There is one exception to their otherwise "credulous" attitude: that is the events described in Genesis 1-11 (the Parashiyyot Bere'shit and Noach). The same people who will believe literally anything suddenly clam up and become Penn and Teller when it comes to that particular section of the Bible. Why?
Again, it's not that they don't believe in the supernatural; they do. Not only do they believe in the supernatural miracles that have occurred from the time of Abraham, they are quite willing to admit that such miracles may very well have happened any number of times in the days before Abraham. So it is not the supernatural they reject. They simply reject the events of Genesis 1-11. For some reason these events aren't regarded as "supernatural" in the way most miracles are. They are uniquely held to be fantasy, fable, parable, folklore, mythology, what-have-you. "Violations" of natural law--even radical ones--apparently most people can accept. But they cannot accept the existence of the world they see in Genesis 1-11. For them it's not supernatural--it's just fantasy.
But why is this? I recently read a column in which the writer affirmed his belief in supernatural miracles, but pointed out that those miracles nevertheless took place in a world we have access to, a world we can understand, a world that is familiar. But because the world of Genesis 1-11 is one we do not have access to, because it is unfamiliar, because we do not understand it, it is labeled mythology in a way no supernatural miracle is.
Would someone please explain this to me?
Exactly why should the world as it was first created function exactly as the world we know today? Why should not the original state of the world been quite different to ours? What is especially puzzling is that the acknowledged miracles all violate fully formed, fully operative natural laws. Why is it so totally unthinkable that at the very beginning these laws were themselves newly-created and not yet "solidified," as it were? Furthermore, until the universe was brought into existence there were no natural physical laws to violate. To insist that natural laws that were themselves in the process of being created were somehow governing the entire process seems most illogical. Yet I am constantly told that this is not so. "Science," I am told, has revealed everything, and we know that the world was never as described in Genesis 1-11. Yet these same people are quite willing to believe that in this unchanging, uniformitarian universe miracles may happen at any time, and that those atheists and scientists who are consistent enough to reject them as much as they do the early Biblical events are being "closed-minded." But those same scientists, whose cosmogony is based on the exact same presuppositions on which they reject the miracles of Exodus or of Chr*st, are taken as absolute authorities by clergy and theologians when it comes to Genesis 1-11. Just exactly what is it that makes Genesis 1-11 so different from everything else, so beyond the pale?
Why this iron curtain that stands between Genesis 11 and everything that comes after?
It's strange when you think about it (or at least it is to me). The sophisticated non-fundamentalist clergy insist that the world must have always gone on exactly as it does now. There could never have been anything different. Man has always died, floods have always been just as they are now, and man has always spoken a zillion different languages and dialects, all diverging from some primate proto-language that emerged millions of years ago. Of course, these same savages may have walked on water, risen from the dead, or pulled rabbits out of hats, but other than those atomistic "violations" of natural law, absolutely everything had to be just as it is now. Miracles happen, but they can only happen in a world where no one has ever lived to be nine hundred years old.
I wonder what these theologians or clergy will do if science ever assumes a more antagonistic attitude toward their own beloved supernatural beliefs. But that probably won't happen. Science never challenges the Exodus, the talking donkey, Prophetic visions, axes that float on water, angels, multiplied loaves and fishes, transubstantiation, a million and one saints' miracles, or the Fatima sun dance. Science leaves us all perfectly free to believe whichever of these we wish to. It says nothing. It takes no position. Maybe it really isn't sure they didn't happen.
But on one issue--Genesis 1-11--it refuses to allow any freedom. The belief in the facticity of these events is illegitimate, primitive, stupid, and must be eradicated. And it is open season on anyone who believes this "nonsense." But no such ridicule will ever be thrown at anyone for believing anything else whatsoever (with the possible exceptions of Joshua's miracle of the sun and the story of Jonah).
No Jewish child is taught in public school that the exodus didn't happen, or that G-d did not speak to Israel at Mt. Sinai. No chrstian child is ever told that J*sus wasn't born of a virgin or that he didn't rise from the dead. But no one escapes being told that Genesis 1-11 is false in any but a didactic sense. These are the "illegitimate miracles." This is error, and "error has no rights."
And some people call this "religious freedom."
Once you compromise the truth of the Word of God anything becomes possible.
You and I have discussed it a bit from the traditional Catholic POV. Although I can not find anything in Traditional Catholic official teaching that states one MUST believe in the literal interpretation of Creation (just that God is the Creator), in practice Catholics were taught to believe it pre-Vatican II. I think if you asked Catholics who lived in the pre-VatII times they would tell you that they were taught that God created the Earth in 7 days. Period.