When, then, the question is asked what we are to believe in regard to religion, it is not necessary to probe into the nature of things, as was done by those whom the Greeks call physici; nor need we be in alarm lest the Christian should be ignorant of the force and number of the elements,–the motion, and order, and eclipses of the heavenly bodies; the form of the heavens; the species and the natures of animals, plants, stones, fountains, rivers, mountains; about chronology and distances; the signs of coming storms; and a thousand other things which those philosophers either have found out, or think they have found out. For even these men themselves, endowed though they are with so much genius, burning with zeal, abounding in leisure, tracking some things by the aid of human conjecture, searching into others with the aids of history and experience, have not found out all things; and even their boasted discoveries are oftener mere guesses than certain knowledge. It is enough for the Christian to believe that the only cause of all created things, whether heavenly or earthly, whether visible or invisible, is the goodness of the Creator the one true God; and that nothing exists but Himself that does not derive its existence from Him; and that He is the Trinity–to wit, the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of Father and Son.

St. Augustine, The Enchiridion, Chapter 9

I cannot count the number of times that I have been called a "heretic" and "unbeliever" simply because of the views I have espoused in relation to origins and the philosophical absurdity that I believe is engengered by those who wish to make dogmatic "creationist" conceptions of the origin of the universe and God's relation to it.

I believe Augustine–over 1500 years ago–gives some of the best advice possible. As seen, he notes that the advancement of knowledge about the universe has absolutely no bearing upon faith, for faith in and of itself is adequate only to affirm the mystery of God's creative and sustaining work within creation, not to articulate the means and processes by which said involvment is actualized phenomenologically in the universe.

I think many creationists would do well to take Augustine's advice to heart and leave off of making essential issues of belief that cannot–by virtue of their very nature–be known, either to the person of scientific knowledge or the person of faith. In other words, neither science nor faith can identify the mysterious ways in which God is involved in the creation. As I have argued elsewhere, over-zealous attempts to do so results in an even more terrifyingly materialist conception of origins than that of the athiest who wishes to deny the existence of God entirely. The Christian, then, should be content to affirm those things of faith that are essential to the orthodoxy of the Church (as Augustine outlines), and not make dogmatic those things that categorically cannot be ascertained by any means of investigation, be they religious or scientific.