I’m so glad you’re taking this journey with your son and helping him remain a Christian! That is wonderful.
I highly recommend John Walton’s The Lost World series (Genesis One, Adam and Eve, The Flood) to see how some conservative scholars look at it. Another book I found helpful recently was Gregg Davidson’s Friend of Science, Friend of Faith. He takes the pieces of Genesis 1-11 and looks at how science interacts with it. I think it would be very helpful for you and your son. And it’s an easy read (Walton is more academic… my son couldn’t get into it, but I got a lot out of his books).
I had a crisis of faith a couple years ago, falling into atheism for a while, and it’s been a difficult road back. I attend a church that teaches YEC, and I’ve heard over the years that the Bible and evolution are mutually exclusive. It is a real stumbling block to someone who sees through the falsehoods and inconsistencies of the YEC “scientific” explanations. Because of my experience, I’ve been talking a lot with church leadership, and it has been good. They recognize that it’s not a salvation issue. I do believe Adam and Eve and the fall are historical. I get the same theological message out of Genesis 1-11 as they do. I just have some different interpretations of what I think actually happened.
In talking to the younger generation, I’m seeing more and more that aren’t believing the earth to be 6000 years old. The older generation is often still believing it, but they haven’t been taught the modern science that the younger generation has been taught. The older generation were taught by their preachers that dinosaur bones were put there to test their faith! But these folks don’t believe what they were taught about that. Likewise, the young people aren’t believing everything being taught now. So I see the tide changing. We just need to keep these young people IN the church. The danger is that they see the science being taught is wrong, and they wonder what else being taught is wrong (that’s how my own faith crisis began). And they’ve been told that the bible and evolution are mutually exclusive, so when they realize evolution actually happens, they throw out the Bible, since they were told they should.
My 15 year old thought that you had to choose between Christianity and evolution when we started doing a Biologos homeschool supplement last year. We did another unit recently, and I think my son has changed his mind about that. It is so very important to me that he understand that accepting modern science does NOT mean you have to throw out the Bible. A false dichotomy has been presented at church, and there is a third way.
I’ve seen some minds change about the false dichotomy presented. These minds still believe in YEC, and I’m ok with that (though scientific literacy would be nice). The change is that they realize that someone accepting evolution isn’t necessarily dangerous or an atheist. We can worship together, no problem.
As far as Adam and Eve and the fall go… I believe Adam and Eve were called by God much like Abraham was called by God - and whether they were born from the existing population or specially created (but biologically the same as the other people), I don’t know. I lean toward born, because there is so much in chapters 2-3 that scream figurative language at me. But even if they were specially created, as long as they interbred with other existing humans, science can’t rule out their existence. I believe Adam and Eve sinned, and now all humans sin. I don’t think we’re guilty of Adam’s sin, but we all sin ourselves and have that guilt.
Once you step out of the narrow YEC view, you start to see more in both the Bible and creation. You’ll see deeper meaning in those Genesis passages, and you’ll see such awesomeness in God’s creation of the evolutionary process. It takes some time to get out of the YEC mode, and it’s a bit scary at first, but then it’s like opening windows to a whole new world and really seeing the glory of God.