Ah, where to begin? ?Science is provable and disprovable,? - at least that's the plan. Often though what is stated as science is philosophy or assertion rather than testable hypotheses or verifiable conclusions. Many "scientists" have thought, acted, and been treated as priests of a modern religion. Is "creationism" provable? No, not in terms of repeatability or laboratory testability. Neither is macro-evolution nor uniformitarianism or anything related to origins of the material cosmos or life. To assert that "creationism" is neither provable nor disprovable begs the point. No explanation of origins is provable or disprovable in scientific terms, including the widely believed notion of trillions (or more) of propitious accidents over billions of years. I will assert just as confidently with regard to a non-theistic origin of life that the premise has "no evidence whatsoever and ignores all evidence to the contrary." The Biblical creation model is viable, supportable, reasonable and consistent. Believing in creation does not require abandoning reason or even compromising it. Only an innate prejudice (quite unprovable) against supernatural creation and the evidence for and in the Bible support the assertion that ?creationism? is not reasonable. The conclusion that the cosmos had an abrupt supernatural origin is reasonable, and consistent with the evidence, even apart from the Biblical frame of reference.

If a 'scientist' says or writes something 'silly', and you are correct - this frequently happens, (s)he is subject to peer review by the scientific community. 'Creationism' has been thoroughly reviewed, examined, sliced, diced, chewed up, and spit out by legitimate biologists, geologists, astronomers, and other scientists and found to be nonsense. If it were not, there would be, somewhere on this planet, at least a small number of scientists that concur with the 'creationist' tenets in the absence of any religious agenda whatever. As far as I know, no such persons exist.

You are hard on "creationist" researchers and authors, but surely haven't read many of them. Nor is your naively stated view of peer review and processes and ?legitimacy? supportable. The humanistic utopian optimism of the 19th century provided the environment for Darwinian uniformitarianism, and it was and still is embraced by people who prefer the presumption of a closed system with no God interfering. While creationism has certainly been rejected and attacked by what are now mainstream educators, and much of the scientific media, including popular media, it has by no means been disproven or shown to be ?nonsense.? It is remarkable that the most ardent opponents of creationism tend to be in biology, which has at this time no viable explanation for a naturalistic origin of life, nor any kind of demonstrations for naturalistic differentiation of kinds, while the larger number of scientists who do accept creation tend to be in physics and fields of mathematics. It has been said that biology professors are the last people on earth who still believe in a free lunch, but that is another story. Meanwhile, I actually know a PhD in biology, a genetics professor in a state university, who believes in Biblical creation. Beyond credulity? Not at all. Scientists who believe in creation are in a minority position, do have a minority voice, but are neither absent nor fools. Even scientists that do not in any way ?concur with the ?creationist? tenets?? recognize that there are problems and ambiguities in the now traditional philosophy of uniformitarian materialistic science, and see uncomfortable indications that the answer of an ancient closed system not certain . Read astronomer Robert Jastrow?s ?God and the Astronomers? or physicist Paul Davies ?God and The New Physics? or biochemist Michael Behe?s ?Darwin?s Black Box? or even Berkley law professor Phillip Johnson?s ?Darwin on Trial.? The list of competent, educated, recognized scientists and researchers who are at least troubled about the philosophic status quo in uniformitarian thinking, and open minded enough to raise pertinent questions, is in fact quite long. Intelligent, well educated, thoughtful people see that there are problems with the anti-creation presumption, and do not merely dismiss the idea of special creation as ?nonsense.? There certainly are rabid spokespersons for the mainstream ?scientific? beliefs on origins, but they by no means represent all scientists, nor even the best of scientists. Meanwhile, many authors of apologetic resources for the creation model are themselves educated and accomplished scientists with careers in their chosen fields. Most of them were educated in the traditional philosophies of scientific materialism in public universities, and many of them formerly accepted those concepts as legitimate. Consider ?What Is Creation Science?? by Henry Morris and Gary Parker, even if you only read the forward and note the author.

I do not doubt that evidence can be found for a catastrophic flood in that part of the world at about that time in history. Such floods still occur from time to time. That is quite different than a GLOBAL flood only a few thousand years ago, for which there's no evidence whatever.

