I'll paraphrase Jesus: "If it is your eye that causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it away. If it is your hand that causes you to sin, cut it off. For it is better to enter the Kingdom missing an eye or a hand than to be rejected whole."
If we followed all of the Bible literally, Christians would certainly be easy to identify, wouldn't we? Obviously Christ was using hyperbole to get his point across, that we should avoid the causes and near occasions of sin. He did this often. What do you think His parables were about, after all?
Taking the Bible literally and claiming it is the only outlet of the Word of God leads Christianity into an intellectual trap. Certain verses of Scripture clearly contradict each other if taken literally and no other knowledge of history and conventions of the time are taken into account. If it is all to be taken literally, and contradicts itself to the literal-minded reader, then it certainly loses its credibility real fast, doesn't it? This fact has been used to discredit Christianity, allowing secularism to take hold to the extent that it has.
As for the evolution and creation question, Catholics are free to consider whatever scientific explanation they wish, within reason. We do believe that man is descended from Adam and Eve. Some Catholics do believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and theorize that just as God created Adam as a grown man, He may well have created fossils for us to discover. Perhaps their purpose is that we are to satisfy our intellectual curiosity trying to find their origins.
You mean like the part about where Jesus makes a vague statement to Peter about him being "a rock", and a bunch of people said that that statement gives them the right to torture and murder people who refuse to bend their knee in submission to some guy in a pointy hat?
You know, I don't take everything in the Bible literally. (Parts of it are allegorical and use metaphor, and parts are historic in nature, as is pointed out in this thread.) But I do understand the Bible's contents to be the true message of God. However, in the case of Jesus, where you have words coming from the true Son of God, I DO take those words literally. I've always believed that when Jesus spoke the words above, he meant it. How could it not be better to cut off a hand than to miss entering the Kingdom of Heaven? I do believe that Christ meant what he said. The problem is, God (and Jesus) make salvation the ultimately most serious matter of existence, whereas many of us are quite a bit more casual about it. We are the ultimate fools if we are among those who do so.