From http://mb-soft.com/public/duality.html on 27 October 1999

Traditional Christian belief and modern scientific research are fully compatible! Now there's a conversation that seems to invariably end up in a heated argument! Why is that? Well, proponents or each side are generally extremely convinced in the validity of their OWN position. After all, they have probably been encouraged and cultivated to feel absolutely convinced of that. Christian children are constantly taught to center their lives and beliefs on the Bible as being absolutely infallible, and that it was effectively written by the Hand of God as a source for all correct human behavior. On the other side, scientists are constantly taught to be skeptical of EVERYTHING, unless such things can be either proven beyond a reasonable doubt or that observable evidence can be repeated with predictable results.

But, how much knowledge do such proponents usually have about the thoughts and beliefs of their opponents? Often, very little. It could be VERY productive if each side would attempt to consider just why their opponents believe what they do. It usually comes down to whether it is possible that the other guys feel they have good cause for believing what they do or that they are complete idiots!

Often, the latter assumption is made. If neither side of a discussion has any respect for the intellect of the other, no productive conversation can occur. Each side winds up digging in and aggressively spouting dogma, defending their side's point-of-view. No one is persuaded of anything and emotions start to build, and any such discussion rapidly degrades into an argument.

Individuals on each side of the issue have been cultivated into disrespecting their opponents. As a part of this, there is an implication that it would be pointless to even TRY to understand what the opponents believe, because it is so foolish!

Be practical for a moment. There are approximately one billion people on Earth who believe in a Christian God (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox). If your perspective is from a scientific point-of-view, are you prepared to think that they ALL are too stupid to understand basic things?

Even if they don't understand or accept science and genetics and paleontology and evolution, how could that many people be so totally wrong? And for nearly two thousand years!? If your perspective is from a Christian point-of-view, are you willing to believe that ALL of the several million highly educated scientists on our planet are blind to all Truth, and therefore misled into believing totally wrong ideas?

Either of these approaches seems very wrong. They are each based on an assumption that seems eminently obvious. We don't agree. I am totally confident that I am right. Therefore, you are wrong.

If this is correct, (and it has been assumed to be so for the entire period of analytical science), then it is destined that NO resolution could ever be possible. An example is whether evolution and genetic adaptation has occurred, and more specifically, whether mankind descended from lower animals or whether he was created separately and independently by God, as per the Creation story of Genesis 1.

There IS no middle ground here. It's true or it is not. Open-minded people on both sides of the subject look to form bridges, but none are or can ever be possible, because there are a number of issues that appear to be diametrically opposite each other (like the one just mentioned). Hopeless!

This common approach toward the matter has quite a few loose ends, however. There are definitely things that the "other side" believes that can not obviously be dealt with inside of "our" beliefs. The temptation (and popular tendency) is to just ignore such things, and to retreat back to areas of "our" strength. A brief mention of an example of such loose ends on each side: A problem for the Christian side is the amazingly similarity between human DNA and that of all of the other of God's creatures, especially certain apes.

A problem for the scientific side is explaining the remarkably accurate listing of pre-historic events presented in Genesis 1. We'll get back to new perspectives on each of these later. It can be VERY beneficial to explore such things. If such exploration can inspire some respect for the intellect of the opponents, larger perspectives might be possible, that might be able to include the two disparate viewpoints as subsets.

How could it ever be possible to find a resolution for such an intractable matter?

It turns out that there may be a way! It turns out that a vaguely similar situation had existed inside the field of Physics for hundreds of years. And then, along came a guy named Einstein, to recognize a larger perspective on the matter. I believe that God planned all that conflict and resolution to play out, and to be eloquently resolved a hundred years ago, as a learning example for us today, in our struggles with finding any possible compatibility between Christianity and science.

