The belief in the biblical story of creation does not negate evolution. Science has proven time and time again that species develop and evolve. Take for example a moth that lives in a region where there is a large amount of polution. This pure white moth will not be able to survive and hide against polluted surroundings, so it evol ves into a dirty gray color in order to blend in. Anthropologists have documented that man has evolved into a species with less hair and one who walks more upright. My understanding of Christian beliefs does not indicate that Christianity negates evolution.

This is the most ridiculous discussion I have seen yet. No one is going to convince a "true believer" of anything, and the "true believers" aren't going to convince atheists or scientists that this Holy Bible a 3rd and even 4th hand account of creation stories originating in Sumer is absolute truth.

Paul speaks for God because Paul says he does.

Mohammed speaks for God because Mohammed says he does.

The pope speaks for God because he says he does and all his followers agree with him.

Christianity along with Islam has a basic tenet of convert or be killed even though the Christian pronouncements of this are now pretty much quieted, but the basic fundamentalist extremeists of any religion except maybe buddhism preach the same thing.

Without religion there would have been a more peaceful world is my own (stupid?) considered opinion now.

I'm with you, sister. I wish enotes would not allow this type of discussion. It inevitably devolves from an intelligent conversation into an argument over whose system of beliefs is correct. The issue will never be solved!

If you consider this whole discussion in terms of human beings and all their many different cultures over time, one common thread emerges. Humans throughout their history have always been driven to understand the wonder of creation and to know its source. This is simply programmed into us, regardless of time or circumstance. Atheists, no doubt, would explain this as some kind of biological quirk imprinted in our DNA. I believe it is far more profound and shows that we are spiritual beings whose creation wasn't random and who try to find their way back to its divine source. The creation "myths" of every human culture demonstrate the same need. Accepting the Book of Genesis as the ultimate truth of creation or accepting scientific theory as the means to understand creation also demonstrate this search for spiritual understanding. Science does not negate faith. For many, it is an expression of it.

I have to agree with #65.  Science and Christianity are not mutually exclusive.  I do not believe it has to be science OR faith.

The order in which evolutionists claim life evolved is the same as the order of the Bible.  Both believe that the Earth's atmosphere underwent major changes in which liquid water collected on the earth.  Then plants emerged followed by more complex lifeforms.  Both agree that compared to the rest of creation, man is a newcomer.

The Bible says that it was on day four that God created the sun, moon, and stars "to mark seasons and days and years".  Essentially this would be the creation of time.  If that is true, then we can understand the "day" referred to in Genesis as an epoch of time rather than a 24 hour day since there had already been 3 "days" before time was counted.

Perhaps science is actually one method by which we can strive to understand the mind of God?

To #54 and #61:  The humonkey is neither human nor monkey.  The humonkey may have lived in one particular niche.  The human and the monkey may have their origens in the humonkey, but they each evolved along a diverging path each filling a distinctly different niche in which their individual adaptations were well suited.

Referring to the Model T example:  yes, the model T may have started it all.  And now we have a Taurus.  However, we also have an Aston Martin and a Chevy Silverado.  Both of these originated with the Model T but are distinctly different from their origin.

It is my belief that God and science are compliments to one another.  One is not explained without the other.  The statement that there is "no scientific evidence of this god you mention" is as ludicrous as the statement that the Bible, translated thousands of times, has no mistakes.

The God of the Universe, the great designer of billions of systems which rely upon billions of things to occur precisely at the right times, in the right amounts, and to the right degree, is as capable of creating the process of Evolution as He is capable of creating the universe from a huge BANG or from nothing at all and beginnng in a garden.

There is a fundamental difference between "truth" and "fact." A short story, for instance, because it is a fiction form is not factual. However, many short stories contain a great deal of truth about life or the human condition. Truth does not necessarily require a set of supporting facts. My personal belief is that the Book of Genesis is not factual, but that the story of creation in Genesis does convey an underlying truth: a divine power created the universe. It seems to me that the more scientific research reveals to us about the biological nature of life and the nature of the universe itself, the harder it becomes to deny that the intricacy of creation is the result of some random occurrence or series of random occurrences. Call it divine power, intelligent design, or whatever--the brilliant perfection of all we have unlocked so far in nature suggests more than happenstance.

