Can Christians can be card-carrying, evolution-believing, "Old Earth" scientists, too?

Yes, say two such people, Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk, in a piece on our editorial page On Religion Forum today that tells believers and scientists alike, "Fear not."

And Giberson is available for a live chat today at 2 p.m. ET to answer questions about faith and evolution. (Submit your questions at onreligion.usatoday.com.

We are trained scientists who believe in God, but we also believe that science provides reliable information about nature. We don;t view evolution as sinister and atheistic. We think it is simply God’s way of creating. Yet we can still sleep soundly at night, with Bibles on our nightstands, resting atop the latest copy of Scientific American. Are we crazy?

Giberson is a professor at Eastern Nazarene College, co-president of the BioLogos Foundation and author of Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. Darrel Falk is a professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, co-president of the BioLogos Foundation and author of Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology.

BioLogos is the foundation created and named by geneticist Francis Collins after he retired from leading the Human Genome Project. Last month, however, Collins left BioLogos when he was nominated -- and last week confirmed -- to lead the National Institutes of Health.

Like Collins, Giberson and Falk seem to say that God expects humankind to use the brains He gave them. They write::

What we learn from science cannot threaten our belief in God as the creator. If God created the universe in a Big Bang 15 billion years ago, guided its development with elegant mathematical laws so that eventually there would be big-brained mammals exploring things like such as beauty, morality, and truth, then let us celebrate that idea, not reject it.

Where that conversation leads, however, is not only to examine how one understands science but also, I think, to how one reads the Bible. The Scientist/Christians diverge from the Scripture-plain-on-its-face approach of traditionalists and fit better with those who say Scripture is always read and understood in the light of times and culture.

Is Giberson saying that although we know more facts about the world now but the essential concepts are eternal? You could ask him that -- or your own question on how he melds the two realms or, as they say, "Are we crazy?" Join the live chat today at 2 p.m. ET.Send your questions now. Or just make a comment here or message me on Twitter.

Photo by L. Allen, NASA/JPL-Caltech: This infrared image taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the "Mountains of Creation" -- towering pillars of dust aglow with the light of embryonic stars.