God's Learning Example for Us

At the start of the 17th century, Galileo first used the telescope to explore the heavens. Shortly thereafter, scientists came to disagree about the true nature of light.. Two major approaches were dominant in the controversy. Some believed a "corpuscular" theory which involved light being tiny particles which were transferred from a source (like the Sun) to a destination (like our Earth) and thereby carried the heat and life-giving energy to us. Others believed that light was a wave-phenomenon where the energy was carried by the wave motion and not by actual movement of actual of particles from the source to the destination.

Many of the world's best thinkers got involved in this debate. Fermat, one of the world's foremost thinkers, believed and aggressively supported a version of the corpuscular theory. Rene Descartes, another of world renown, believed and supported a slightly different corpuscular theory. Christian Huygens, who was equally respected and known, believed and supported a wave based explanation. These were the heavy hitters of the day.

The initially peaceful, constructive debate on the true nature of light gradually degraded into a situation where animosity ruled. Those who believed in the corpuscular theory occasionally thought up experiments or evidence to support their position, but more generally spent their efforts attacking the wave theory proponents. These attacks ranged from personal attacks on the intelligence and ability of the individuals, to specific attacks on specific experiments or results, to generalized attacks on the concept. The wave theory proponents acted in kind. I don't think it would have been easy for a scientist of the day to hold his head high. The mud-slinging resembled that in some of the uglier modern political races.

Resolution did NOT occur! For nearly three hundred years, scientists were forced to choose one belief or the other, because they were clearly mutually contradictory. Then, after having chosen one or the other, these new scientists added their voices to those who came before them, and sometimes even intensified the rhetoric. The schism among scientists regarding the true nature of light had gotten to be pure dogma. Very little new thought was developed in the area. Most effort gradually came to be in the attacks on the opposing side.

The situation was clearly not soluble, unless one side happened on some possible way to utterly destroy the opposition, which didn't seem to be in the wings. No middle ground was possible, either. Light was EITHER a non-solid wave phenomenon OR a solid particle (corpuscular) phenomenon. It's either solid or it isn't. Even if it was somehow "semi-solid", it would still be "solid."

The same is true of wave phenomena. Tiny waves are still waves. There was no such meaningful concept as a wave-particle, and all those scientists knew that. In addition, if the correct nature is as a particle, this suggests a certain "graininess" where you couldn't forever keep dividing an amount of light in half. At some point, you would get down to one particle and couldn't divide it further. (If you could, the pieces would no longer be light, but something else.) In contrast, a wave nature implies always being able to divide it in half, forever. You either can or you cannot keep dividing it. Yet, absolutely compelling evidence existed to support each point of view. Numerous experiments seemed to support the wave nature of light. When two beams of light were aimed at each other, they passed through without hitting and bouncing off, just like a wave would. When light passes through a narrow slit, some of it is diffracted, and interference patterns are easily seen. This is also clearly a wave phenomenon. But there were some long-standing scientific findings, such as stellar aberration and the Photoelectric Effect which give equally compelling evidence for a particle nature for light. Each side could find repeatable scientific evidence to support its own position, but couldn't resoundingly demonstrate the errors in the opposing viewpoint.

Does this sound familiar?

Christians and scientists each find extensive basis for their own beliefs, but are frustrated at not being able to conclusively disprove the opposition's view. The Nature of Light Dilemma Resolved

Finally, a man came along who looked at all the evidence and saw a bigger picture and realized that both sides had been right all along. This man, Albert Einstein, didn't get his Nobel Prize for his work in relativity. He actually received it for his explanation of the Photoelectric Effect. His insight in this subject was significant because it resolved the controversy over the nature of light. The actual mathematics of the explanation of the Photoelectric Effect is somewhat trivial, but the conceptualization was exquisite. He had found a resolution, where all of the hundreds of the world's best minds hadn't, over the previous hundreds of years.

All the previous efforts had been to find a major flaw in the opposing approach, to determine the solution by default. Einstein realized that that approach was forever doomed to failure, since BOTH sides had been right all along! Einstein was the first to recognize that the two camps had merely been seeing different aspects of a more complicated phenomenon. Under certain circumstances, light behaves EXACTLY as if it was a wave. But under other circumstances, it behaves EXACTLY as if it was a particle. I don't want to get into the Physics of this here, because it gets real deep, real fast! If you're curious, any college Physics textbook includes a discussion of the subject.

