[Nathans_Dad]

Livi, you have essentially come upon my personal theory for the origin of life. If you look at things from God's perspective (or at least try to) things actually start to make sense. Here goes:

I see the Genesis story as God's attempt to explain his creation to man in a way that we can understand. Who says how long a "day" is to God? Why does a day have to be 24 hours? I would think that a day to God could be any amount of time he desired. Therefore there is plenty of time for dinosaurs to emerge and die off, humans to emerge, etc.

I do not subscribe to the idea that God made man and all the animals in 48 hours. I think evolution IS God's method of creation. The Bible says God created man in his own image...it does not say HOW he created man.

Even though Steven Hawking is staunchly anti-God, I find some striking resemblances between his theories on how the universe began and God. For example, Hawking talks about the time before the big bang. Actually time didn't apparently exist at that point so call it whatever you want. He talks about all the matter in the universe being packed into a small area, he calls it a "singularity". Hrm...a singularity which existed outside of time and space as we know it. A singularity which exists outside of the bounds of physics as we know it. A singularity from which the entire universe arose. To me, that sounds an awful lot like God...