All those debates are political in origin anyway and a throwback to church control over society. Notice how almost no other religions have frets about evidence interfering with faith, or figuring out what the true and right answer is. We don't see people fighting over Izanagi and such for example even though Shinto is still pretty big today.
We don't see people going "Izanagi and Izanami couldn't have created the land because the continental plates prove otherwise" and somebody else going "Yeah well science is a trick and I'm going to believe this anyway!" Why not? Because they have no need to validate the religion. It doesn't matter because they're not trying to control politics, e.g. what gets taught in schools. That level of social control seems to be unique to the Abarahamic religions and the reason it is like that stems from social control and state influence. The church can't let itself be questioned if it's telling you what to do.
All of which requires that you accept the premise that the church (what church?) is totalitarian, authoritarian and the "baddy" of the piece.
Surely that is a ridiculous oversimplification?
If the western world or the part of the world in which the abrahamic religions are rooted has supposedly been the most socially controlled, which I highly doubt, it has also been one of he most socially contested and socially challenged or usurped in history.
And how have the challlengers in every instance sought to usurp their enemies in the establishment? By attacking the narratives which sustain them, challenging the orthodoxy and changing the script, that's how.
Shinto, if I recall properly, is the state religion, it was adopted by the emperors and was in contest or conflict for a long time with Taoism which thought it was superstition, and I think that Taoism was appointed state religion for a time too or maybe it was confucianism.
The conflict in that part of the world was between taoism and confucianism, one believing man was perfect in a state of nature, uncorrupted by artifice, the other believing that man was corrupt in a state of nature and requiring instruction in the way of the upright, just and good man. Which is a sort of perennial debate globally echoed by Roseau, Voltaire and their conservative detractors as late as the modern political revolutions.
The literal truth of doctrines such as the genesis story I would suggest is a legacy of the solo scriptural and biblical literalism doctrines adopted in opposition to traditionalism by the protestant opposition to the church during the reformation. Far from it being an overarching authoritarian and monolith church insisting upon it, it was the pretenders who thought asserting their own orthodoxy and dogma contra the establishment they could raise enough support to drive the establishment to extinction. Dont take my word for it though, check out The Discourse on Free Will by Erasmus and Luther from continuum classics for a first hand account.