Light did NOT have a simple, single, fixed nature, as had been previously thought. Its complex TRUE nature just APPEARED to us to exhibit characteristics of being a wave or being a particle, depending on what experiment we did. It is now generally accepted that any experiment you could ever do will only show light to seem to be a particle OR a wave, and not both at the same time.

Immediate Consequences of the Concept of Duality

Once Einstein broached this level of understanding about the nature of light, the floodgates of new knowledge opened. Recognition that solid objects were also subject to this dual nature soon led to E=mc2 and the universal equivalence of energy and matter (another example of this Duality). In addition, the entire fields of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity suddenly sprouted.

Suddenly, the growth of knowledge in physics was so fast that scientists found it hard to keep up with the mass of current discoveries. This situation still persists today in nuclear physics and astrophysics. Quarks, gluons, black holes, cosmic strings, and literally hundreds of other new areas of research are now being explored. All because Albert realized that neither side had to be wrong.

Is the point obvious?

God has given us this historic example of a long-term intractable problem. There was clearly no solution possible. Then He helped Einstein recognize a larger truth in it.

Christians and scientists today, (and even Young earth and Old earth Creationists) face a similar situation. Many thousands of the world's best minds have looked for a major flaw in the position of the other side, and have been memorably ineffective in showing errors significant enough to displace proponents of the other side. The premise is that a larger truth exists here, as in the recognition of the dual nature of light. Both the Christians AND the scientists are totally and absolutely correct! This is true, even though there would appear to be elements that are unresolvable. As with the case of light, it is impossible to find the fatal flaw in either argument, because there is none! The two arguments, which often seem so diametrically opposed, are actually mutually consistent explanations of our history and heritage and environment.

Before Einstein, an individual scientist could find comfort in his belief that light was a particle OR in that it was a wave. Each felt that his choice gave an appropriate explanation to fill in a gap in human knowledge. As it turns out, they were all right! Since Einstein, we find comfort in a more comprehensive explanation that clearly explains all of the confusing discrepancies that had befuddled scientists for centuries.

A similar situation exists in the Christianity/science debate (one part of which is known as the Creationism/Evolutionism debate.) Christians have always found comfort in the conviction of their beliefs. Scientists have long found comfort in getting repeatable results from experiments. This partially explains why each group defends its ground so adamantly. Each side has total confidence in their established positions, which is based on compelling evidence, arguments, and beliefs.

This Time, the Subject is More Difficult

The debate on the nature of light had the advantage of being something where repeatable experiments could be performed to confirm aspects of the phenomenon involved. This established firm foundations for the arguments of both sides. It also allowed Einstein to recognize that he could not disprove either side's arguments, and therefore to figure out that there was a larger truth of the matter. The science/religion debate involves many events of a very distant past history, which means that scientists have incomplete information with which to work. This same limitation also affects the Christian argument, both from the antiquity of the information and from the fact that the Bible wasn't really intended as a precisely historical document. Both sides therefore have huge gaps in their knowledge base, which complicates the debate even more than the nature-of-light debate had been.

A Resolution

In order for someone to reasonably accept such a different perspective as this dualistic explanation, it helps that there was a similar precedent for us to learn from. Not just the Physics that was learned, but the idea that we might be able to take a step back, to be able to see a larger, more comprehensive understanding of things.

Science

For scientists, the subject described above regarding the true nature of light, is an excellent example which is absolutely accepted by all scientists today. Still, the necessary consequences of the fact that all matter and energy can switch from one to the other (under rather specific circumstances) can be a little unsettling. In this past century, science has learned that solid objects are mostly empty space with occasional atoms, that seem to act like solid little balls, right? Well, no. Those atoms are actually also mostly empty space with a nucleus in the middle and electrons flying all around it, that FINALLY are solid little balls, right? Well, no! A consequence of this new understanding of the nature of light and matter is that all of these protons, neutrons, and electrons can sometimes seem to act as waves and therefore pass directly through each other! I remember even calculating (in college) just how often the orbiting electrons pass directly through the (solid!??) nucleus of an atom.

