Television and Movies Monday - How the Earth Was Made

I think I'm drawn to contriversal things.  That might sound bad.  I am very careful about what I actually watch or study.  If it seems too far out there then I just don't go there.  For example, I like to learn about the Middle East and Islam because some people love it and some people hate it. 

This weekend, Derek and I watched the History Channel's, "How the Earth Was Made."  Doesn't sound to contriversal, but for many relgious viewers, it is.  I was interested in how the creation story would be presented.  And I'm always interested in how the scriptural account of how the Earth was made and the scientific account go together. 

Why some conservative Christians heatedly protest the scientific version of Earth's creation is a little confusing to me, I admit.  I understand they are upset with science taking God out of the picture.  No one should do that in any arena.  But what confuses me is why God couldn't have made the Earth scientifically? 

I was always taught to believe that there are certain laws of the universe that must be followed.  I'm not saying that someone else made the rules for God to follow, but maybe God made the rules for how the Earth and Universe would run and then had to follow them.  It's just like in a classroom.  The teacher makes the rules.  For example, I made the rule in my English class that Korean was not allowed.  Do you think that the students let me get away with saying even one badly mispronounced word?  Of course not!  It wasn't right for me to make a rule and then not follow it.

So who's to say that God didn't create the world in the way the scriptures AND science explains it?  Seems impossible, doesn't it?  Not so impossible in my mind.  People are imperfect.  I think we all know that.  Since people are imperfect, to me that means that our science and research (studied and theorized by people) is also imperfect.  Not everything lines up between scripture and science.  But that's not because one is completely right and the other is completely wrong.  Maybe we're missing some key evidence of how our planet--and the whole universe for that matter--was made.  Humans don't know everything.

Also, the wording of the scriptures can be a little vague at times.  The Bible uses days to measure the time needed for each step in the creation process.  Personally, I don't believe that the entire Earth was created in just 6 days.  But I do believe that God's time is different.  Maybe it was one day for him, but one day for him could be millions of years for us!  Who knows, I sure don't.  Another thing to consider is translation errors.  No matter how perfectly you would try to translate a document, it's hard!  Mistakes will be made, and mistakes were made--intentionally and unintentionally.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that I am religious and scientific all at the same time (notice I listed religious first).  And that we don't know all the answers, yet.  Someday, maybe.  And that the History Channel special was good.  A little off on the humans-came-from-monkeys part (that's one thing that I just can't accept.  Humans were made humans.  End of story.  We're really missing some key information if we think that humans came from monkeys!), but overall, good.  I'd recommend it to other docu-junkies out there!