I always thought of religious stories of creation as something much deeper. Think about Jesus in the New Testament if you will. He always spoke in parables. In essence the principle of the issue as far as he was concerned was not that one grasped the story in a literal sense, word for word; rather it was that people understood the main point to which the story was pointing. In that instance, the story really wasn't important at all. What was important was whether or not humans came to terms with the point of the story and gained a deeper internal understanding of their relationship with God. And I think that this is what is happening in stories of creation, particularly in the book of Genesis. I don't think that literal interpretations can be taken seriously, nor do I think that one should attempt it. What I perceive to be the case is that God is trying to relay to us some key facts about our existence. The first one is that we are here because of Divine will. Secondly, that our existence on this planet is imperfect because of errors on the behalf of man. And third, it is only when one attempts to re-connect with the rhythms of God that we can become whole again. Aside from these points in the story of creation, I am not entirely certain that the details of everything else matter, much like they wouldn't in a parable. And, I think when one considers these points, it is hard to find a conflict between science and God because it opens up the possibilities that perhaps things did happen the way that science thinks about many things. What I do know is this: however you refer to God (I like the Great Spirit), he/she/it is more complex, more complicated, more intelligent, and more sophisticated than anything we mere humans could ever imagine. And secular science likes to reason that since there is no proof of a God, there isn't one. My argument to this is that if God does exist, what makes us humans think we are even close to smart enough to grasp a speck of the intelligence needed to know it? God could be staring me in the face as I type this, and I fully expect that I would not have a clue because of how complex of a being would be required to place a universe like ours into function.It kind of reminds me of the scene in the Mothman Prophecies when Richard Gear asks that crazy journalist why, if this Mothman really existed, didn't he just stop and communicate with us like a rational being, whereupon the crazy journalist emphatically replied "You're smarter than a Cockroach.......you ever stop to explain yourself to one?" I wonder if perhaps that statement isn't closer to the truth regarding how God functions in the capacity of our intelligence.
