FWIW, I’ll chip in some elements from my own “escape from creationism with faith intact” that differ a bit from @sfmatheson’s summary–not to contradict him, but just for some additional color. And because there’s been a fair amount of chat lately about Christians who accept the science of evolution, so I thought folks might be interested to hear more from some of us.
For reference, I grew up attending evangelical churches where YEC was treated as the only viable Christian option. I also attended Christian schools where YEC was explicitly taught as part of the science curriculum. (My high school science texts were published by Bob Jones University.) I was aware in a general sense this was counter to “secular” science, but mostly because I was told so rather than having much awareness of the alternatives. I was content with this and prepared to go off to college and have to choose between giving the “true” answers on exams and the answers that would get me good grades.
However, despite being a biology major as an undergrad and doing a PhD in molecular microbiology, that scenario never arose. Natural history and common descent didn’t come up in any of my classes; to the extent that evolution came up at all, it was in relation to issues like antimicrobial resistance that could easily be compartmentalized as unobjectionable microevolution.
So my “escape from creationism” didn’t start with
Instead, I had an encounter with theology I had never heard or seen before, which involved basically the same “shocking discovery” of the mere existence of serious believers who had no qualms with an old earth and common descent. None of these folks tried to persuade me about the science–I’m guessing they didn’t realize just how different my education had been in that regard and also they weren’t biologists–but they did address the various theological objections and issues I had grown up with. So in that regard the “friendly environment” was still a central and likely critical component, but what I learned in that context differed.
As a result, the first waypoint on my escape route was agnosticism about the details of most origins questions while retaining a belief that God was ultimately involved whatever the particulars. I was still fairly uninformed on the science, and so I didn’t have a feeling of having been lied to so much as figuring folks in my denomination were understandably underinformed about what was going on in the other denominations.
However, now that I’ve dug more into the science, I continue to struggle with my own version of:
I’m willing to grant that most/all of the folks in my particular circle are not lying in the sense of knowingly bearing false witness. Nevertheless, they are demonstrably wrong about various matters of biology, and also fairly impervious to correction. So what else are they wrong about? The answer could be ‘nothing’ of course, but it is difficult to maintain the level of trust required to believe that, especially when there is so clearly no reciprocal trust in me.