There are a number of reasons why evolution is incompatible with orthodox Christianity and why Christians who have incorporated evolution into their worldview have had to make some important concessions. It usually requires that they compartmentalize... much like Gould's non-overlapping magisteria... which incidentally is a concept that is not required for any other 'scientific' theories except evolution.
Without rejecting all of which Copernicus said, there are some other reasons as well. I would like to point out that I have a thread here somewhere here talking more about orthodox Christianity and evolution and I point out that from a very strict point of view, the creed only calls for the belief in a God who is the 'maker of heaven and earth' without specifying the mechanism. Elsewhere I have argued that even if you protest the creation account in Genesis, that still leaves 65 books you have to deal with- again, not necessarily as religious texts, but just as historical documents will do.
1. Incompatibility between views on death. According to the Christian Scriptures- and not only in Genesis- death is an enemy to be defeated. In the face of death, even as he knew he was going to raise Lazurus in John 11, Jesus wept. Death is described as being completely incompatible with God's plans and purposes and is a punishment/consequence. Jesus' efforts were not done merely to usher in a 'heavenly afterlife' but to over throw death itself. One cannot read the NT and come to any other general view, though certain exceptions are noted (ie, Paul's desire to depart and be with the Lord).
But for God to utilize evolution, especially via a mechanism of natural selection, means that death was not a punishment/consequence but rather a good ('good' in the theological sense) thing chosen by God to 'create' life. How many creatures and pre-humans died before the so called pinnacle, the homo sapiens, were 'created'?
How does the rational Christian reconcile a God willfully using death to create creatures that he offers as a promise the defeat of death? It has sometimes been said that the Christian Gospel has had power because it speaks to a sickness that most intuitively recognize in the world and themselves and brings the cure at the same time. Ie, it brings both the diagnosis and the cure. The difference in the views can be simply seen by comparing two different doctors. One doctor diagnosis the disease and offers the cure, the other doctor CAUSES the disease and then offers the cure.
I think the impartial reader, even an atheist, could see the difference in worldviews in this matter.
2. Science and evolution as cloaked secular humanism and philosophical materialism. I don't think that Cop's view that the 'age of reason' brought in civility to mainstream Christianity speaks to the real root issues. The age of reason was also the age of the French Revolution, and the seedbed of marxism, etc, too. A great many scientists were overt Christians prior to 1900. That is no longer the case.
From 1700 to 1890ish, science was understood in terms that I accept today as valid... genuinely methodological naturalistic, rooted in direct experimentation and observation, etc. Darwin's proposed mechanism, natural selection, is perfectly compatible with such parameters. A genuine methodological naturalism rooted in direct experimentation and observation is no threat at all to Christianity because the Christian God is a supernatural entity that is transcendent and immanent, by definition. Therefore, it is outside the scrutiny of science as understood in these terms.
As notions of what passes as science have softened significantly to include basically inquiry into any idea, insane or not, so long as notions of supernatural agency are excluded a priori, Christians have not felt welcome in the scientific community and science itself has become perceived as a threat.
Evolution may be a great explanation, but it is the only one allowed on the table by 'scientists.' Apparently, a person like myself that sees the existence of information as prima facie evidence of an intelligent agent is not acting scientifically and, according to Stathei in another thread here recently, therefore not rationally. Perhaps Stathei has not heard of Francis Collins, the head of the human genome project, who was an atheist but who is now a Christian, largely because of what he has seen in his DNA research. Atheists should be careful in taking the full measure of the validity of Christianity (ala Stathei) when there are Christians like Collins running around as professed theistic evolutionists insisting that they are orthodox (and in most other respects, clearly are).
It is because science has said that the only explanations that are going to be considered even as plausible are the ones that exclude God a priori that evolution today is considered a threat. You can tell me all day long that evolution is the best scientific explanation currently available, but what that really means is that evolution is the best explanation currently available after supernatural explanations ahve been excluded. Who knows what the result would be if supernatural explanations were even allowed to compete? I happen to think it irrational and wrong, and even immoral, to insist that reasonable people who wish to be Christians have to tolerate as reasonable theories which directly attack our worldview in some respects but thrive by at the same time excluding that worldview a priori. That's just nuts.
3. C.S. Lewis has not been called a fundamentalist by anyone that I know of, nor has GK Chesterton. (I also am not a fundamentalist, again, when the word is used to mean what it originally meant). These two, and Lewis in particular, were highly skeptical of evolution in part because of my section #2 but for another reason, one that is near and dear to me- and that is the epistemological problems evolution raises. Newton was a strident Christian and creationist (a fact that Dawkins is particularly embarrased about) and did not see the order of the universe as a threat but as a window into the workings of God's mind. The whole 'watch maker' paradigm. It follows that an orderly God if he is going to create creatures 'in his image' will also have orderly, cogent, and rational minds.
But most evolutionists protest the idea that agency was involved at all in evolutionary processes which means that we are being asked to believe that the evolutionary God is very much akin to the deistic God, everything was wound up at the beginning and by orderly cause and effect using natural selection orderly, cogent, rational minds resulted. That's one theistic evolutionist answer to the materialistic minded evolutionist like Dawkins that mocks notion of agent interaction in the natural order. The other is not much better, and calls for ad hoc manipulation of evolution in order to create creatures in God's image whose minds can be trusted to examine reality in the first place to find out that they are the results of the manipulation of evolution.
C.S. Lewis protested these notions, and not because he felt inclined to cling to biblical literalism. If our minds are the result of random mutations sorted out by natural selection, what grounds do we have of trusting our minds at all? One could always say that we believe what we believe- whatever it is- merely because we were evolved to believe it. The hope that one can uncover objective reality on such a basis was one that he found to be flawed. I also find it flawed. Angus Menuge, in his great book "Agents Under Fire" does a good job of dealing with the same issue.
I went back to C.S. Lewis here to show that this hostility is not merely confined to the 'geographic location' of the US based on a perceived threat to the Genesis account. There are other reasons.
From Cop:
"That is why Dawkins sometimes appears less disrespectful of religious fundamentalism than of religious liberalism. He sees religious liberals as hypocritical--stubbornly refusing to follow their reasoning through to its logical conclusion."
On this I agree with Dawkins. :)