That said, those who accept the Book of Genesis literally will always reject science in terms of explaining the creation of mankind and the universe. Genesis, however, when interpreted figuratively in conveying the truth of creation, does not rule out science. Many who accept evolution view it simply as being the means through which God created mankind.

It shouldn't be a matter of "feeling sorry" for those of us who do not use the Bible as our religious canon. Simply rejoice that such book and your spiritual direction work for you, and rejoice in that others (who are also God's Children, according to your own argument) also have a way to find their inner peace and their place in this Universe.

Feeling sorry for others not believing the same as one does defeats every goal of living in a free country where differences are precisely what have brought us to be the unique group of people that we are.

I must admit that my curiousity on how a topic with 41 responses only acquired 2 stars??? I think the answer to that question can be found somewhere between the subject matter and the uncompromising passion the responders experience. Could it be that the subject matter strikes so deep, rating the question simply holds no significance??? (just some food for thought)

Scientific theory and discovery have challenged Christian beliefs for many years. The arguments of both sides have played out upon the judicial stage for years, wins and losses accumulated on both sides.

Religion holds only one requirement....faith. On the other hand, science and its theories are rooted in experimentation and in some cases proven fact. Due to this, there are those that will never be able to reconcile their religion with scientific discovery and those who will never reconcile their religion and scientific theory and discovery.

So for what its worth... The deal is people living in a society which guarantees 'freedom of religion, speech, and due process' will argue this topic. If and when this topic needs to be addressed Constitutionally, it will have its day in court. Until then those of us who live in a society that protects 'freedom of religion or the freedom of no religion' should remember this.... whether it is your faith or your science, or your reconcilation between faith and science, never forget how lucky we are to encompass all those perspectives.

Let me pose another question: What is it within us that makes us argue over a topic that no one can ever prove or disprove? Those of us who believe that God created everything that is will forever shake our heads and pray for the poor misguided souls who don't believe. Those who believe in the theory of evolution will forever shake their heads and snicker at the poor misguided fools who believe in superstition and myth.

Neither side will ever budge. So why waste our energy arguing?

1978-79, Cullman, Alabama, trial on a change of venue from Decatur, Curtis Lee Hines, poor retarded young black man sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Sad story, not something I'd make fun of. It was a big deal at the time, lots of national media, the major TV networks, an observer from the Justice Dept. Got me a free lance job with Pacific News Service. You could probably find out a lot about it were you to do some research.

I did not say Gould or Fedducia did not believe in TFs, I quoted Gould as pointing out problems with some views of evolution, it's an accurate quote. I quoted Fedducia et al only in relation to their article, which was about the differences between Archaeopteryx and therapods, quite accurately which you would know had you read the article. Your posts have a couple of disjointed sentences, or haven't you read them either? "Your I find your assertions..." You made no points in your posts, you simply repeated your opinion. You still have given no information nor documentation to support anything you've said. What kind of science is that?

I have not misrepresented anything, but you have twisted things I wrote to try to say I have stated things I did not say. Either you did not read my answers to your question closely or you are purposefully misinterpreting what I wrote. That's still not science. You actually haven't done any serious reading in this area at all, have you? You're simply trying to bully me into shutting up. That's not science, either.

How can I cover everything, there's only 4500 characters per post. I just hit the obvious high points. I could address the others, but it would obviously be useless.

I have made no "Creationist" arguments at all.  I said up front Gould was an evolutionary scientist. I just said he didn't believe the General Theory, and he doesn't or why would he have come up with his own? He himself wrote that he could disprove any theory of evolution he could think of. Didn't actually read his book, did you? Today we have multiple versions of the theory, and that's good, that's the refining of the theory I was talking about in the first place. I like his work because of his honesty and clarity, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything he says.

Did you read any of the articles? No, because had you done so you would know I did not misquote, misrepresent, take out of context, or commit any other kind of intellectual chicanery. I simply disagree with you, and hold that I have valid scientific reasons for doing so. Why do you feel threatened by that? You're so angry you can hardly make decent sentences. Do you make wild accusations about everyone who disagrees with you about anything?

