Regarding the Bible and creationism: The Bible's version of creation (Genesis, chapters 1-2) is so full of errors that it is irrelevant to an intelligent discussion of creation. Any serious geologist - in fact, any educated person - should be aware of them.

For example, I cite the King James version (in itallics).

First Day: God created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was without form; and God said, "Let there be light." And God divided the light from the darkness; God called the light "day" and the darkness "night."

There are three problems with this account: Day and night require the earth to have form, to be rotating on its axis and to be receiving light from the sun.

Second Day: God made the firmament between the waters below and the waters above. God called the firmament heaven.

What about the heaven created on the first day? What are the waters doing above heaven? Are they coluds in the sky?

Third Day: The waters under heaven were gathered into one place and dry land appeared. God called the dry land earth and gathered waters seas. Then earth brought forth grass and fruit tree(s) yielding fruit after his kind.

Problems include: Grasses and fruit trees cannot exist without the energy of the sun. MOrever, they evolved late in geologic time about 140 million years (Cretaceous) and grasses about 50 million years (early Eocene). In contrast, the age of the earth is at least 4.6 billion years. Seas, like fruit trees and grasses, could not exist on the earth without the heat of the sun. The oldest fossil bearing marine rocks.

Fourth Day: Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide day from night and to give light upon the earth. God then made two great lights - the greater (the sun) to rule the days and the lesser light (the moon) to rule the nights. And God made stars and set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

First, the sun is much older than the grasses and fruit trees, which the Bible says were formed on day three. Two, many stars in the universe are much older than the sun, and others are younger - and some are now being formed.

Fifth Day: Let the waters (seas) bring forth life and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. God created great whales and every living creature which the waters brought forth abundantly.

Huge errors here: First, life in the early seas can be traced back in fossil bearing rocks to more than two billionyears before the present, which greatly antedates the first apearance of whales in the geologic record (Paleocene - about 60 million years ago). Second, early aquatic life also greatly antedates fowl (birds), which make their first appearance in strata of the Jurassic Period (about 175 million years ago).

Sixth Day: Let Earth (which the Bible calls dry land) bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after his kind. God created man in his own image.

One, creeping things (spiders and insects) can be traced back to the Carboniferous Period, more than 325 million years before the present, whereas the ancestors of present cattle appear only as far back as th Miocene Epoch, about 20 million years ago; two, spiders and insects (of day six) are much older than grasses and fruit trees (of day three) and the whale of day four; third, spiders and insects are much older than fowl (of day five).

If one accepts the Bible's version of creation, then theother myths are easy to accept ... Faith is a belief in something the person knows if false. Science attempts to reach the truth.

Herbert J. Howe
Vancouver, Wash.