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Interesting story. I personally know many scientists who "compartmentalize" religion and science separately in their minds when there is a conflict. Whatever way this fellow manages to do it, more power to him. I just hope that he'll keep it up after he gets tenure... unlike some I've read about.

Agreed, fascinating. What if he finds his own research one day totally refutes the objective truth of his beliefs, though? This has the makings of a great novel or play.

The most satisfying answer to this dilemma, in my opinion, is to see the six-day accoount in Genesis 1 as a grid on which the spiritual truths, appropriate for the time and purpose of the genre, were written. It is sometimes called the framework hypothesis; in that the six days of the Jewish Sabbatical week formed a logical presentational "framework" upon which to hang the truth that the living God had both engineered and carried out the entire process of universal creation. From our current perspective that could have taken millions, billions of years.

Along with this framework MO comes the proposition that all steps of creation were effected by the intervention of divine creative potency, not by random, purposeless caprices of matter and energy and the laws of physics - altho these were certainly part of the process. And - that man was a special creaion of God, and not a mere twist of cosmic luck, Genesis 2 being the beginning of actual historical narative, and hominids and other proto-humanforms being simply the product of simian micro-evolution. The real kicker for evolutionists, no matter now many fossils and tools they find, will be the first self-replicatable cell - which raises thorny questions about design as well as beginnings.

There ARE some difficult wrinkles in the total-evolution model, acknowledged by many evolutionary scientists; even some that have to do with age. But the fossil record is there and it appears that long periods were almost certainly imvolved. Time is no problem with God, being eternal and outside time in His being.

The crucial issue is the veracity of the Scriptures, which do not rest entirely upon Genesis interpretations. That veracity is not at all damaged if one sees the six-day model as a didactic tool, and not a literistic mandate.

I am far from being a theological liberal, and there are many conservatives in the Evangelical-Reformed camp who see it this way. I have done so for many years. See http://www.asa3.org/gray/framework/frameworkOPC-SC.html for a Reformed church position.

But if, in the course of doing sound science, someone produces findings that DO strongly suggest the validity of non-directed evolution, wouldn't that be just as high a hurdle as the young earth/old cosmos dilemma? Could someone truly be a thinking whole humkan being if he or she had to "bracket" off such contradictions?

Well, we have humans who can kill without mercy and turn around to go worship a "god of peace" without noticing a contradiction. The human mind can get twisted into all sorts of strange shapes when the motivation is there...

Freddy, there are enough uncertainties, doubts, theoretical flip-flops in BOTH the scientific and theological communities. It's interesting that atheistic scientists don't seem to have a problem viewing a HIGHLY complex and finely tuned cosmos with critters that can think objectively and critically, peer through miraculous lenses at the ends of the universe, etc. and still not acknowledge that it was anything more than random matter and energy: coalescing, cooling and mixing until out comes a Bach cantata or a Mona Lisa. Just goes to show you that sinful man will propose ANYTHING to get himself off the responsibility hook before his holy and righteous Creator.

Freddy, even evolutionists are having to come up with more and more astounding and intricate THEOries as to how even the most elementary of organisms could have "developed" their own flagella or wings or eyes (see Nov. 2006 Nat. Geog. Mag.). Although I do not accept the authors' totally naturalistic conclusions, it simply begs the question the more ultra-complex, mind-boggling and magnificent it all becomes. How divine!

Trying to credit all this stupendous variety, beauty and functionality to "smart matter," "brilliant physics" and "inventive energy" will at some point become utterly exhausted and absurd. I don't think it will be long now. I submit that "undirected" will become a meaningless conundrum. Man will understand it, I suppose, at the Omega point of scientific-theological convergence. Until then, we all had better maintain a humble and OPEN attitude.

Of course, I resolutely maintain my belief in divine agency in it all, and you have your firm beliefs; however, it is certain that NONE of us comprehend the Magnum Mysterium of universal being: its origin and its processes. It's just good to be able to thank, worship and walk with the thrice-holy Creator in the mean time. I may not comprehend all His how’s, but I fully understand that He did. And though some aspects of the Word are less transparent than others, all I need to know concerning how to be redeemed, to live righteously and love fully is manifestly clear. The great challenge of life is to live and love up to that standard.

It seems quite likely the real creator of the Mona Lisa painting, Leonardo himself (a much more "brilliant" physicist, inventor and general thinker than you or I), not the invented or designed Dan Brownie version, held a rather non-theistic view; although he was careful to couch his thoughts in acceptably vague language, thus avoiding heresy charges and the stake.

The clear reason scientists don't jump to acknowledge in their science the idea of an "creator entity", is that science demands we seek explanations that do not rely on supernatural causes. Otherwise, it isn't science, it's magic. Now, if there were such an entity, it might be able to find a fitting explanation for its involvement in the universe, but those explanations would not, by definition, be scientific. Fine. You should be happy with that; why insist on taking hostage and emasculating the scientific method and the apparatus of scientific research? Theology should be enough for a theist, shouldn't it?

The human eye, that favorite recourse of ID propagandists, is actually rather poorly "designed": the color receptors would work much better in front of the retina, not behind it. And the whole positioning of the blind spot thanks to the bundles of ganglia makes no sense if argued as planned. Functionality in both cases is hardly optimal.

And quantum mechanics/physics does, indeed, sound and seem absurd...but it proves out every time it has been tested. Just because the average Joe (including me) struggles mightily and usually fruitlessly (there's your Biblical metaphor for ya) to grasp them, doesn't invalidate the theories. I am all for open, but are you proposing opening science to paranormal explanations? That's what got us alchemists and astrologers.

Whom, by the way, Leonardo suggested should be castrated.

Misspoke: the membrane that is behind the retina is the one that would work better in front of the receptors. See, I am not much of a biologist, either. But, at least, in the case of the eye, we know a lot more today than Leonardo, who made drawings of second and third inner eye-globes within the brain...wild speculation. In some ways prophetic, as we found the lobes and areas of the brain responsible with those lense and other tools developed by science (unless you'd venture God left them for man to use...à la Allah leaving the qallam for Muhammed and his predecessors).

Finally, the entire question so often begged, as usual, is precisely what is "understanding". Since we probably have utterly different concepts of what that word denotes and contains through its associations, I doubt I could ever bridge your idiosyncratic/religionist use of that term, nor you mine.