I have given actual information from direct research of source documents. Your posts speak of invisible pink elephants and Occam's Razor, you describe a TV show and you do a good bit of bullying, but you have posted no actual piece of information, much less valid documentation. You express viewpoints, but offer no real support for them.

Have you ever actually read anything serious about this, like the Origin of the Species or any other major work? Or have you just read about them? And did you throw away whatever you were reading if it didn't tickle your fancy? Do you always attack people who talk about things you don't really understand? Yes, I appear to know a great deal more than you, but no, you have not refuted anything, you have simply reiterated your opinion with no actual information given to back it up.  And in the end, when I answer your question about my point of view, the only thing you have to fall back on is an almost incoherant aggression. Is that your view of science? In the late 1970s, as a newspaper reporter, I spent a year investigating the Ku Klux Klan. They use the same tactics, they exhibit the same behavior and mental traits. Sorry, but it's true.

You seem to have a serious personal bias about anyone you even suspect of having any sort of religious ideas at all. I have said nothing about religion except that I feel it is irrelevant to the issue. I certainly haven't said or implied anything about whether I believe anything or not, nor have I in any way argued from any religious viewpoint. Why would I misrepresent things and lie? To bring you to Jesus? How would that work? If you feel you need to go to Jesus, that's your problem. Not my business. And I refuse to acceed to your efforts to make it my business through innuendo and unfounded accusations.

There are indications that some current version of the theory or perhaps something which will grow out of a current version may be the answer, may provide proof.  I don't care what theory turns out to be true, but I'm not convinced as of right now. How could I make this clearer? Well, for example, I'm not sure you are an intellectual fraud; there are indications but I'm not totally convinced.  I'm not sure you're a bigot about religions of all sorts, but there are strong indications. I'm positive you're a bully, and that you have an anger management problem, you've convinced me of that at least.

I took part in a discussion here. You seem to think you're in some kind of a fight. If so, you're fighting yourself, Bubba, not me. Enjoy your Pyrhhic victory over yourself.

On to Lucy. There were a large number of fossils found, Lucy (AL 288-1) being the alleged first female ancestor of modern humans.  Almost all the scientists involved in the reconstruction and direct study of these remains consider that "Lucy" was male and that all the Australopithicus aferensis were of pongid (ape) structure, with the fingers, wrists, rib cage, hips and pelvis, legs and feet all oriented toward knuckle-walking and arboreal activities, not bipedal locomotion.  Donald Johanson (the discoverer) himself stated in the March, 1996 National Geographic that, "Lucy has recently been dethroned."  As early as his 1981 book Johanson stated, "You begin straining your eyes to find Homo traits in fossils of that age.... Logical, maybe, but also biased. I was trying to jam evidence of dates into a pattern that would support conclusions about fossils which, on closer inspection, the fossils themselves would not sustain."

“If AL 288-1 was female, then one can exclude this species from the ancestors of Homo because its pelvis is certainly less primitive than the pelvis of Sts 14 [the designation for a specific A. africanus fossil]" (Hausler and Schmid, “Comparison of the Pelvis of Sts 14 and AL 288-1: Implications for Birth and Sexual Dimorphism in Australopithecines,” Journal of Human Evolution, 29:363-383.1995, p. 378). Their reconstruction of the pelvis indicated "Lucy" was male, of the Pongidae family, and simply too small to be a viable hominid.

Stern and Susman (1983), in “The Locomotor Anatomy of Australopithecus afarensis,” Journal of Physical Anthropology, 60:279-317, stated, “It is demonstrated that A. afarensis possessed anatomic characteristics that indicate a significant adaptation for movement in the trees." They went on to comment: “The AL 333-91 [a specific A. afarensis fossil] pisiform [hand bone] is ‘elongate and rod shaped’ and thus resembles the long, projecting pisiform of apes and monkeys. " These structures were considered one standard unit of deviation from the gorilla and orangutan. "We discovered a substantial body of evidence indicating that arboreal activities were so important to A. afarensis that morphologic adaptations permitting adept movement in the trees were maintained."

