I now eagerly look forward to each succeeding issue of the EXPLORER to read the next round in the debate over the origins of the human race. I would like to introduce an idea that may not have been considered, as well as two books that may further confuse the issue.

I would urge everyone to read the book of Genesis in the light of the times, 3,000+ years ago, when it was presented to the Israelites. At the time the Israelites were a land-based people, somewhat less sophisticated, less knowledgable and less educated than we are today. Genesis is a short and symbolic rendering of the creation of the earth and universe in terms that the Israelites - then - would understand.

Who, at that time, could understand "Big Bang," a 13+ billion-year-old Earth? Those believing in creation and those beliveing in evolution cannont get beyond the idea of six 24-hour days. This, the greatest stumbling block, entirely clouds the rest of any possible agreement.

God did not have a Timex. And (according to Genesis) it wasnot until the fourth day that God created the sun and the moon so that time, as such, could not be defined until there was a way to measure it. The fourth day and the preceding three days could each have been a nanosecond or billions of years long.

God was not writing (or creating) a textbook ... to argue about the timing of the creation and the sequence of events is to ignore the intended audience. It is easy to believe that the Bible is infallible if we can put aside our egotistical notion that someone or anyone can properly and infallibly interpret all of God's meanings and intents have sometimes been misinterpreted.

A recent book, "The Complete World of Human Evolution," by Stringer and Andrews shows the path of human and hominid evolution rom the early Miocene to present. The enormous time gaps in the sparse fossil record better illustrate that the theory of evolution is, indeed, a theory. "Forbidden Archeology" by Cremo and Thompson details large collections of incised and broken bones and various types of lithic tools gathered by professional scientists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from any locations around the world. The dating of these seeming indications of fairly advanced intelligence is dated from the Pliocene into the Eocene.

Creation,evolution, Vedic origin, etc. - we don't really know very much.

William H. Lang Jr., Houston . . .