[PatrickHenry]

God might indeed be an infinitely perfect and potent being, but even He cannot explain quantum mechanics to a person with a five-year-old's vocabulary and a completely parochial worldview. Such a person lacks the terms with which to define and correlate the concepts.

I've never found that a convincing reason why scripture is so sketchy regarding science. Even we, limited as we are, can take a totally ignorant 6-year-old and in a mere 10 years that child is ready to do college-level science work. If the kid is bright and the teachers are good, it can be done in less than 10 years. And if we can do it, there's no reason why God couldn't have done it -- if that was the intent. So it's very clear to me (in my always humble opinion) that scripture was never intended to be a science text, and it's a mistake to read it that way. There are many things which have been left for us to figure out, and we're doing rather well.

[longshadow]

"figure this" placemarker

[King Prout]

I don't disagree, exactly.
But I don't agree, either.
Language to a great extent defines and limits what can be conceived and communicated.
The thing is, we can take a six year old NOW and raise him up using the 150,000 word English language, with all of the lovely interconnected technical language - all of which references as much as 4000 years of research (in terms of mechanics, at least) - and easily expand the number of things that kid can conceive, and in what detail.
Could you, given that you spoke period Aramaic, explain to a bronze age Israelite sheep herder the full details of the workings of so simple a machine as a thermonuclear bomb?
I couldn't. I doubt God could, either. But let us assume He could, and for some reason did. How would that suddenly erudite former shepherd record and convey the knowledge to his former peers?
Profound ignorance is quite a barrier to detailed comprehension.

[King Prout]

I just thought of this, as an appendix and tangential addendum:
A story may be entirely non-factual, yet remain utterly true.
Case in point: no one believes that animals speak or behave as they are presented in Aesop's Fables, but does that have any impact whatsoever on the essential truth of those stories?
Perhaps the apparent disparity between Genesis and more verifiable records is along those lines - God may hve been more interested in imparting His Truth to Man, rather than cramming our heads full of rote memorization of abstruse facts.
Assuming, for the argument: God; God's involvement with Man; God's ultimate authorship of Genesis - none of which are demonstrable.