Peter Schmid, a paleontologist at the Anthropological Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, studied Lucy extensively;
"When I started to put the skeleton together, I expected it to look human. Everyone had talked about Lucy as being very modern, very human, so I was surprised...the ribs were more round in cross-section, more like what you see in apes. Human ribs are flatter in cross-section. But the shape of the rib cage itself was the biggest surprise of all. The human rib cage is barrel shaped, and I just couldn’t get Lucy’s ribs to fit this kind of shape. But I could get them to make a conical-shaped rib cage, like what you see in apes (as quoted in "Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human," Leakey and Lewin, 1992, pp. 193-194)."  Dr. Alan Walker of Johns Hopkins claimed that tooth wear indicated a diet gained by tree foraging, not ground foraging, according to Johanson.

I could quote dozens more.  So every physical characteristic says "ape", not proto-human.  Not suprising in the light of anatomist Lord Zuckerman's researches (and John Oxnard of U. of Chicago's computer analysis in 1975 of numerous Australopithicus forms, concluding all were knuckle-walking apes). Zuckerman's work predates the discovery of Lucy, but was performed on much more recent fossils.

This very week, in Tel Aviv, Prof. Rak and others at the anatomy and anthorpology school of the Sackler School of Medicine announced findings based on Lucy's mandibular ramus being the same as a gorilla's. "The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor."  Jerusalem Post, May 6, 2009.

I have no personal grudge against evolution, and I'm open about it.  If someone produces what I could honestly view as scientific proof I'll climb back on that wagon. I climbed off because science convinced me otherwise.  I'm not saying it's evil, I'm just saying it's not proven as fact.

frizzyperm, I don't know what your level of expertise is. I probably could have phrased that better, though, and I did not mean it as any sort of insult. Gould is a believer in his Punctuated Equilibrium theory, not the "General Theory." I like his work because of his disdain for the 'just-so stories' type of evolution. "In honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic design than a saga of accumulating excellence,"  from his article in Natural History, February 1984, sums it up. It was Patterson's book which first caused me to question the theory, although I'm not sure being the head paleontologist of the world's foremost natural history museum makes him a "minor scientist."

There are eight examples of Archaeopteryx, some so well preserved the details of the feathers are visible, and soft tissue. Among the soft tissue are the lungs. Avian lungs do not have a bidirectional air flow, like mammals or reptiles, which breath in and out through the same bronchial tubes. Birds have lungs which are small and rigid, with a flow-through arrangement of nine interconnecting flexible air sacs between the muscles under the skin.These aren't involved in oxygen exchange, but act like a bellows pumping air unidirectionally through the lungs. This puts more oxygen content into the bloodstream and keeps the volume of the lungs relatively constant, which helps birds stay level in flight. Archaeopteryx has these lungs. What soft tissue evidence found in therapods had convinced many paleontologists and evolutionary biologists by the late 1970s that they had bidirectional lungs. The remains of a Sinosauopteryx, a supposed ancestor, was found in the 1990s with the visceral cavity in excellent preservation, and has a diaphragm-like muscle seperating the lungs and liver, like an alligator. This is the best preserved of these examples, but it confirms what many others indicated long ago, that the lungs of therapods were like reptiles, not those of birds (J.A. Ruben, T.D. Jones, N.R. Geist, and W.J. Hillenius, Lung structure and ventilation in theropod dinosaurs and early birds, Science 278:1267–1270, 1997).

One of the most striking features of Archaeopteryx is the three long fingers in the wings. Most terrestrial vertebrates have this five-fingered hand in embryo, and in both therapods and birds two are greatly reduced or lost in embryonic development. Therapods retained fingers 1, 2 and 3 (counting the thumb as 1), but birds retain 2, 3 and 4.  Archaeopteryx has the bird structure (A. Feduccia, T. Lingham-Soliar, and J.R. Hinchliffe, Do feathered dinosaurs exist? Testing the hypothesis on neontological and paleontological evidence, Journal of Morphology 266:125–166, 2005).

