Christianity makes little sense w/o fall or cross (note this, Darwinians)

First of all, I'm not sure that there is necessarily required a conflict between all flavors of Darwinism and all flavors of biblical Christianity. Even though I consider myself an Old Earth Creationist. But there are some Darwinians, such as Richard Dawkins, who take the implications of Darwinism as a disproof of Christianity.

But I just heard a podcasted lecture from the Royal Society about how poets in Darwin's age responded to Darwin. The narrator offered as a given that natural selection showed that whatever creator exists, it could not be both good and all-powerful. I have a few responses:

i) This is exactly the argument I've heard from some Young Earth Creationists, who never seem to tire in finding objections to biblical faith for the scientifically literate. If animals suffered before the advent of Adam, the YEC's say, therefore the bible has to be wrong about everything, including salvation. Because a good God wouldn't allow animals to suffer the way they appear to have since before humans arrived. In this view, the YEC's become the most extreme animal rights activists-- probably more than PETA-- but just this one issue this one time. Even PETA believes in the right of natural carnivores to eat their prey. Faced with such animal suffering, Old Earth Creationists would have few other recourses than to point to the specialness of humans in God's creation.

ii) The historian gave a critique of Christianity without any mention of the Fall or the cross or resurrection. I, too, will agree that Christianity is completely philosophically absurd without a cross. It's like a bus without wheels.