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Apart from what Sklansky likes to pretend to coax the theists [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img], evolution greatly diminishes the Christian God and the Jesus story by making them look like stupid fables, no different from the silly tales of a hundred other cultures.

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This depends on how you interpret holy texts. If you believe that they only have merit if they contain accurate descriptions of the physical world, then science seems to diminish their importance. I would argue that most theists look to the Bible for humanistic concerns and not for the answers to science questions. If I don't believe that all the stories in the Bible must have actually occurred historically, there is no problem.

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Evolution in no way diminishes a God of some sort. But it does greatly, greatly diminish the chance of a God that drowned the world

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Yes

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turned a woman into salt


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Not really. Evolution and science can't really say anything about this other than that this phenomenon has never been observed in a scientific setting.

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and impregnated a virgin with his holy wang so that we wouldn't go to a place of eternal fire any more.

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Evolution also says nothing about this. It explains why it is unnecessary to believe this, but it doesn't force you to believe otherwise.

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Well, I think you could make a pretty strong argument that many of the stories in the Bible simply DO NOT WORK as fables, and MUST be based on actual, real events. Things like the ressurection, the crucifixion, the virgin birth, the Fall. If these were not real events but merely metaphor and allegory, then they are pointless. We cannot base a religion on Aesop. MOST Biblical stories work just fine as allegories, stuff like Abraham almost killing his son, Cain and Abel, that stuff doesn't have to have ever happened. We get the point. But if Eve never existed, ball game.