Then there are feathers. Dinosaurs being essentially reptiles, we have known since fairly early fossil examples of skin that they had scales. Compsognathus is a dinosaur supposed to be an ancestor of birds, and an excellently preserved example found post-2000 has scales, but no feathers (U.B. Gohlich and L.M. Chiappe, A new carnivorous dinosaur from the late Jurassic Solnhofen archipelago, Nature 440:329–332, 2006). The so-called "feathered dinosaurs" were found largely in Liaoning Province of China, and both Sinosauropteryx and Sinithosaurus have what are called "proto-feathers," interlaced structures with no real resemblance to feathers. These turn out to be collagen, connecting tissue in the deep dermal layer of skin. As it was put in one article, “The major and most worrying problem of the feathered dinosaur hypothesis is that the integumental structures have been homologized with avian feathers on the basis of anatomically and paleontologically unsound and misleading information.”(Feduccia, T. Lingham-Soliar, and J.R. Hinchliffe, Do feathered dinosaurs exist? Testing the hypothesis on neontological and paleontological evidence, Journal of Morphology 266:125–166, 2005).The Archaeoraptor of National Geographic's November 1999 issue was a fraud. Making all this more complicated is the fact that true birds were found in the same rock strata in China as their supposed ancestors, and that two taxa (Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx) orignally thought to be dinosaurs are now considered large flightless birds (op cit). That the supposed ancestors are 20 million years more recent than Archaeopteryx is certainly an issue.

Linda-Allen, i was accepting of your post until you discredited the bible. i will tell you this, there is a passage of scripture is Revelation 22:18-19 that says "For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." Translation: You will spend enternity in Hell if you add or take away from the bible. I don't know how your grandparents and parents told you the stories but mine actually had a bible open in front of them reading it, so, that tells me the story was not miscontrewn. You may say words get lost in translations, but you're wrong. The bible was originally written in Hebrew, if it still appeared that way nobody would be able to read or understand it. When different translations were made of course words are lost here and there, most languages, like Hebrew, do not have all the words we have, their vocabulary is not that big, so, you need to rethink that comment you made. The bible was ordained by GOD therefore it is 100% accurate and 100% holy!

You are very mistaken in saying that I "discredited" the Bible. It is the Holy Book of Christianity, and it should be respected as such. To call the stories in the Bible "stories" is not to discredit their power. Jesus himself was a storyteller and used stories in his teaching. The parable of the prodigal son should not be taken literally. Jesus was not reporting on an incident that he witnessed. So also, Old Testament writers were not reporting events they had witnessed but were relating stories their elders had told them. As I said before, it is inevitable that some stories got changed or embellished.

As far as the idea of pi being 3, that is exactly what pi was considered to be in ancient times.  The Babylonians considered the circumference of a circle to be three times the diameter, ie that pi equals 3.  So did the Roman Vitruvius, one of the founders of architecture as a science.  By 1800 BC the Egyptians had pi to 3.1604, but it was not until 1789 that pi was proven to be an irrational number, and 1882 that it was proven to be what is termed a transcendental number, by Lambert and Lindemann respectively.  It seems shortsighted of us today to make fun of people in the past for believing what everyone then believed, even their contemporary mathematicians.

The theory that the Bible was told and retold orally for centuries before it was written down, although widely believed, seems odd if you think about it.  Writing was quite common in the ancient world, widely used by the public at large and taught in school to children as a matter of course at least as far back as the third millenia BC.  The city of Akkad, scene of the first "empire" of history, was also known as Sippar, which means "scribe town."  Excavations, starting with the first in Sumeria by Rich, Botta, and Layard found tablets and inscriptions at every site.  This has continued to the present.

Moses was raised as a prince in the house of Pharoah, at a time when writing had been in use for thousands of years, and he was educated at the court.  He then lived in an area of southern Arabia where writing is known to have been common for centuries.  If he felt what he was doing was important, can we rationally believe he didn't have it all written down?

