If I believe something because it is in the Bible, then how might that affect my beliefs about some other area of reality, such as geology or history?
First, I might take a scholastic approach (see yesterday's episode), by which I formulate my theories of geology just as any other geologist would, but at the end of the process I whip out my Bible and check for any inconsistencies. If necessary, I do some more digging and some more theologising until those inconsistencies disappear (which hopefully they will).
Or, second, I might take a fundamentalist approach. This is the subject of Chapter 6 of Roy Clouser's The Myth of Religious Neutrality (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). In this approach, I scour the Bible for anything it might say about geology, and explicitly include that information in my theories.
Despite some rather strong language, Clouser doesn't seem to have a fundamental problem with either of those approaches, per se. (His main problem with the fundamentalist approach is when the Bible is misinterpreted, and forced to speak on matters about which it doesn't actually speak.) These two approaches
[focus] on either the logical compatibility of specific religious beliefs and specific theories [the scholastic approach], or on the inclusion of biblical teachings in the content or confirmation of theories [the fundamentalist approach]. But while not denying that revealed truth can, at times, act as "control beliefs" for theories in those ways, this position [see below] denies that those are the only or most important ways divinity beliefs impact theories (p.127).
This third position is the radically biblical position, which we encountered last time. In this, the religious beliefs control other beliefs by acting as presuppositions:
By acting as a presupposition to all theory making, rather than by being part of, or by confirming part of, the content of any particular theory, belief in God can guide every theory and do it in a more pervasive and important way (p.121).
The next chapters form a "casebook", giving examples of how this works in mathematics, physics and psychology. So watch this space...