A huge number of other equally counter-intuitive consequences have resulted from the recognition of the dual nature of energy and matter. Therefore, it seems reasonable to me that a scientist, who understands and accepts the sophisticated duality of matter/energy, should be willing to consider a dual understanding of Creation/Evolution.

Christianity

Christians, from the very start, have had an equally difficult concept to deal with. God is at once, one and three. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are usually conceptualized as individual entities, but they're actually one and the same. Truly understanding how He can be one and three at the same time is somewhat difficult. Discussions and explanations of the Trinity often revert to expressions of personal opinions, with rather little supportive evidence for any specific point-of-view. The point here is that this is similar to recognizing how Biblical Creation and Scientific History can be seen as different while they actually are one and the same. Therefore, it seems reasonable to me that a Christian, who understands and accepts the sophistication of the Trinity, should be willing to consider a dual understanding of Creation/Evolution.

Many modern Christians must not have much belief in the astounding and limitless capabilities and foresight of the Lord. Otherwise, they would see that there is actually no reason to emphasize contradiction between Biblical creationism and scientific theories and conclusions. As a matter of fact, God gave us the story of Genesis, which effectively strongly supports (and even proves!) the compatibility between Christianity and science.

He Considered the Christian perspective

The Lord clearly DID create the world and the universe. From the Christian point-of-view, He actually did all this in six days! And He caused descriptions of all the events to get to Moses and thence into the Bible, some thousands of years ago. And He realized all along that He needed to provide for the natural curiosity of His humankind.

With incredible foresight, He arranged for fossils to be available to be found in many rocks throughout the world, even though no one would even know what a fossil even WAS for thousands of years! He arranged sedimentary rock layers and magnetic "striping" and radioactive dating information that suggest enormous time intervals. He arranged for the DNA double helix and evidence of similarities between the DNA of His humans and the DNA He put in other living things.

He even left innumerable other intriguing clues (and some red herrings) for the edification of the curious scientific humans that would come many centuries later, that could support a scientifically self-consistent evolutionary explanation for all of our questions about the past and the Universe and ourselves.

Why would He go to the trouble to do all this?

With His infinite foresight, He knew that thousands of years later, that His humans would build the capabilities of learning and researching every facet of existence, and would amass information at an impressive rate in all fields of curiosity. He knew that their curiosity would eventually extend to exploring their own past and their environment's past. If He did not provide for that, their curiosity would be frustrated by coming upon logically incompatible information. Our Loving God would never do that to us!

By impressively planning ahead, He placed fossils and numerous other clues so that when their curiosity and capabilities were progressed enough, they could find evidence that would comfort them in putting together a jigsaw puzzle of their past. He placed stars and galaxies and super-clusters throughout the universe in such a way that His humans would eventually be able to recognize patterns which they would interpret as fitting in with their understanding of an extremely large, extremely old universe. He effectively allowed future men to believe EITHER a story that involved one really impressive week or a story that apparently required phenomenally long periods of time, whichever gave each of them the most comfort!

Clearly He also placed clues in even more inaccessible spots on and in the Earth and elsewhere in the Universe, that we may not find for thousands of years yet. We current mortals are not necessarily the final generations. With His unlimited knowledge of our curiosity and inventiveness, it seems obvious that many future discoveries await us that even Sherlock Holmes would have difficulty deducing. How wonderful that He has provided for our entertainment and elucidation. He arranged for us to keep from getting bored. And for us to achieve a level of understanding of the universe.

The important aspect of this is that He has very carefully arranged His Book and His Universe to be compatible with EITHER story. There are actually NO direct contradictions between the two stories, no matter what advocates of either side tell you.