As for transitional forms in fossils, sorry frizzy, but nothing has been found to support the quotes you cite.  Wikipedia's not much of a source, except for pop culture.  Try some of these books:

Collin Patterson, the Listener (Patterson has retired as head paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History- his book is probably the one you should start with);

Salet, Hasard et al, Certitude: le Transformisme devant la Biologie Actuelle;

B. Leith, the Descent of Darwin;

N. MacBeth, Darwin Retried;

Stephen Jay Gould, the Panda's Thumb;

H. Nielson, Synthetische Artbilding;

Luther Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma;

well, I could list a couple dozen more just to start with, and a long selection of articles from mainstream and specialized scientific publications, many involving paleontology and archaeology, but that'll do to get you started.  You may not recognize the names some of these authors, but if you don't recognize Gould and Patterson you probably don't really know this field very well.  Oh, and check out the centennial edition of Origin of the Species, the one with the introduction by Thompson, or the 1971 edition with the introduction by L. H. Matthews.

This discussion seems to have degenerated into nothing but opinions, usually set forth with no regard to proof or courtesy, which seems useless in terms of learning anything.

"The Bible is always right!" Despite what you may think the bible has no flaws. You have distorted what the passage in Leviticus really means. SCIENTISTS, and HISTORIANS have investigated the Bible and found now flaws, no blemishes, or inconsistancies! God is the one who creates everything we know today, and he said "IT IS GOOD!" There is no such thing as evolution! One question for you...who gave scientists the knowledge to save you? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. Proverbs 1:7 Hell is a real place my friend and the bible says the all who do not believe will be cast into the lake of fire!!!

You must not have heard of the minimalist movement in biblical archaeology. These scholars take the biblical stories as starting points for history but not as literal retellings of history. One of the most prominent minimalist scholars is Israel Finkelstein, who claims that the Bible was written centuries after the stories it retells and casts the historical events in the light of the later era. For instance, he believes that the Jerusalem of David and Solomon was not a great city but a mere village.

It is possible to have faith in God and Christ and still not take the stories in the Bible as 100% accurate. The Bible is a handbook for living the right life. The stories were passed from generation to generation by grandparents telling stories to their grandchildren. It is inevitable that some changes were made along the way, especially when the stories were finally written down.

I agree this is the Science forum.  We don't really discuss religion per se here, but I see two flaws in this discussion.  One is the assumption that the Bible is absolutely infallible, and the other that it is scientifically completely fallable.  Neither is true.

The history recorded in the Bible can be proven back to the earliest cities, those founded by Nimrod.  From all archeaological evidence and all records discovered in these ancient cities we have proven the history recorded in the Bible is correct from the earliest cities through the entirety of the Old Testament.  This does not mean every tiny detail, nor does it necessarily follow that the philosophy and religion are "correct."

As for the duck-billed platypus being a "missing link", paleontology has found no missing links, neither has biology.  The duck-billed platypus is a mammal, although a very primitive one.  It may tell us about early mammals, but it is not some missing link between two species.  People still have this idea about archeaopterix also, that it is a missing link between dinosaurs and birds.  It may be that the smaller therapods (two-legged hunting dinosaurs) were ancestors of birds, but archeaopterix is a bird.  A rather primitive bird, but a bird with no characteristics of any other genus.

Most of these posts seem to be written somewhat angrily, and with a view to "proving" an I'm-right-you're-wrong sort of argument.  What's scientific about that?  But of course this post started that way.  I'm thinking this is a good topic to drop.

In response to frizzyperm:

All true, . . . and more of the "whys" that I can't even pretend to understand.  It is the minutia (all non-murderous) that I was speaking of:  the debate between evolution vs. creationism.  I would hope that the events you mention, very brutal indeed, are not causing any happiness "up there." 

In short, you're right.  I should have said, "Somewhere up there, I suspect that Jesus is smiling at our discourse about details."  Because, heck yeah, I certainly can't presume to know what Jesus is thinking.  I can only insert my own opinion, . . . and value yours.

You know, after reading your very heated question, listening to all of the responses (including your own), praying about it, and asking the Holy Spirit to guide my words, what I have to say is this:  I guess the strong Christian in me just doesn’t feel like I have to know absolutely everything about life on this flawed earth, for this is not my eternal home. 

