Beyond mere ignorance, what may be keeping this kind of science vs religion debate going is that Man started out being the center of the universe. Everything revolved around the earth, which God created as the home of Man.

But some ancient Greek (way pre-Christ) had already figured out that the earth was round, not flat, and had even come up with a remarkably accurate figure for its circumference.

Then Copernicus comes up with the outrageous notion that perhaps the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around. Then along comes Galileo with his handy-dandy Tom Swift telescope and proves it! The Church had a wall-eyed fit about this and threatened to fry his tookus unless he recanted. Galileo did, partly to save his life and largely because he knew that, what with all kinds of astronomers getting telescopes in their cereal boxes, the word would swiftly get around, and since he proved it first, he'd get the credit.

Then, as astronomy moves forth apace, we learn that, rather than some 6,000 years old, the Cosmos is more like 13 billion years old, the solar system, including the earth (along with the Garden of Eden, someplace in the Mid-East, presumably) has been here for some 4.5 billion years, and not only is the earth not the center of the Cosmos, the Cosmos doesn't even have a center, as such!

If God really did create the heavens and the earth—and Man—it would appear that Man is not really anywhere near as important as he thought he was. Even to God!

What a blow to Man's ego! Some folks are really miffed about this!

Hence, all the convoluted efforts to deny the obvious.

Don Firth

P. S.   Here's a thought to play with:   Just suppose that the Cosmos were a Petri dish, the entity that we think of as God is actually just one of many, say, biology students or lab technicians in a biology laboratory in some Super-Cosmos, and we--are merely a bacteria culture on that Petri dish.......

P. P. S.   By the way:    42