At my undergrad, there would be after hours "talks" by religious leaders about the foolishness of plate tectonics, the fallacy of radiocarbon dating, etc etc. At least for hardcore Bible literalists, believing that the world is older than X generations (with the lineage spelled out in the old testament) is to believe that the Bible is false, and therefore their whole religion is disproved. My family was raised this way too.
That is only true if you accept the idea of Biblical (or, more generally, textual) literalism, which is largely a feature of a subset of Evangelical Protestant sects in America starting in the mid-to-late 19th century.
For thousands of years prior to that, pretty much everyone was perfectly content understanding that these were stories to inform our understanding, some of them pure myth, some allegory, some depicting historical events (often with embellishments of one sort or another).
There's no contradiction once you assume an all powerful creator. That's why logic won't win these discussions.
Many small Pentecostal and evangelical churches gain a lot of media attention thanks to their conservatism, fundamentalism and obscure views. Fortunately, they do not constitute the majority of Christians worldwide (at least not yet).