The answer to your question is about FAITH, not about fact. 

I have heard it all:  evidence for evolution and evidence against evolution.  I understand your call to enlighten others, but at the same time I find you judging those in my own religion (Roman Catholicism), and you know what our Bible, our inspired Word of God, says about judging (Luke 6:37 & Matthew 7:1).  I try very hard to ask myself what has now become a colloquialism:  What would Jesus do?  Then I try to act accordingly.  You are right about one thing, however, there is only one Truth.  For me, that Truth is found in the Bible, and here it is:   “Peter, you are Rock, and on this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).  This is why I am Roman Catholic and why I will continue to pray for you and for all responders.  Someday, those who are truly blessed will enter heaven and know all of these truths we worry so much about on this earth.

Somewhere up there, Jesus is smiling at our discourse about details. 

I simply believe that God  is so much bigger and greater and more awesome than all of our petty disputes down here, . . . and He is even bigger and greater and more awesome than our inspired Word of God that we CAN understand.  For the true God is bigger and greater and more awesome than ALL of our human understanding. 

For me, I would hope that I will be blessed someday to be allowed at Jesus feet, to look up in awe and simply listen to Him.  Not to say, “Thank you God for not letting me be like this tax collector” (Luke 18:11), but to be like the sinful tax collector himself, “standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!'” (Luke 18:13).   I would hope to be much like Mary featured a bit earlier in the gospel of Luke:

Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.  She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord's feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me." But the Lord answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)

Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I want to be Mary.  ; )

To say that Biblical creation is a proven and supported fact is to say that it is scientifically proven.  However, almost all scientists would say that the weight of scientific evidence is strongly in favor of evolution.

It is quite another thing to say that science isn't the only important way to look at things.  Faith is a fundamentally different way of trying to answer the mysteries of life.  If you choose to believe in Biblical creation, great.  However, if you decide to play on the scientific playing field, be prepared to lose.

Yes, obviously this has opened a heated debate. The fact of the matter is that both beliefs are theories, each with some form of evidence. It is just as much begging the question to say that the duckbill platypus evolved to have poisonous spurs on his feet as it is to say that God created him that way originally. Both are based on the assumption that a particular view is right. As for Leviticus saying that a rabbit chews its cud, the actual Hebrew word used in the original language doesn't translate rabbit. Scholar's believe it to be an extinct animal, perhaps similar to a rabbit.

For good arguments showing the validity of Creation, www.answersingenesis.org is a good place to start.

I can't resist beginning by pointing out that your question contains not one but two basic logical errors. First, you've called Biblical Creation "a proven and supported fact" while offering no proof or support. That's petitio principii or "begging the question," in other words, assuming what you are trying to prove. Second, you've tried to prove an assertion by demanding that those who do not share your opinion disprove that assertion, an error called shifting the burden of proof, a special case of Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, the argument from ignorance. As a person who is asserting that Biblical Creation is "a proven and supported fact," the burden of proof is on you to support this statement, not on others to disprove it.

As for errors and contradictions in the Bible, there are many extensive lists available. I would refer you to the one at www. infidels.com, linked below, for starters. It does not particularly surprise me that a book as old and varied as the Bible has inconsistencies, nor does it necessarily speak against the general truths expressed therein (though I am not a believer). You leave yourself unnecessarily vulnerable by insisting on defending the absolute consistency of the text.

I would also note that many Christian organizations, including the largest of them all, the Catholic Church, have no difficulty in reconciling evolution with an ultimate Divine origin for life. Of course, you could assert that Catholics are not Christians, but I would suggest that would be a very bold statement to make.

Finally, a thought. At the time Jesus was on earth, there were not one but two great empires. There was the Roman Empire, in which he and his disciples lived; and there was the Chinese Empire, the Han dynasty, which like the Romans ruled over fifty million people and an advanced civilization. If he came to set all men free, why did Jesus and his Father neglect China so grossly? It would be eight centuries at least before an obscure sect of Christians, the Nestorians, appeared in China. Does this myopia not speak to the origin of Christian belief among the lower and less educated classes of the Roman Empire, who did not even know that China existed?