An Afraid New World

A New York Times headline today says;

SCIENTISTS USE MONKEY CLONES TO EXTRACT STEM CELLS

Not only is this the first time such cells have been produced in any animal other than a mouse, but the method, the researchers say, should also work in humans.

“We hope the technology will be useful for other labs that are working on human eggs and human cells,” the lead researcher of the group, Shoukhrat Mitalipov at Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton, said in a telephone interview. “I am quite sure it will work in humans.”

Not everyone is happy about this development. Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center said:

“I certainly think that this represents a new threshold in the entire discussion,” said the Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. “At this point, it becomes essential to ask a question as a society: Are there ever going to be circumstances where it is morally justifiable to clone human beings?”

What do you think?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/science/15primate.html?ex=1352782800&en=64dd27c654844c3a&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

Ghost Story

My wife and daughter share a casual interest in accounts of the supernatural.  They love to watch those ghost shows on the cable channels, the ones where the paranormal investigators check out allegedly haunted houses.  Although they are not in the least way obsessed with the idea of supernatural contact, they both find it entertaining and have adopted a “who knows?” attitude.  As for myself, I am a born skeptic and have little time for these ‘reality’ TV programs.

Last Sunday Bev and I took Dot, our 19 year old daughter, and her best friend Bekah , out to enjoy an afternoon’s drive through the countryside at autumn’s peak. It was a classic fall day, a brisk wind pushing gunmetal clouds across a blue sky.  The sunlight had that watery feel to it, softening the bright colors of the leaves. Later in the afternoon we ended up in an old town that is famous for being at the center of a Civil War battle.  Dot mentioned that the town was considered a favorite haunt for many ghosts, apparently due to the thousands of violent deaths inflicted in that battle.

Since the weather was so nice and the trees so beautiful we were surprised that only a smattering of restaurants in town were open.  Of those few, we chose a busy place on the square.  Most of the buildings in town looked quite old yet well maintained, and this one was no exception.  There was a 20 minute wait for a table so I took my pager outside and sat on a bench.  My wife darted into an antique store to check out their advertised “dental artifacts” while the girls ran to the lady’s room, upstairs in the restaurant.

Ten minutes later the girls burst out through the establishment’s doors, laughing and giggling.  When I asked about all their joviality, Dot held out her phone to me.  “Listen” she said.

The traffic noise was loud on the square but I could just make out Dot’s voice saying; “Is there anyone with us today? If you’re here we would like to talk to you.” There was a long pause full of static, then Dot saying; “You can talk to me (garbled)?” Pause. “ You don’t have to be afraid of us. You can talk to me. My name is Dot. Pause. Allright, bye- bye.” This was followed by the sounds of both girls giggling.  .

(I knew just what they had been up to. Recently we watched the movie “White Noise” on DVD. In it, Michael Keaton is contacted by souls who have gone over to the ‘other side’. They reached him by laying their voices down on magnetic recording tape. Upon playback these spectral voices could be heard for the first time.  Called EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomena- it is taken very seriously by some people, the foremost experts being Lisa and Tom Butler of AAEVP, consultants on the film. [ http://www.aaevp.com/  ]  I thought it was a fair movie, but like most ‘scary’ movies you need to suspend your disbelief for a couple of hours. My disbelief in the paranormal returned before the credits were running, My wife and daughter maintained their “who knows?” perspective. and after the movie they excitedly exchanged stories of other EVPs.)

Back on the town square, I smiled and handed the phone back.  One should never underestimate what Dot might do.  Just then, as Bev was walking up, the restaurant pager went off. We went inside, had an enjoyable meal and within a couple of hours we were back home.  That night, in the quiet of our living room, Dot listened to the recording again. Excited, she had us listen to it as well.

In the middle of the second pause of scratchy white noise a woman’s low voice could be heard whispering what sounded like “Kitty, kitty, kitty”, followed by a very soft chuckle (or sobbing, perhaps?).  I immediately suspected the girls of playing a prank but Dot was able to quickly convince me of their innocence. I know my daughter, and that’s not her style.  She insisted that they were completely alone in the ladies room (she would never had attempted this stunt otherwise).  I asked her to send the voice message to my phone and the next day I had some co –workers listen to it.  Eyes were wide when they put the phone down. You can hear the recording by going to the following link:

http://www.t-mobilepictures.com/14196383/_entry/8a38a92d15cf060d0115cf5831a8359d/ps/ENTRY/EDITENTRY?foneblog=1193281762884

Going to Google I initiated a search for more information and found what I was looking for:

In 2001 this restaurant burned down to the ground and it had since been rebuilt to the original specifications.  During the reconstruction the body of a recently murdered woman had been discovered at the building site, where she reportedly had been left to die.  (I have yet to find any other information). The restaurant staff says that the spirit of this woman haunts the building, open and closing doors and windows , with most of the activity taking place in the kitchen and in the ladies room.

