"Virtually no bible scholar interprets the bible this way. Only a few extremists who are not considered mainstream by any stretch."

Try telling that to the 40% of Americans who believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, and who think literalism is the only correct interpretation of Genesis.

Unfortunately, young-earth creationism is very much a mainstream view of the creation account -- maybe not among Bible scholars, but many Christians don't trust Bible scholars *because* of those "liberal" views. If you think these fundamentalists are extreme, then we're concerned about the same thing.

I'm only dissecting fundamentalist Christianity because that's the only religion I'm intimately familiar with, but the same can be done with any religion that makes specific, literal claims about the origin of Earth and humanity.