The vicious attacks between Christian leaders and scientific spokespeople have become so common and expectable, that people on both sides have closed their minds to the ideas of ever finding compatibility with people of the other side. If they each would just be open-minded enough to accept and digest the knowledge of BOTH sides, they would all have TWICE as much background information to work with and should be able then to achieve even better understandings of the complexities of this life the Lord has given us.

An analogy

Think of being in some desolate mountain locale. With great difficulty, you climb up to discover a lone building. The way you happened to climb up only enables you to approach a single wall of the building, and therefore only be able to look into the single small window on that wall. As you look in, you see a basically empty room with a single round, brown, apparently old, wooden object in the center of the room.

While you are pondering what you see, you hear the voice of another person who has climbed up a different path, and who came up to have access to the adjacent wall to the one you are alongside. That person is now looking in, through the single small window that is present on that wall. That voice begins commenting on the object in the center of the room. Comments about the beauty and reflectiveness of the shiny new metal surface really confuse you. The rectangular shape is so wonderful! The greenish color of the reflection of light off the object is beautiful! What is going on here? Is the person speaking a raving lunatic? Are they blind? Or stupid? Don't you want to get around the corner to maybe knock some sense into their head? Fortunately for him, there is no easy path around the corner, and it would require you to climb all the way down and then back up on the other path to get there. What is the result of this? You are almost certain to disrespect the other person, and therefore you virtually ignore any evidence he claims to be giving you. It also turns out that if you express what you see to the unseen companion, an equally disrespectful attitude is likely to develop in him about you. What neither of you know is that the object that you both are looking at in the room (and which neither of you has actual access to) is actually an object shaped like a 55 gallon oil drum, laying on its side, with the top (round) surface facing you. The other person is looking at the side, which appears to be rectangular. The materials and textures of the drum's side and top are different, which explains the other disparate findings of the two of you.

My point here is that, if the two of you are so narrow-minded as to only believe what your own eyes see, neither of you will learn much and neither of you will ever understand the object much better. However, if the two of you would be willing to give some credit to each other, such that you would each have twice as much information to build from, eventually one or the other of you (maybe named Einstein??) might eventually realize that a more complete explanation of what you both saw might be that it was a cylinder, lying on its side, with the end facing you. One this concept was acceptable, the other details could quickly be analyzed to develop a decently complete idea of just what the object actually seemed to be. Will the resultant conclusions be absolutely correct?

Probably not, but they will certainly be a LOT more correct and complete than would otherwise have been possible. For me personally, this premise enables me to BOTH believe in a six day Creation AND in a scientifically established sequence that includes evolutionary principles. Just not both at the same time!

Genesis as Proof of the Compatibility of Science and Christianity

Over 3,000 years ago, God presented men with the story of Genesis. He knew that man would always have great curiosity about his environment and history. Since this story was presented to very primitive humans, who were almost universally illiterate, He knew that the story should be brief and clear. He also wanted to emphasize to those humans just how incredibly powerful He was, so He presented the entire Creation story as having taken just six days. Even if He wanted to describe the steps as having taken millions or billions of years (which might have made it seem like He was not so spectacularly powerful), the peoples of the time would not have been able to comprehend such time intervals. Even now, when we casually discuss thousands of years of history, or even greater intervals, it is very difficult for us to actually comprehend any time period greater than a human lifetime of 70 years or so.

God also knew that the inquisitive and creative and persistent nature of man would some day enable mankind to more carefully and thoroughly investigate human environments and history. With remarkable thoughtfulness, He arranged to provide fossil records, DNA similarities of all living things, and many other artifacts. Scientists that would come to exist thousands of years in the future would be able to find appropriate evidence to be able to intellectually create logical sequences and patterns. They would eventually conclude that the human environment would seem absolutely scientifically self-consistent, and that a logical history of the past would also be (some day) absolutely logically self-consistent.