OK.  I can’t explain this. Is this the result of some elaborate hoax being perpetrated by the operators of this restaurant?  It’s not as if they promoted any haunting – it was not easy finding the story of the dead woman’s body.  Could it be the tortured soul of someone named Kitty, somehow trapped in this house?  Or, as my daughter suspects, was the spirit mocking Dot, comparing her to someone who casually calls for a pet, not knowing what they are really dealing with? Is Kitty someone we should be praying for?

At one time I would never seriously consider such a thing as supernatural phenomena, but for over the past 5 years I have been immersed things spiritual.  As some will say, who knows?

What do you think?  Do you have a similar story to share?

Birds of a Feather; Environmentalists and Fundamentalists

Many of today’s environmentalists are concerned about the state of our planet and if it might be too late to fix things.  Apparently the problem we face is that the greatest threat to our planet is mankind itself, and with our depraved nature there is little hope for the future.

The general consensus among this group is that early in the Earth’s history the world was pretty much perfect. Man even knew how to live harmoniously with  all of nature. This changed when man’s arrogance, pride and selfish tendencies began to exact their toll on the natural balance. War, famine, pollution, poverty as well as natural disasters became the norm. Now the Earth is worse than it has ever been and apocalypse looms on the horizon.  The extinction of humanity may be inevitable and in fact a good thing for the rest of the world.

Many of today’s Christians are concerned about the fate of the Earth and don’t believe that there is any chance of saving it. The problem apparently lies in the fact that man is the root of the problem and his depraved nature leaves little  hope for the future.

The general consensus among these folks is that early in the Earth’s history the world was perfect. Man even knew how to live in harmony among all of God’s creatures. This changed when man’s arrogance, pride and selfishness brought sin into the world.  War, famine, pestilence, poverty and natural disasters became the norm. Now the world is worse than it has ever been and apocalypse lies just around the bend. The inevitable extinction of most of mankind will be the result and this will pretty much be a good thing for the world. 

So what’s the beef?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Two Bottles of Adam’s Ale, Please! (Don’t Drink the Water)

I love it, I love it, I love it. I work in the food industry and for years one of my pet peeves has been the conspicuously ’sophisticated’ tastes of some of my clientèle. You know who I’m talking about; the gourmand who would ask if the beef was prime (at what I was charging? c’mon), the aesthete that would send the trout back to have the head removed, the bar denizen who would call for Absolut in his Bloody Mary (who can tell, with all the Worcestershire, Tabasco and horseradish?).

But the ones who really got my goat were the bottled water drinkers. Convinced that tap water was going to kill us all (too many chemicals, likely tainted, or even recycled urine) they would lament the fact that I did not carry their brand of designer water. After giving in to market demands (I’m not a complete fool, there is some nice profit to be had off of this never ending fad) I would daily receive complaints that I was not carrying a specific brand. But who could keep up? In the nineties there was a new boutique water coming out every week. (Some went better with quiche than others did.)

Eventually the big beverage boys decided to get in on the act and Pepsi and Coke both came out with their own brands of bottled water. Why not? They could charge much more than their soft drink product. The water market was so upscale that the typical consumer wouldn’t even touch the cheaper brands. Gads! Not only that, it was cheaper to produce because it was essentially cola without the stuff that made it cola – carbonation, sugar, flavorings, preservatives and dyes. Still, many of these companies did find a way to sneak a fair amount of chemicals into this ‘pure’ beverage.

Bottled water has become such a status symbol that no self respecting business, professional organization, civic group or lobby would dare hold a meeting without a cooler full of bottles chilled and waiting for the program to begin. Ah, the poor old board room water pitcher. Where are you now?

