He even glosses over the issue of sin, evil, and the fall
This to me is inexcusable...especially from a pastor.
The ordering doesn't line up with astronomy either. It's not just evolution that's at stake here, but the reliability of our senses.
and that is to your credit, unfortunately, when given the choice between the Word of God and the word of man, you chose man.
I am not choosing the word of man. I am choosing to accept what I see with my own eyes that God gave me.
The Word of God cannot contradict what I see in the universe that God created. If there appears to be a conflict, then my interpretation of the Word of God has to wrong. God doesn't lie, either in his Scirptures or in his creation.
A literalist interpretation of Genesis contradicts what we see in the universe. It's that simple.
He even glosses over the issue of sin, evil, and the fall (one of the key issues in all of Christianity), admitting that his viewpoint does not have a real answer to this question, only hunches.
False. He brings numerous pieces of both Billical as well as Patristic evidence to show that the Fall brought SPIRITUAL death into the world.
I'll add to his evidence. If physical death did not exist prior to the Fall, what was the purpose of the tree of life?
The wages of sin is death and sin entered the world through Adam, if one believes the Word of God, so how can death exist prior to Adam?
Because the Bible is speaking of spiritual death, not physical death.This idea that sin was retroactive to all of creation prior to the "evolution" of man has no biblical support whatsoever, and even he admits that it is only a suggestion that, I would guess, he doesnt even believe.
It's not his central point. You have not read his essay carefully.
The Bible and evolution are not compatible. They cannot live in harmony.
Why are you so isistant on driving people away from God? People will reject a religion if they find that in contradicts what they can see plainly with their own eyes.