Most educated Christians (including the late great Pope John Paul) have no problem reconciling Evolution with their belief in God by postulating just what Michael says above, i.e., God started the whole thing and Evolution just describes the rules under which the change with time progresses. For Fundamentalists, however, that's not good enough. They feel compelled to deny the whole process, which is absurd given all the cross-verifying chains of evidence. I think their objection can basically be distilled down to one element; the cry of "We did NOT come from apes!!!" . I recently read an account of the origins of racism in the South, and I think it is very telling that most of this fundamentalist opposition to evolution occurs in the South. The idea is that southern whites told themselves that black people were essentially a seperate creation, from apes and monkeys. That way it was okay to own other human beings, since they were "quasi-human" at best. (I'm not making this up; it is what southern preachers taught their white congregations for generations, and what many rednecks still believe to this day, although they won't admit it outside their own circles). To this day, one of the most offensive epithets a redneck can call a black person is a monkey. Therefore, their racism demands that they must NEVER admit to such a "demeaning" and common origin for themselves as for the object of their racism. Darwinism says white people and black people came from the same line; this is horrific to the white southern man. Therefore, although it is couched in religious terms, I believe the real root cause of Bible Belt anti-evolution is racism, not religion.
