Will Biblical Literalists Be the Death of Christianity?

I've written a couple of previous posts on the issue that could cause the Christianist theological house of cards to come tumbling down: the fact that Adam and Eve did not actually exist. I've long believed that those who claim that the Bible is inerrant and that it must be read as literally true in ever respect (except, of course when inconvenient) in fact (1) have a very brittle and superficial faith and (2) are doomed to have their belief system disintegrate as knowledge advances. Albert Mohler - a head honcho within the virulently anti-gay Southern Baptist Convention leadership - recognizes the extreme danger facing his denomination. If there was no Adam and Eve and no Garden of Eden, then likewise there was no serpent and fall of mankind setting the stage for the need for a messiah. The whole fabric of the far right Christians' religious world is rendered asunder. The irony is that it's their own idolatry of the Bible as inerrant that makes to collapse of the Christianist belief system likely unavoidable. Here are highlights from Mohler's blog they lays out the severity of the threat scientific truths pose to his world:

In terms of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the most urgent question related to beginnings has to do with the questions related to the existence of Adam and Eve as as them first parents to all humanity and to the reality of the Fall as the explanation for human sinfulness and all that comes with sin.

A report from Barbara Bradley Hagerty of National Public Radio a few weeks is an undeniable sign that even the secular world now recognizes that this is a question central to Christianity. . . . Hagerty then talked to John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College for many years. Schneider took the argument even further. As Hagerty reported: “Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently, says it’s time to face facts: There was no Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.”

At this point we are looking at a repudiation of the Bible’s account of beginnings. We are not talking about an argument over the interpretation of a few verses or even chapters of the Bible. We are now dealing with the straightforward rejection, not only of the existence of Adam and Eve, but of both Eden and the Fall. Look carefully at Professor Schneider’s words — “there never was any such paradise to be lost.”

The implications for biblical authority are clear, as is the fact that, if these arguments hold sway, we will have to come up with an entirely new understanding of the Gospel meta-narrative and the Bible’s storyline. The denial of an historical Adam and Eve as the first parents of all humanity and the solitary first human pair severs the link between Adam and Christ which is so crucial to the Gospel.

If we do not know how the story of the Gospel begins, then we do not know what that story means. Make no mistake: A false start to the story produces a false grasp of the Gospel.

Common sense in the modern age ought to have made it clear to Mohler and those like him that a literal reading of the Bible was bound to lead to catastrophe and a crisis of faith for sheeple. The Bible's creation story has no more factual accuracy to it than any of the competing creation myths from other religions across the centuries. All represent the attempt by ignorant, uneducated peoples to come up with a story of how existence began.