What?s funny about the flood traditions that support a catastrophic flood several generations before Abraham is that they are by no means unique to the area of the fertile crescent, but are in fact a part of the mythos of virtually every ancient human civilization on the planet, including those in the Americas. There is certainly evidence for a global flood, both in the traditions of men and in the worldwide deposits of sedimentary rocks and fossils. Population statistics and the historic rise of civilizations also provide evidence for a global catastrophic flood several millennia ago. The question is not whether the evidence exists, the question is how the evidence is to be interpreted, on the basis of what presuppositions. There is no dispute that every land mass on the planet has been completely inundated with water, the dispute is in the interpretation of the evidence as to time and means.

Scientists continue to seek new evidence for the age of the universe. The fact that it is VERY ancient is not in doubt. Based on current knowledge, (and, of course, subject to change), the best estimate is 15 billion years, more or less. Some (not all) preliminary findings from the new space telescopes seem to suggest an older universe, perhaps 40-50 billion years or more, but that will require much more research to verify. In any case, science marches on while superstition and ignorance remain the same always.

The basis for the supposing the universe to be 15-20 billion years old has been (aside from wishful thinking) the observed red shift of stars, apparently moving away from us and farther apart. There is nothing on planet earth itself that provides that sort of calendar, and there is plenty on planet earth and in her immediate environs to raise questions about the asserted vast antiquity of the earth (4.5 billion years, they say) and the cosmos. The earth was first guessed to be tremendously old as a means of explaining how very slow processes could produce the vast complexity of life that seems to be designed. If there is a designer, that explanation is not only unnecessary but absurd. And there is no current well supported or widely accepted explanation for a naturalistic origin of life over any time span whatsoever. If the universe is a product of creation, there may be many explanations for the appearance of age in the starry host, not least of which is simply that when God made the stars he set them in the expanse of the sky (Genesis 1:16-17), meaning that the God who had the power to create them certainly had the power to set their light in the sky of the earth. That would not of course be scientifically provable, but it is not nonsense, nor is it superstition or ignorance. It is a premise based on faith, consistent with evidence. The age of the universe is of necessity beyond the scope of our verification. We cannot test it, we cannot confirm or deny what forces were in play at the beginning of the universe, we cannot verify that our methods of measuring light from distant stars and computing their distance and relative velocity are legitimate. We can however demonstrate that many of the methods of establishing vast age on planet earth, radiometric methods for example, are seriously flawed and inconsistent. And, by the way, the results from the space telescopes have introduced many new questions into the discussion of vast ages, and resolved few. In a universe that is running down (the second law of thermodynamics) that clearly had beginning point, positing a universe already in excess of 20 billion years old (these in fact are nonsense numbers) creates far more difficulties than it solves.

The bottom line is, what is the use of arguing or wasting time worrying about whether there is a 'gap' between the first and second verses of a narrative that was 'cribbed' from a non-Biblical source in the first place and is clearly metaphoric in any case? I would suggest using the time to study the history of the Bible and the sources of the various OT writings. When one realizes that all of Genesis was carefully sewn together by scholars during the Exile, from three major and a couple of minor sources, previously unrelated, then one realizes why the accounts in Gen 1 and Gen 2:4ff are so incompatible. Trying to reconcile both of them with scientific fact is futile at best and foolish at worst.

Knowing where we come from, to whom we are accountable, is of ultimate importance. Genesis was not ?cribbed? as you suggest. The old documentary hypothesis of the 19th century German theologians got a lot of play, but it doesn?t stand honest scrutiny. It never was scholarship, only humanistic prejudice, and the notions of deconstruction therein employed are inconsistent and absurd. At heart, the basic premise that the Bible could not have come from the mind of God is assumed. There is good evidence that the Bible is exactly what it claims to be, and good evidence that the Torah originated just when Jewish tradition has always said, during the period of the Exodus from Egypt. The book of Genesis documents its own ancient sources in the references to the patriarchal accounts. The final additions to the Hebrew canon did occur during the exile, apparently in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, but it is clear that the book of the law was already known and accepted. The accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 are not incompatible, but provide two perspectives on the same story. There is no existing or known extra-Biblical source for any of the material in Genesis. The book is not a retelling of pagan myth, nor a carefully stitched deception, but rather an historical record of what really happened, and a record we need to come to terms with.