It is de rigeur to provide bottled water at charity marathons and bike-a-thons and the Gatorade coolers are now filled with….Gatorade. The upwardly mobile athletes at these events typically vote Democrat, are health conscious and would choke at the idea of consuming the more dangerous variety of water that springs forth from the walls of every home in America. Something they have in common with the old John Birch Society, I guess. If only they knew.

According to an article in ‘American Demographics’:

Indeed, some 86 percent of Americans harbor concerns about the quality of their tap water, while 32 percent think their water is not as safe as it should be, according to a survey of 1,021 adults released in April by the Water Quality Association (WQA), a group representing makers and sellers of home water treatment systems. The concern rate goes up to 90 percent among Americans with kids under 12. According to a 1999 report by the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (NEETF), 91 percent of Americans cook with tap water, but only 75 percent actually drink it. Meanwhile, 65 percent take steps to drink purer water, either using filtration or distillation methods or by drinking bottled water. (Hmm, maybe)

Women constitute the majority of bottled water drinkers: 45 percent of 18- to 34-year-old women and 44.6 percent of 35- to 54-year-old women drink bottled water, according to BMC/MediaLink research, compared with just 35.3 percent and 34.5 percent of their same-age male counterparts. As one might expect, bottled water use climbs with income, says Gary Hemphill, senior vice president at BMC. Use also spikes at the younger end of the core group. Some 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think their water is as safe as it should be, according to the WQA survey, and 41.4 percent of the group drink bottled water regularly, reports BMC.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is_2001_Oct_1/ai_79052846

I guess that it would be safe to say that the typical bottled water afficianado is fairly young, educated, fit, financially successful and concerned about their health as well as the environment. After all it is the well informed and sophisticated that are the first to identify and address those threats that many choose to ignore; pesticides, global warming, second hand smoke, the ozone layer, high fat diets, overpopulation, carcinogens in meats, fruits, fish, vegetables, bouillabaisse, high tension wires….and good old tap water.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – PepsiCo Inc. will spell out that its Aquafina bottled water is made with tap water, a concession to the growing environmental and political opposition to the bottled water industry. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070726/hl_nm/pepsico_aquafina_dc_1

 

You probably aren’t surprised that I am more than a little amused. Finally it is being revealed that the Emperor has no clothes. Under extreme pressure, Pepsi Cola is agreeing to post it’s water source on it’s packaging. And guess what that source is – the faucet. That’s right, both Pepsi’s Aquafina (nice Italian name) and Coke’s Dasani (even nicer- could be Italian, could be North African but whatever- it’s someplace hip) use the same dang water that most of use to wash our dishes (and our toes) in- Adam’s Ale. It’s even the same water that goes FLUSH! for most of us at least a couple times a day. The very same water I use to keep my petunias and my Fescue fresh and colorful as well as my sidewalk clear of grass clippings.

I might be going out on a limb here, but I bet that if you check the ‘fridge of just about any overly worried environmentalist that you will find a bottle or two of designer agua. Then check out the lackadaisical Joe Shmoe’s ice box and you’ll probably see a couple a liters of Dr. Pepper and a partial six pack of Bud. And it turns out that Joe might be the better steward!

And according to the article even those companies that claim to use spring water are only shipping water in from regions that are known to have reputations for ‘good’ tasting water.

Thank God! Now I can stop buying Perrier for my cats.

Jetsam: Nature’s Sad Litter

My wife and I recently took a vacation in the southern Caribbean. It was our 25th wedding anniversary and the first time the we had been outside the country together (unless we count Canada).

We spent a lot of time exploring the small island, including those remote and barren parts that see relatively few tourists. We spent one morning on the rugged east coast, where large lava outcroppings relentlessly battle with gigantic waves, waves rolling thousands of miles unchallenged from across the Atlantic Ocean. A new sun glinted through fast scudding clouds as the pewter sea threw itself violently upon the rocks. Salt spray coated our sunglasses and camera lenses. The ceaseless wind roared in off the water, allowing nothing more than the occasional cactus any kind of purchase. It was exhilarating.

Until we crested a rocky escarpment and took in the long, narrow, sandy bay below. The tremendous breakers funneled in between rocky capes of hardened lava, their power compressed and intensified. Over the centuries they had swept a broad fan of ivory colored sand deep into the island’s interior. Among the rocks and pieces of driftwood lay an immense garbage dump of bottles, clothes, furniture, toys – the discarded trash of mankind. The litter lay in deep and topographical layers, periodically strewn upon the beach.