Since He has provided us with a duality of understandings of our Universe, each of which is absolutely internally self-consistent, we will NEVER have any way of proving one or the other wrong. We WILL always find that each perspective can be confidently supported. He arranged for Creation believers to conclude that He "planted" fossil evidence and even "aged" those artifacts so that they would give reassurance to the scientists who would some day find them, even though He actually whipped all of it up in just six days. He arranged for those people whose logic made them resist believing such a rapid Creation process, to eventually develop logic and science and to therefore be capable of developing a Scientific explanation of everything. This just means that the "view" through the two different windows of the analogy above, just seem to distort the rate of the passage of time. The critical part is that the SEQUENCE of the events described be in the same order. Then, even if the time scale appears very different, or even non-linear, the two perspectives can still be compatible.

This allowed Him to give a brief, simple story of Creation to the primitive people of ancient times, while also allowing human curiosity to find consistency in logic in everything, which would eventually include "fleshing out" the brief Genesis story with a more complete story. It is certainly intentional that the time scale that actually occurred while the universe was created, was left vague. The premise of this Duality concept implies that NEITHER view has preference or precedence over the other. We will therefore NEVER know if He actually took six days, or 15 billion years, or even some other interval of time, to create the Universe!

As mentioned above, the critical matter is that the SEQUENCE of events be the same. The following presentation of Genesis 1, with comments regarding the present scientific thoughts regarding the times of those events, should make the case for this. There IS the one item that does NOT match up (the appearance of birds), but the matching of the sequences is otherwise quite striking. A mathematical statistical analysis of the comparison of the two sequences implies that there is less than one chance in a million that Genesis 1 could have been written with the sequence it has, without the knowledge of the correct scientific sequence. Since science has only been able to determine the times of these events within the past few decades, the question arises to scientists:
"How can you explain the writing of Genesis 1 over 3,000 years ago?" No one (except God) knew the correct sequence!

Sequence Analysis of Genesis 1 Gen. 1:1 - In the beginning God created heaven and earth An introductory statement, which precedes the rest of Genesis 1. This might also be a vague reference to a Big Bang event to begin the existence of the Universe, when scientists will be eventually capable of comprehending the possibility of such things. Modern science currently believes that such a Big Bang event occurred, and various evidence suggests that this event took place about 15 billion years ago. (Notice that this Duality approach also allows a compatibility of Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists.)

Gen. 1:2 This is a reference to the fact that there was no form or light or anything else. Most Big Bang theories suggest that there was a brief period that occurred before matter could exist.

Gen. 1:3 - God said 'Let there be light', and there was light. This seems like a reference to the creation of the multitude of stars in the Universe. Modern science would place this as beginning from a few million years after the Big Bang essentially through the present. Many stars (and therefore many sources of subdued light) existed by 6 billion years ago. Logically, this would have seemed a peculiar first item to create, if you think about it. Ancient people would probably expected ground or people to have been created first, then the other stuff. In ancient times, the sequence of Genesis events must have seemed very strange. Why plants before animals? Why water before plants? Why fishes before land creatures?

Gen. 1:4 - . . . and God separated the light from the darkness. This probably refers to the creation of the Sun which establishes a clear distinction between light and darkness. Before the Sun came into existence, a faint level of starlight came from every direction. Modern scientists believe that this event happened about 5 billion years ago.

Gen. 1:6-8 This is somewhat hard to fully understand, but possibly describing the creation of the Earth.

Gen. 1:9 - . . . and let dry land appear. This clearly indicates that the Earth now existed. Modern science believes this occurred about 4.65 billion years ago.

Gen. 1:10 - and the waters that were gathered together he called seas. Creation of the oceans and seas are completed here. Modern science believes that most of the moisture came out of innumerable volcanoes, which condensed as rain, to fall and eventually fill the seas. Science believes this happened about 3-4 billion years ago.

Gen. 1:11 - Let the Earth put forth vegetation Plant life was created first, to feed the later animal creatures. Scientists have found evidence of fossils of very simple and primitive plants to be the oldest of all fossils found, so that they know that plants came before the later animal creatures. Modern science also believes that there was very little free oxygen in the atmosphere at that time. These plants used the plentiful carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as an important source material for their photosynthesis, and they gave off oxygen as a waste or byproduct. This would later be of crucial importance for all the animals that needed the oxygen in the atmosphere to survive. Scientific dating of fossils of these plants suggests that they were prominent on land by about 400 million years ago, after having existed as water borne plants well before that.

