rather than in American public schools. We were taught both Creationsim and science. I’m not even sure where to begin responding to this post. Nothing I’m reading here describes what we were taught, with the possible limited exception of some brief statements by sirshack.

I don’t know any Christian Creationists who believe that God just snapped his fingers and ‘poof’ there was everything. If there are such people, they’re woefully under-educated. The biblical texts tell us that God created the heavens and the earth in ‘7 days.’ There is fierce debate amoung biblical scholars about whether the term ‘day’ is to be interpreted as the 24-hour period we currently know, or whether it was a mis-translation of a similar Aramaic word meaning ‘age’ (a lengthy but vaguely defined period of time) or whether the term is allegory and not meant to be taken literally at all.

If we examine the creation passages in Genesis substituting the term ‘age’ it doesn’t seem unreasonable to blend science and religion into a unified theory.

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth."And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

If we imagine it took him the good long time suggested by an ‘age,’ this doesn’t substantially differ from The Big Bang theory, it merely presumes a supreme being is the author of the original cataclysm. Earth is a gaseous cloud, it’s not yet caught in the sun’s gravitational pull. Indeed the sun itself may at this point be naught more than a gaseous whirl. Day and night and stars in the sky did not begin until the second age.

In the third age, the gaseous cloud seems to be firming up, waters form, and dry land, and grasses and trees and fruits develop on the land.

Much like what we presume to be true of evolution, Genesis tells us God first put animate life in the seas, it was an age later before he brought life to dry land, and fowl to fly the skies.

My instruction was not limited to religion, nor limited to science and perhaps that is the explanation for why so much of science and religion seems intertwined to me.

Examine theoretical physics and it the question of the coexistence of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. They would seem to rule each other out, but in some limited mathematical and scientific ways we have proof that each is true. Thus it is for me in interpreting religion and science. My unifying theories are the result of an energetic intellect and an excellent education.

Ultimately, I was never taught to think of religion and science (or much of anything) in terms of black and white. It’s not an either/or proposition, like most of life, spirituality and thought, there are a lot of grey areas.

I suspect what most rail against or describe as “easy” with regard to Creationism has less to do with Creationism and more to do with a lazy intellect. Most people, I venture a guess, choose between science or religion as a default position. It’s either one or the other. I assert people who just assume what they’re told and ask no questions are intellectually lazy.

It’s just as easy to be intellectually lazy about science as it is about religion. I suspect we’d be bitterly disappointed to find out just how many who’ve received a public education on evolution cannot present more than the most rudimentary (and often mistaken at that) description of it’s theories. Much less could they advance any lists of additional scientific theories on the progress of life on earth. Ditto Creationsim. A disappointing number of alleged Christians and alleged Creationists have pooly formed concepts of what these two things mean. They either accepted what they’ve been told outright and without question, or they’ve allowed their friends and family to tell them what the bible ‘really’ means.

I disapprove of teaching Creationism or any religion-based theories in public, taxpayer funded schools. That said, I think people who do teach Creationism quite honestly could be doing a better of job of it, but then so too could we be doing better by the sciences.