Why All The New Interpretations of Genesis 1?

I've been enjoying reading the interesting discussions at JT's blog on creation. I found this one (by a Scott C.) quite eye opening:

"Here is the problem I see. Genesis 1 teaches a unique supernatural creation of the material universe divinely spoken into existence out of nothing in 6 24hr. periods (the text is historical genre). To the modern scientific mind this is absolutely absurd and one would have to be a complete loony to believe such nonsense. Just like we Christians are loony to believe in the resurrection and all those other goofy miracles of the Bible.

Christians don’t want to appear loony for believing what the text says; we want to appear respectable in the eyes of the unbelieving world. But here is the problem, we also don’t want to denigrate the text. We want to believe in the inspiration, inerrancy and authority of Scripture too so we can’t just reject the text. So we need to figure out a way to make it say something different; something that will appear respectable to the unbelieving world so that they won’t laugh at us. We need to give it some scholarly backbone to make it even more credible and believable as well. In the end, the text needs to comport with the way the world says we came into existence since modern science has undeniably solved this question.

I may be wrong, but I am suspicious that this is why we are witnessing so many recent novel interpretations of Genesis. But here is the thing, no matter how hard we try to be respectable in the eyes of the unbelieving world they are still going to dismiss us as a bunch of loonies."

I encourage everyone to continue to look into the matter closely before rushing into call foolish what is the wisdom of God.