Gen. 1:11 - and fruit trees bearing fruit The larger, more complex seed-bearing trees are created next. Modern science thinks that this began about 350 million years ago. Enough fossil evidence of these and all following plants and animals exists, such that sequences of subtle changes have been found by scientists that suggest a logical progression of how all these living things would seem to have come about. A fairly continuous fossil record exists for some species of plants, which suggests that later plants could have "evolved" from earlier plants adapting to new conditions. This set of scientific understandings allows scientists to be comfortable with an evolutionary explanation for these events that they can comprehend in a logical way and that they are comfortable with.

Gen. 1:14-18 - . . . to separate day from night, etc. These clearly refer to the Sun and Moon. But the earlier reference regarding the Sun's existence (Gen. 1:4) make it clear that these Scriptures are not referring to the original existence of the Sun and Moon. A possible scientific explanation is that, before the oceans and polar ice caps held so much of the Earth's water, much more of that moisture might have been in the atmosphere, as clouds. Enormous amount of earlier volcanic activity would also have kept large amounts of volcanic dust in the atmosphere. Those things being true, it might have been that the atmosphere was forever cloudy. Day and night would be recognizably different, but actually being able to see the Sun or Moon from the Earth would have been impossible. This Scripture might be referring to the cloudiness becoming less, so that the Sun and Moon could be seen from the Earth. Gen. 1:20 - And Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures. Fish became numerous in the seas during the Devonian period (390-340 million years ago). Modern science uses a large amounts of fossil evidence and radioactive dating information to establish this.

Gen. 1:20 - . . . and let birds fly above the earth Birds are also preserved in fossil records. Modern science believes that birds seem to have developed and evolved from the reptiles that crawled out of the oceans. Note: at present, science believes that birds came AFTER some of the creeping land creatures mentioned in 1:24. This represents the only apparent discrepancy between the sequence of these events as presented in the story of Genesis and the (incomplete) information and knowledge so far amassed by modern science. Modern science finds that the multitudes of birds only came about roughly 65 million years ago, with the oldest known bird fossils are from about 120 million years ago. Archeopteryx, a sort of flying reptile (bird?) existed about 150 million years ago, and a fairly recently discovered Protoavis may have existed as long as 225 million years ago. That's still more than 100 million years later than the Genesis story would imply.

Gen. 1:24 - Let the Earth bring forth living creatures (animals) Science says that the crawling and slithering creatures arose as some types of fish adapted to life away from the waters. First, small amphibians crawled out of the water, but they never became dominant species. Later, reptiles developed and multiplied, so much so that the Mesozoic period of history (230-65 million years ago) is also known as the Age of Reptiles (of which dinosaurs were a part).

Gen. 1:24 - . . . cattle, etc. After a great extinction of reptiles (and dinosaurs) about 65 million years ago, there was no longer a dominant type of creature on the Earth. This enabled the development of many varieties of (warm-blooded) mammals, beginning about 65 million years ago.

Gen. 1:26 - Let us make man in our image Modern science says that this happened within the last 2-3 million years. Eventually, societies developed, man developed language, tools, weapons and logic, and has come to dominate over all the earth and its creatures. Since humans have now gotten to a point of being able to scientifically research their heritage, they find adequate but subtle evidence that exists that supports the theory that they evolved from lesser creatures. This assuages their intellectual curiosity. No absolute proof will EVER be available that that was actually the case (to the exclusion of Biblical Creation), but extremely convincing evidence exists to support the scientific point-of-view. There will NEVER be any way of determining whether the Lord did this all in 6 days and thoughtfully pre-planned for future men's curiosity; or whether He used billions of their years to do it and necessarily had to describe it in terms of days because of the primitive nature of the intellect of the Bible's initial readers. Also, the early readers didn't comprehend the full scale of the Earth and Sun and Universe. They still thought the Earth was flat!