Where did all this debris come from? It seemed unlikely that the islanders, who so desperately needed tourist dollars to sustain their economy, would tolerate this wholesale littering. My wife suggested that perhaps it came from ocean going vessels, dumping their trash over the side. Maybe, but there was junk on this beach that did not jive with any picture I had of a sailor’s kit – baby dolls and toys, women’s clothing, laundry detergent bottles, plastic garden tools, tennis shoes….this beach looked like a disaster area.

And then it occurred to us; these weren’t items that people had just flippantly cast away. These were things that people had lost, things that they needed, even loved. These things the sea had taken from them.

It was now obvious that this beach was a natural repository for the relics of human suffering. As the hurricanes batter the islands and coastlines of the Caribbean and Gulf they leave in their wake devastation and destruction. But they also take away. As their tidal surges recede, the inventories of both families and businesses are pulled out to sea. It has to go somewhere and much of it must end up on beaches around the world, like those of this island.

While at first we were angry over the what we took to be the contemptable behavior of our fellow man, now we were ashamed of ourselves. We had judged harshly and emotionally, solely upon this ‘clear’ evidence of man’s disregard for nature. The litter was not the result of the selfish actions of ‘American Consumerists’ or capitalist profiteers. This beach was a silent monument to the suffering of millions of our brothers and sisters, most of them too poor to escape nature’s wrath.

A lot of people have taken to pointing their fingers at people they blame for destroying our planet. It is taken for granted that mankind has defeated the earth, that because of our efforts, accidental or otherwise, the planet will succumb to a less than gradual death. Drastic measures need to be taken, they say, even if they are at the expense of individual liberty and freedom. All of us will need to tighten the belt.

There is little doubt that the human race needs to improve its stewardship of the planet. Most of us need to do a better job at working towards this goal, but with kindness and compassion. It is all too easy to throw the first stone, making monsters out of the rich and the well off. But it is rarely the rich or the well off who have to pay a (relatively) big price for their efforts. Many of those environmentally concerned people who now are calling for personal sacrifice can easily afford to pull in the buckle a few notches without feeling too much pain. But most of the people on this Earth do not have that luxury.

If we try to turn the environmental problems facing us into esthetically acceptable spiritual challenges, (with all of the inherent noble sacrifices) while writing off the possible economic side effects as merely the self-serving rants of unsophisticated capitalists, then we could be consigning the majority of or our world’s poor to even more hardship.

Instead of getting behind solutions that just ‘feel’ right, perhaps we should dig a little deeper and look for other answers that might work, without demanding more from our neighbors than from ourselves. Perhaps if we look towards furthering God’s kingdom in a more holistic and all encompassing fashion, rather than obsessing on single issues, then many of the problems we face today will work themselves out.

Quantum Miracles: Physical Spirituality

OK, please bear with me here. Other than the fact that I am as curious as a cat (and live with three of them) I haven’t the foggiest notion what I am talking about. Still, there just might be something to this.

In 1935 the Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger envisioned a scenario that illustrated some of the mysteries of quantum mechanics. This famous thought experiment became known as the dilemma of “Schroedinger’s Cat.

Here is a description of Shroedinger’s Cat that I found a bit easier to digest.

Schrodinger’s Cat

A cat is in a box with a lid that is shut. Within the box is a radioactive nucleus that has a 50-50 chance of decaying in an hour. If the nucleus decays this triggers a mechanism that breaks a vial of poison gas that kills the cat. The cat has two states: alive or dead. Schrodinger argued that if quantum mechanics is regarded as a fundamental universal theory then it must be applicable to all systems be they small or large. If so, then we must write, for the cat’s state,

|cat> = a|alive> + b|dead>,

that is, the cat apparently is in a superposed state of life and death! Then we open the box.

According to the measurement hypothesis (discussed next) when we open the box, we are performing a measurement of the cat’s state; this is said to cause the cat’s superposed state to collapse into one base state or the other |dead> or |alive>. The cat is found either pushing up the daisies, or purring for its milk. Schroedinger considered this to be so absurd that (like Einstein) he concluded that quantum mechanics could not be the final word; something was missing.

