The Anchor Bible, published by Doubleday, translated and notated by the best Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant scholars of our time, is in my opinion the absolute state-of-the-art in Bible redaction. It is certainly the best example that I, at age 62, will ever see in my lifetime. These editors are not God, they are not infallible, but they are among the best in the world at what they do.

In the Anchor Genesis you can read the entire Pentateuch broken down, verse by verse, and even word by word where necessary, by source, D, E, J, P, or 'X', (that is a source other than one of the other four). These scholars' work is good enough for me, until something better comes along, and as I said, it won't be during my lifetime.

Right now I am sitting in the public library in Essen, Germany, feeding Euro coins into one of their public computers. Within this very building one can read the various Sumerian and Babylonian creation legends which served as source material for Genesis 1 and 2. They are very easily dated to pre-Biblical times.

As I see it, there are three possibilities:

1. God (YHWH)created man (male only) before the animals, and woman much later, from man's body. (TANGENT: Do you know, caf, that there are actually fundamentalists who think that men have one rib fewer than women? Don't bother counting, the Bible sez so, so it must be true).

2. God(s) (Elohim) created everything, beginning with the simplest (light) and progressing to the more complicated, ending with animals, and finally man, with both beasties and man created male and female together.

3. Everything that exists exists because of the laws of chemistry, physics, biology, and the other sciences. Our knowledge of these laws will always be less than complete, but they are always at work just the same.

Now I pointed out in a previous post, and you may even agree, that #2 (Gen 1:1-2:4) is really a pretty good parallel to the scientific history of the universe. So I guess my own belief is somewhere between 2 and 3, which I do not see as incompatible, or a challenge or affront to my Christian religion.

Of course it is possible to explain away the differences between 1 and 2 if there is no limit put on how ridiculous the explanation can be. The fact is that the editors of Genesis realized that the two accounts could not be reconciled, considered both important to Jewish history, and simply presented them serially. I doubt that any Jew, for whom the book was assembled in the first place, would dispute that.

There are many, many ways of proving the antiquity of the universe, of which red shift is certainly one of the most impressive. And there is very little doubt that, at one point in its history, the earth was covered by water. That was, of course, long before man, long before any sort of life except the most primitive. There are certainly many cultures with many flood stories and no doubt many actual floods which have left evidence to support the stories. Saying that they all refer to the same flood is nonsense, and the hilarious fabrications that 'creationists' put forward to explain how a global flood could have occurred so recently are so bizarre and outrageous as to strain the credulity of all but the most gullible.

Please provide the name of a scientist without a fundamentalist Protestant religious agenda (that is, whose mind was not already made up to begin with) who supports the idea of a global flood so recently, or of a young universe. Of the names you mentioned, most are, I believe, leading creationists, completely and utterly dismissed by the worldwide scientific community (and I might add, 'creationism' is, as far as I know, unknown here in Germany. It seems to be purely an American phenomenon.) Michael Behe is, I believe, a Roman Catholic and has conspicuously rejected 'creationism'. He tries, rather, to prove 'intelligent design'. I believe in intelligent design. So do millions of God-fearing scientists. That is quite different from believing garbage that was formulated only to separate the gullible from their money. And by the way, I don't think Behe has proven intelligent design. I leave open the question of whether it is provable.

I certainly agree with you that many scientists are open-minded. ALL of them should be, for that is the essence of scientific study. 'Creationists' are completely closed-minded. There minds are made up and nothing can change them. Scientists do not reject 'creationism' because their minds are closed, but because it makes no sense. It starts with a false premise and then builds an entire pseudoscience thereupon, to form, as one science writer called it, an 'upside-down pyramid' of nonsense, swaying and teetering on its own lack of foundation.

Now, caf, please be honest. Please tell me the religious affiliation of your friend, the 'Ph. D. in biology, a genetics professor in a State University, who believes in Biblical creation'. Please be honest. Does his church leave him any choice in the matter? Or does his church threaten him with eternal damnation if he believes otherwise? I'm not asking you to name the man or the University (though, of course, I'd be delighted if you did so), because I realize you may wish to respect his privacy. But I doubt very much if he harbors such a belief as an agnostic, Jew, Catholic, Unitarian, or 'mainline' Protestant.

No, science is not a religion. Science has none of the characteristics of religion. Nearly all religions are based on faith. Science is based on empirical evidence. When I was in high school, we were taught that the planet Mercury had a 'captured rotation', that is, it always kept the same side toward the sun, and its day and year were the same. (This led to lots of science-fiction stories about the 'twilight zone' of Mercury, which can still be read today). This 'truth' was based on the best scientific evidence of the day, but is now known to be false. Mercury does indeed have a synchronized rotation, but the ration is, I believe, 2:3 rather than 1:1. This is now firmly established and I doubt that there is an astronomer anywhere on earth who still maintains that Mercury keeps the same side toward the sun.

How much more evidence will it take to make 'creationists' give up their unsupportable beliefs? That is the difference between science and religion in a nutshell.

I've really enjoyed this exchange - best wishes to you!