God has intentionally provided a way of forever keeping it hidden just which time scale actually was involved and which was for assisting limited human comprehension. He made for a Duality of perception, so that humans would be free to accept EITHER understanding, since either is totally internally self-consistent. He created some big things but needed to tailor the possible understandings of those things to terms that both ancient and modern humans could comprehend.

His Universe would appear totally self-consistent to both the Christian believer of the Bible and the scientist, who only wants to believe in things he can measure and analyze. This does NOT mean that mankind is ACTUALLY related to other of God's creatures. The Duality of understandings just allows each individual the choice of believing whichever viewpoint he comes to be most comfortable with. It is actually just more evidence of just how marvelous our Lord is, to provide this option for us. This story is still breaking. Over the next five years or so, science may confirm a very recent and unexpected amazing finding. Human DNA is known to contain about 200 million individual bits of information which are passed along from parent to child. Current scientific research is attempting to "map" the functions of each. It is called "the Human Genome Project." It has unexpectedly been discovered that a relatively small proportion is actually used in passing along the necessary genetic information for creating the new child. At least half (100 million) seem to be absolutely unnecessary.

Some preliminary research has suggested that these "introns" seem to be similar to the DNA found in bacteria and amoebae and trees! One (of many) scientific working theory is that each organism forever maintains the DNA (genetic) code and capability of its predecessor species (in evolutionary development) and just adds on to the DNA string for newly added adaptations or improvements.

If this turns out to be accurate, then this current Duality presentation may be the only way of maintaining credibility of both Genesis/Creationism and Paleontology/Evolutionism. Even if this research theory turns out to be correct, it STILL doesn't mean that mankind is related to any other creature; it just means that the Lord arranged another detail of our environment to enable us to come to that conclusion for the sake of scientific consistency. We already know that He made our blood and DNA very, very similar to that of some apes; He left intriguing ancient skeletons that seem to hint at mutual origins. But He left all this totally consistent scientific evidence for the benefit of our intellectual curiosity!

An Additional Thought

If, several thousand years ago, a group of people tried to fake a Bible, and therefore Genesis 1, they would have had that same dozen or so events to chain together into a believable story for Genesis. They would have wanted to include references to the creation of earth (land), water, people, the Sun, large animals, small animals, fishes, birds, plants, the Moon, the stars.

If they did actually do this, they did a pretty stupid job of faking it, because the story line really wouldn't be very believable to people of the time. Why light before dry ground? Why plants before animals? Why everything before man (who would need to witness it all to be able to be aware of it)? Why ocean animals first?

A plausible fake story wouldn't have had such a sequence. An intelligent faker would have wound quite a different story from those Biblical events. But the Bible (including Genesis 1) was written approximately as it is understood today.

And only in the past two hundred years has science started to be capable of recognizing the (apparently) correct scientific sequence of those events. And they have turned out to be REMARKABLY similar. One can apply the scientific approach of statistics to the two sequences. The results confirm that from a scientific statistical point of view, the likelihood that the Bible could have been faked is less than one in a million. That's a statistically valid proof that the Bible MUST be what it claims to be, inspired by God himself! The people of the day didn't have anywhere near enough information available to them to get the sequence of Genesis events in the correct order unless the Lord was giving guidance! The author feels that Duality is a compelling resolution to the age old animosity between Christians and scientists. In addition, the remarkable sequence of events described in Genesis seems to present strong scientific, statistical proof of God's existence, and therefore of the accuracy and truth of the Bible. Hopefully, as a result of this, some scientists who have had closed minds regarding Christianity, will see this as evidence that they should look into Christianity as it could apply in their own lives.

First Fully Developed Feb 1989, First Published on Web: Jul 8, 1997, Revised since E-mail to: Duality@mb-soft.com C Johnson, BA Physics, Univ of Chicago P.O. Box 301 Kingsbury, IN 46345