I am a Scientific Christian (but not a Christian Scientist! ;) I believe that God created Man through a miracle. Some claim this was a quick one that ancient Heberews could understand, but I personally lean towards a long term one that science can understand. Although that is my belief, God will explain the correct answer to me in the afterlife, and probably then it will no longer be important to me.
However, some of my zealous, enthusiastic Christian brothers make Creation a tenent of the Faith that outstrips and replaces the real center of our Salvation, the personal sacrifice of Jesus Christ to erase our sins (if we come to Him and ask, of course.) With bulldog like intensity, they will bring it up at every opportunity. I believe this to be a liability, and I will now submit why:
We were counseled by one of the Apostles to "not eat meat offered before idols." He noted that while everything is made clean before God, not all things are good, and that to some Hebrews, to do this would be offensive. To Christians made clean, the act was not forbidden. But the very fact that it was offensive to the Hebrews actually harmed the witness for Christ, for those Jews could scoff at the Christians, and use the action to discount the witness for Christ.
I have a very Intelligent, Scientific Friend from college, and I would like him to understand that Christ died for him. Now, the free sacrifice by God Almighty might be, given the right conditions in my friend's life, something he could get his busy brain around. However, I have another friend, a dyed in the wool Creationist, who would go to this very Scientific Fellow, and insist:
"Hey! Everything you know is wrong! Carbon dating, atomic decay, silt, the rate hydrogen burns at, migration patterns, everything! Wrong, wrongo, wrongiest! Oh, and by the way, Christ died for your sins."
To this Scientific Friend, any creedece that the Salvation of Jesus Christ may have possibly had is now out the window. What he has experienced is not a loving explaination that there is sin in his live that God can remove, but an attack on all the facts that he knows are true. This scientific fellow is now convinced that Christians are deluded people who don't understand Science, and whatever "that spiritual thing" is that they believe can be discounted.
In summation, My Perception is that the Universe is probably older than some other people's by a factor of about a billion. It is no less aweinspiring or astounding for the fact that God took a lot longer crafting it. I may be wrong. God will straighten me out in the Debriefing. But beating a Cold, Rational, Scientific Person over the head with the literal interpritation of Flood and Pre-Flood Creation will place a unneeded barrier between them and Jesus Christ. And that is something I don't want to do. Our witness to the unchurched, to the Lost, to the sheep wandering outside of Christ's fold, should be about the Agape love that Christ has for them, personally, and the Salvation change that can make them new and better people. Beating the Creationist horse can weaken that witness among scientific-minded people.
(And boy, you should have seen the face of this Intelligent Fellow the night my wife tried to tell him that "everybody knows a Ouija board WON'T BURN!")