It's certainly true that a crisis of faith is not fun. Fear of finding out that the book you base your life on isn't literally true could shake up someone's world entirely. I know I had a problem for a brief while when I realized that there really isn't a whole lot of evidence that Jesus ever existed.
I found my feet again, so to speak, when I realized that the question of whether the events in the Bible happened or not was irrelevant - all that matters is the message, and it holds true.
I think, though, that it's a deeper problem than that for some of the more rabid fundies. It's a loyalty issue. If they admit that the Bible isn't literally true, they feel like thay are calling God a liar. They feel that the only way to remain loyal to God is to take on faith that the Bible is literally true. Even if by some miracle of science we were able to actually go back in time and show that there was no Flood, that evolution does happen, and that we really do descend from apes, they would still take on blind faith that the Bible is true and the images were either false, or God rewrote history after the fact.
Because of this string determination that the Bible is ALWAYS right, regardless of evidence, even if it says up is down and black is white, they don't find it necessary to do research into science. If the Bible says it's wrong, it's wrong - and any evidence to the contrary is either a test of faith from God, the work of the Devil, or "fallen man" trying to interpret things he can't possibly understand. Or maybe all 3. In any case, research is irrelevant if the Bible is assumed to be always true by default.
Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.
™ Version 4.2
