One does not have to believe that the first part of Genesis is “allegorical” to interpret it differently from the fundamentalists. Whoever wrote it just accepted the cosmology of the time, which is quite different from our own. But the writer(s) had a very different theological view of the Creation than their pagan neighbors. It is the view that we find in the Book of Daniel, that the Most High God directs the course of events.
So what about “evolution,” et al,? At bottom is the assertion of a cosmology very different from that of the ancient pagans, one that takes for granted that blind chance governs all actions. That all appearance of order is an illusion. That nothing exists but what is analogous to what is presented to our senses, things we call “matter.”
The term [Fundamentalism] was born when conservative Protestants in early-20th-century America committed themselves to defend the five "fundamentals" of their faith -- the inerrancy of the Bible, virgin birth and deity of Jesus, doctrine of atonement, bodily resurrection of Jesus, and His imminent return.
-- from the thread The many forms of fundamentalism
Fundamentalist: A term created during the turn-of-the-20th-century Protestant church splits to define those who held to the “fundamentals” of Christianity—the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth of Jesus and his literal resurrection from the dead. The term is now considered pejorative. (Wheaton College philosophy professor Alvin Plantinga famously observed, “The full meaning of the term…can be given by something like ‘stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine.’”)
-- from the thread New Kids In The Flock