The relationship between funamentalist or evangelical Protestant Christianity on the one hand and Evolution on the other is very specific to certain occurrences in both science and theology in the 19th century.

It's nearly fruitless to try to understand the "circle the wagons" mentality of anti-evolutionists nowadays without studying how things came to this pass. There is a very good book on this subject -- "Without God, Without Creed" by James Turner, which has shaded all my thoughts on the subject.

Anyway, the main idea of the book is that with the rise of modern science, preachers tried to move away from the older way of approaching religion (e.g. we believe this because it is what was handed down to us) to a new, more scientific way of approaching religion (e.g. we believe this because it "makes sense" of the world as we find it).

But then when mechanistic evolution threw out the "God hypothesis" in the 19th century, certain theologians found the foundation they had been standing on for over 100 years suddenly disappearing from beneath them. This gives rise to the hatred and fear of evolution -- not because it disproves God, necessarily, but because it takes the wind out of the sails of the sort of "rational religion" that was popular in the mid-19th century. (Which, coincidentally, is when the literalist reading of Genesis first rose to prominence!)

Of course not all theologians had based their understanding of religion on science; some had held to older models; some had developed newer models that were not so dependent upon science. Both these strains have continued to do just fine, and to some extent the former adherents of the "rational religion" school have jumped into one or another of these camps.

But some have been unable to make the transition, and for them evolution is seen as a threat to their religion, to be fought at any cost.

Since this is what (to at least some extent) is going on in the evolution/creationism "debate," it is highly unlikely that either side is ever going to convince the other of its own correctness. It's not really a "debate" at all but more like a lobbing of word-bombs back and forth between two very entrenched armies (if you'll excuse the military metaphor).

FWIW, I am a Christian believer, and am agnostic on the topic of trans-species evolution.

Alex
O..O
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