I can't see the Bible conflicting with evolution
This is the only part of the whole Biblical creation story that [conflicts with evolutionary theory]
Forget about reconciling evolution and Genesis, just tell me how to reconcile those two statements. Or explain how plants grow for thousands or billions of years without bees and other animals to spread seed and pollen, or without earthworms to break up the soil. Or explain why Adam was alone with the animals until Eve came along. Shouldn't they have evolved together?
editOh, Barbara, I almost forgot a major conflict. The Bible has birds and fish coming about in one day, then land animals the next day. Evolution, if I remember rightly, has the aquatic animals evolving into amphibians and reptiles (land animals) which then evolved into birds.
Christians believe that "the wages of sin is death," so we cannot accept death as the mechanism for biological progress, or that it occurred before the garden of Eden. Jews must still explain why a loving God thinks that death is "very good." You really have two different ideas of creation here. One that presents a faultless and peaceful paradise, and one built on eons of bloodshed, violence, mutation and disease.
I can't see the Bible conflicting with evolution, unless you argue that the entire thing is in there, which we can see every day is not true.
What do you mean?
Yep, Genesis says six days..but it was written thousands of years ago when people didn't have quite the same understanding of the concept of billions of years. If it had been explained, they wouldn't have understood.
Where do you get that idea? In what way do you understand billions of years better than Moses or Noah might have?
The chronology in Genesis is pretty close if you think about it..closer than you would expect for people who were still developing concepts like zero.
Wait, where did the Genesis account come from? If it is divinely inspired, then it should be more than just "pretty close," and the sophistication of those ancient people is inconsequential. If it was written by human beings, why would it have any relation to modern scientific theories? If they didn't even understand zero, how would they know about evolution or big-bang cosmology?