The theory of evolution is compatible with the existence of God

You ask me why God would create life over millions or billions of years when he could just as easily do it in a day. (Though I didn't make that claim in my above post, I'll respond anyway.) My response: Why would God create life over the course of six days when he could just as easliy do it in a day? If God is able to make everything instantly, then it seems equally arbitrary for God to wait multiple days, multiple weeks, multiple months, multiple years, multiple millennia. Either God did everything as quickly as he was able to (which should be instantaneously and all at once, since he's omnipotent), or he did not. If the former, then he should not have even taken a week to create the universe; and if the latter, then who are we to judge how long God should have taken, when we don't know his ultimate plan? God is eternal, so surely length of time matters little to him. Who are these "they" you claim have proven that the Earth is 10,000 years old? Certainly not scientists, since no modern earth scientists accept that the Earth is so ridiculously young. Mind you, they could be wrong (silly fallible human scientists!), but it is nonetheless dishonest to imply that there is some sort of evidence for the Earth being so young, when in reality a particular interpretation of the Bible is the only "evidence" for such a claim. You're free to believe whatever you want, but don't try to misrepresent your religious beliefs as being something they're not. Where in the Bible does it say that man as God created him was "the same as he is today"? Last I checked, people nowadays don't live for centuries, like the earliest Biblical humans did; that certainly suggests at least some differences, purely from a theological perspective. Heck, even without appealing to fossils, basic anthropology will tell you that people used to be much shorter. So change does indisputably occur; the only real question is the magnitude and nature of the change. "They" (presumably you mean paleontologists) do not try to "USE THE FOSSIL THING!", as you put it, to date fossils. Rather, they most commonly use geological strata (layers of rock which consistently correspond to different chronological periods) and radiometric dating, which tests for the abundance of naturally occurring radioactive isotopes (forms of elements which decay at regular rates). "There is no proof for evolution, and no proof or reason God would use it." - I'm not attempting to provide a proof or reason why God would use evolution to create. Why should I, when you haven't provided a proof or reason why God would use the "poof" method to create? We are mortals, and it is not our place to speculate wildly on what God would or wouldn't do, when both options are possibilities. Theologically and Biblically, there is no strong reason to accept either the "poof" method of traditional creationism, or the evolutionary method of modern science. The evidence provided by the natural world (i.e., by God's Creation itself!), therefore, not human theology and speculation, should determine which of these two options we ultimately accept. Lastly, I would remind you that my aim in this debate was not to prove that evolution occurred or that evolutionary creationism is true; my goal was only to prove that such a thing is _possible_, that evolution and God are not inherently contradictory. I believe that this point has been effectively demonstrated, as even you seem to concede that God _could_ have used evolution to create--you just don't understand why he would. (Though I'm surprised that you'd think that if you personally don't understand something about God, that thing must be untrue...)