, especially in light of modern physics.
Vedral and Bukner, for example, have shown that particles can be entangled over segments of time. I "caught it" at first, but maybe one of the more scientifically trained person here can explain how they show that better.
But regardless of what science has begun to show, it is an assumption that time flows linearly only, and not "spatially" as well. In other words, common descent is based on the idea that causal events only affect things forward in time.
Is that correct though?
The principle of entanglement demonstrates information being transferred superluminally, and thus at a different time-flow than the surrounding world.
Wave/particle duality demonstrates in double-split experiments that consciousness mysteriously is necessary for matter to take on a definite form, that consciousness somehow is connected to and has a determinative role in the formation of matter.
Where am I going?
Well, we know when man fell that the Bible says God cursed the earth, and later the Bible suggests perhaps the whole universe, or at least parts of "the heavens themselves" were changed.
Hmmm.....
So death enters, and all sorts of changes occur, even perhaps changes in physical laws. That's what the Bible suggests or states happened.
So God changed the universe as a result of the consciousness of man falling? Did he do that from time forward, or did He do that from the beginning forward?
In other words, look at the creation and development of the universe or multi-verse, as a movie with God as the Director and Producer.
Maybe instead of changing things as if by magic, poof, from that time forward, maybe the fall of man's consiouscess affected the entire universe backwards and forwards in time, and incidentally the reserruction of man's consciousness might one day do the same.
I think if you read the Bible closely and think about God's ways, that it makes sense that God changed the universe by changing it from the foundation forward. God is not limited by time.
In that context, it is possible for both special creation and common descent to have occured, and it is possible, imo, for any combination of the 2.
Heck, it's completely possible, and I believe we will discover this, that the past is changing and not static even today. That may be a revolutionary concept, but I think because the changes are slow, we are slow to detect it, but will one day see that both the past, present, and future are affected by actions and changes.
Certainly, the linear changes are more easily seen, and dominant, but that does not mean that non-linear action is not occuring and changing the time-line gradually and those changes add up over time.
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