Reconcilation

John Zimmer (jzimmer@therad.rpslmc.edu)
Wed, 9 Oct 96 16:07:52 CDT

I enjoyed the latest discussion between Niel Haave and
Steven Schimmrich, which sort of left off with the idea that
it's a challenge to reconcile our understanding of a natural universe
with the existence of a supernatural God.

I think that a good place to start is to "reimage" the
first chapter of Genesis by asking the childish question;
"If the first chapter of Genesis resembled the evolutionary record (ER)
then how would they match?" (Of course, the question assumes
the answer, but there's no better way to phrase it.)
Now the challenge is to find novel ways to compare the
first chapter with the evolutionary record.

Perhaps the most obious way to start is to look at what the first
chapter of Genesis and the evolutionary record have in common.
They both depict a sequence of events. Each 'event' is denoted
by a special term (day for Genesis, epoch or era for ER). They both
locate the origin of man within the context of the sequence of events.

The obvious start points to a "day" to "epoche" comparison. What
six epochs occur in a sequence and sort of match the processes that
are described for each day in Genesis?

J. Raymond Zimmer