Thank you so much for such an honest and humble post. I have been reading your blog for 6 weeks or so, and I am always intrigued and challenged.

Regarding God and /or evolution, here is what I recommend: Seek to worship and know God through creation...how it came to be is not the thing. That God displays His attributes and self through creation is. He is a personal God, and you will not go wrong in knowing Him.

Good luck, and keep sojourning, fellow pilgrim.

From one with few answers, many questions, and a joy in life.

"And why can these two ideas not co-exist?"

They can't if you are a Biblical literalist, or an atheist. Otherwise, there are no problems. After all, why would G-d go to the trouble of creating each and every individual animal, when he could set up the laws of the universe to do it for him? Assuming G-d did indeed make Man in His own image, then we can be sure that avoiding unneccessary work is a G-dly trait.

Actually, there was a school of thought in the 18th century that considered G-d as 'Great Watch-maker'.

Mark Twain thought that his father was an absolute idiot when he was eighteen, and was amazed by how much his Father had learned by Twain's 21st birthday.

Humility is a precursor of Wisdom.

Even some of the most radical postmodern literary theory, reads very much like ancient negative theology, only much shallower.

Final Historian:

I'm not sure I buy that. I don't know what the phrase "going to the trouble of..." means to an omnipotent being.

On the subject of evolution:

Be wary of those who say, "Mankind needs to evolve..." Evolution is not a painter, but a sculptor, and his chisel is death. Many people have used that construction without appreciating its implication ("More (of the right kind of) people need to die for my pet social theory"), but in so doing they have empowered those who understand it all too well, and like the idea a bit too much (does anyone doubt that in less turbulent times Lenin and Stalin would have wound up murdering hookers in alleys?)

On the subject of ancient theology, all I can say is that Osama Bin Laden is the Western left's Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man.