JPM, In my view it is more than merely evolution, which I think the Bible does address. It is the wholesale ditching of early Genesis as having to do with anything historical. What is outlined in Genesis 1, as normally read, can’t be true historically. One has a choice, re-interpret it to make it fit history or claim that it holds only philosophical/theological truth, but no real historical truth. IMO, that places early Genesis on the same level as the myths of the Greco-Roman world, which we believe to be untrue, but perhaps holds philosophical truths, in spite of the fact that millions once believed those myths to be actually true.
Holding that early Genesis contains only theological/philosophical truths does divorce the Bible from telling us what God actually did in creation. By proclaiming it historically false we ‘win’ the battle in the same way the French won WWII in 1941, by raising our hands in surrender to the atheist charge that the bible is false as grandpa’s teeth.
Was the bodily resurrection of Jesus a scientific/historical fact? If it is, then at least parts of the Bible address scientific/historical events, and your statement above is not quite correct. If it was merely a spiritual resurrection, then Jesus’ body is still in the grave, in contradiction to the early Church’s belief. In this case the resurrection wouldn’t be a scientific/historical fact and your statement above would apply even to the resurrection, but Christianity would take a big hit. It becomes a religion based upon faith alone sans observational evidence, not based upon the historical fact of a bodily resurrection.
edited to add another quote from Tipler:
"Provine remarks, ‘My observation is that the great majority of modern evolutionary biologists are atheists or something very close to that. Yet prominent atheistic or agnostic scientists publically deny that there is any conflict between science and religion. Rather than simple intellectual dishonesty, this position is pragmatic. In the United States, elected members of Congress al proclaim to be religious; many scientists believe that funding for science might suffer if the atheistic implications of modern science were widely understood.’ Provine’s opinion is confirmed by Steven Weinberg’s 1987 congressional testimony asking for money to build the SSC, a $10 billion device to be constructed in Texas. (Funding has since been cut off.) A congressman asked Weinberg if the SSC would enable us to find God, and Weinberg declined to answer. But eventually the atheistic implications of modern science will be understood by the general public, who will themselves become atheists. The majority of Western Europeans and a large minority of Americans have already become effective atheists: they rarely if ever go to any church, and a belief in God plays no role in their daily lives. The evidence is clear and unequivocal: if scientists have no need of the God hypothesis, neither will anyone else. Were theologians to succeed in their attempt to strictly separate science and religion, they would kill religion. Theology simply must become a branch of physics if it is to survive. That even theologians are slowly becoming effective atheists has been documented by the American philosopher Thomas Sheehan." ~ Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 9-10
by physics, I think Tipler means observational.
