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the universe is a lot older than the 6000 years suggested by the bible. In this matter, it seems that a document as self-contradictory as the bible cannot plausibly taken to be wholly fact, and to claim that some is fact and some is not is to beg the question as to how one decides which parts are literally true and which aren't. Contrasted with this dubious source of fact is the foundation of evolutionary theory which is based in the scientific method and agrees remarkably well with all the relevant data of the fossil records, the current variety and adaptedness of species etc. As far as this primitive version of creationism goes, it seems that this conflict is borne out of a bizarre expression of religious sentiment with no evidence except the word of the bible. This fundamentalism is the kind of religion that people often associate with the "battle" between science and religion. Only a small majority of the faithful fall into this disproportionately vociferous category.

Creationism in this crude biblical literalist sense should not be confused with Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is based on the claim that there are some aspects of some organisms which it would be impossible to arrive at through evolution, thus a creator is invoked. The favourite example of this sort of evolutionary impossibility is the bacterial flagellum. This is a collection of proteins which allow some bacteria to swim in a kind of paddling motion. The claim is that the flagellum is irreducibly complex, in other words it could not have evolved gradually. There would have been no evolutionary advantage to having some of the parts of the flagellum without having all the others, thus there would have been no selection pressure for a "half-flagellum", in fact it probably would have been selected against. The ID versus evolution debate does not seem, at first to be a case of science against religion but rather one of two competing scientific theories. While it is not an overtly religious movement, almost all ID advocates espouse some kind of Christianity and the movement has been attacked for being "creationism in disguise." This is a little unfair, but there does seem to be little motivation for ID outside of some kind of religious intuition. The intelligent design alternative explanation for the bacterial flagellum and things of that nature is unsatisfying and in a way unscientific. It is essentially a revival of the "god of the gaps."

The deeper question behind these types of interaction

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