This is such a strange notion, a cat that is somehow both alive and dead, and, more to the point, contrary to what appears to happen in the macroscopic world that there seems to be only two possibilities: either quantum mechanics works only on a microscopic scale, in which case it is not a universal theory, or it is a universal theory in which case it cries out for a better understanding of the notion of superposition.

Since the advent of quantum theory, many physicists have tried to devise different interpretations of the superposition of states.

From “The Quantum World” , Florida State University Physics Department.
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/users/ProsperH/AST3033/quantumworld.htm

So, in a layman’s nutshell: Just the act of observing an experiment will affect the outcome. The tree falling in the forest makes no noise.(The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle makes a similar statement, but let’s not go there right now.)

 

The reason I wanted to talk about Schroedinger’s cat is because I think it might just have some bearing on the validity and relevance of miracles. A group of us have been engaged in a discussion over some of the works of CS Lewis and recently the topic was his essay “Miracles”. Lewis, for those of you who do not know, is considered by many to be one of the greatest of Christian apologists, practicing the art of intellectually and rationally explaining the Christian faith to those who do not believe.

In this essay it is his premise that the miracles that have been witnessed by many people over the centuries present clear evidence, to anyone who is interested, that there exists a God, particularly the God of Christianity. One of the people in our group took issue with his suggestion, a suggestion that is not unique to Lewis and is considered a part of Christian doctrine as told in the various creeds.

She contended that so many of these miraculous events are easily explained away by non-religious people and the more that science reveals of our natural world, the less people are likely to accept supernatural explanations. There also tends to be a lack of consensus among spiritual believers over what constitutes a miracle, from dramatic healings to the finding of lost keys.

I would have to agree with her. I have witnessed events that I can only describe as being supernatural evidence of God but rarely have I presented them to others as being miraculous. When I have witnessed those attempts at convincing a skeptic that God does work miracles in this world, they have never been successful. That doesn’t mean that miracles have never drawn someone closer to accepting spiritual possibilities, but I have never seen it happen.

The evidence of miracles had very little to do with my turning away from atheism, and the same can be said for my family and friends. I can not recall ever witnessing a miracle (before I found my faith in God) that I would have identified as such. But since I now enjoy a relationship with God, through Jesus, rarely does a day go by that I do not encounter a miracle or two. Some of them may be considered mundane but more than a few cannot be easily explained away naturally.

So could it be, that because I have changed my perspective on life, miracles do exist for me as I observe them? And when a skeptic observes the same event, there is no miracle, because of his particular vantage point? I am not suggesting here that our perception causes us just to see things differently (though that is certainly true) but that in many (perhaps all) instances it is our actual physical observation that helps shape the outcome.

In other words; the skeptic opens the box to find the cat dead because his rational mind, weighing the evidence in hand, tells him it must be so. When the person of faith opens the box, she witnesses the miracle of a live cat even though the same evidence was clearly visible to her. Her faith has effectively changed the outcome of the event.

And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.
Matthew 13:58

What do you think? Other than perhaps I should consider putting a little less catnip in my pipe.

10 Questions about Global Warming

Here’s a neat little 10 question quiz to test what we really know about global warming. You may be surprised with the results.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html

Now I know a lot of you will insist that this test is put out by the vast consumerist/carbon spewing/capitalistic profit mongering conspiracy of the Evil West, and perhaps it is. But will someone please dispute just the answers to the test?

Natural Faith: Panentheism and Christianity

There is a convention within much of modern Christianity to relate naturalism (or more accurately natural supernaturalsim) to atheism or perhaps more commonly with paganism. Many of history’s pagans were pantheistic such as the Native Americans, the Celts and of course most of today’s New Age philosophers so they tend to find their god(s) primarily in the natural world. I would agree that a person would be far off track spiritually if they ascribed a divinity to material or inanimate objects. But have Christians allowed themselves to miss much of God’s original intent for humanity, by increasingly distancing themselves from the natural world?

In Eden, mankind was in complete and total harmony with nature, having no wants, cares or needs while walking with the Lord in the garden. Nothing was made by our hands and we were entirely dependant upon the grace of God. As time went on we moved from this native existence and began to ‘progress’, perceiving ourselves to be more and more self-reliant, gradually and inexorably pushing God out of our picture.

Today we have reached the point where by the work of our hands we feel that we have become the masters of this domain. For years we have perceived the Earth as being primarily a material resource for our endeavors as we continued to improve upon our existence.

Of course we realize now that this is a fallacy, that man has despoiled the Earth, not improving upon anything other than perhaps our own health and wealth, and that for only a select few of us. Christianity for some time has had a view of the Earth as being a disposable product, flawed in its fallen nature and doomed to die a nasty death, later to be resurrected with all the perfection and glory that God had originally intended.

But what if we are terribly mistaken? The evidence would support the argument that we have misinterpreted God’s wishes for our co-existence with the rest of his creation. Mankind’s selfish preoccupations have put us dangeroulsy out of balance with creation.(The anniversary of the Katrina disaster reminds me of this.) The faithful people of the Old Testament, especially those we are told about in Genesis, saw no separation between a natural and supernatural world. Living primitively, and with their survival wholly dependant upon what God provided them through the abundance (or lack there) of nature, they enjoyed a very close and spiritual awareness of the presence of God. In our age this is something that we have to deliberately search for, often in the form of forced solitude and retreat.

I have always looked with romantic longing upon the natural and spiritual lifestyle of the unadulterated Native American. Coming to a faith in Jesus, I struggled with their interpretation of God, imputing satanic influences to how they saw him (or her). But perhaps God, our God, and the God of the Israelites, speaks to them in a fashion similar to how he spoke to God’s people in the time before the coming of Christ. Not having been exposed to the Bible, they still demonstrated a love for God’s creation, possessing an intensely humble and grateful demeanor with a sense of spirituality that is not found in most of our modern churches.

In the past, long before the advent of most technology, people like Saint Francis of Assissi understood this. Some of their prayers celebrating nature are jarring to modern evangelical ears, sounding dangerously similar to those of the nature ‘worshipping’ pagans. It is unfortunate that so many of us who love Jesus (through whom all things are made) do not seem to have a corresponding passion for his creation.

*If God Is In The Details Why Does Genesis Offer So Few?

All things are possible with God. So it could very well be that the universe was created precisely as it has been laid out in the book of Genesis. Science certainly has not been able to prove otherwise, but for many of us the culmination of the evidence does paint a slightly different picture.

It is often said that God is in the details. The closer we scrutinize nature and observe its intricate workings the more God reveals himself to us. We often come upon paradoxes that would only seem to be explicable as long as there is some benevolent intellect at work behind the scenes. (For example: proteins are manufactured in cells yet cells need proteins to exist).

But if God is in the details, Genesis surely does not present us with too many of them. Perhaps the creation account is correct but the picture it paints has been made with broad, flowing strokes of the author’s brush. Perhaps there was no felt need at the time to be very detailed and precise in describing the process of God’s creativity. We should remember that the Bible was originally an oral history. How much detail could be retained and then passed on from generation to generation? How much detail was even necessary to convey God’s message of love and beauty? We need only to look around and it is all there for us to behold.

As creation surrounds us, it bedazzles us, inspires us and nurtures us. It also intrigues us. Being creatures in his image we are obsessed with the rest of God’s creation. The longing for God’s nature drives us to uncover more of his mysteries. How and why do things happen? To what purpose is there to the observable world, if any at all? The more we study our universe the more we learn about ourselves as well as the artist who first imagined us.

There are some very concise (yet hypothetical) explanations by various highly accredited scientists, theologians and philosophers that bring Genesis and science together with little trouble. The problem seems to be that many good people on both sides of this debate feel that the wall of separation is too high to be able to see over.

Maybe both arguments are correct. Before I am accused of relativism here let me try to explain by analogy:

Statement #1) In 1863 Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.
Statement #2) In 1865 the Union finally defeated rebel forces thereby ensuring the emancipation of the slaves held by the Confederate states.

Although both the above statements are true, neither one is complete. Some people may even think that these statements are virtually at odds with each other.

Is it possible that Genesis says all that is necessary but is deliberately lacking the detail to fully explain God’s artistic process, that it describes the picture without identifying the medium or the technique? Isn’t it also possible that secularized science does a good job of identifying the palettes, pixels and mediums involved in the painting yet fails to see the hand of the artist, the passion that the artist has for his work? Every work of art denotes an artist and every artwork is the culmination of an intricate combination of materials and processes used by the artist. It is often hoped by the artist that his work be studied, pondered and examined and that truth may be revealed to the observer in the process. With all good art there are usually more questions raised than answers given but the truth will shine through.

How else could it be in the hands of the Maestro?