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To: Theo
Check out, especially, the three models, specifically the "orchard" one. Fascinating stuff!

Indeed. I've read a few chapters; don't agree with all of it, but agree it's fascinating.

There seems to be an overly strong regard for certain things like the 'days' of creation. Given that the term 'day' has no natural global meaning, and given that the term has no particularly logical meaning in the absence of the Sun, I see no reason to attach anything resembling the modern '24 hour' meaning to the term.

Further, the argument for 'Intelligent Design' seems to be, essentially, "There's all this cool stuff; it couldn't have happened by accident. Therefore, it must have been created by a god--presumably the one we worship." I would counter that it would be much more reasonable to say, "There's all this cool stuff; even taking into account the huge selection bias that we're only looking at a planet with enough biodiversity to include us, it's unlikely that all the cool stuff happened by change; it was most likely formed or manipulated by some entity we do not understand, though the nature of such entity is unknown." There are a lot of theories that have been proposed, with varying degrees of seriousness, involving other planets and galaxies in the formation of this one. Some theories are atheistic (e.g. life was created by physically-existing creatures from another galaxy); some involve creative Biblical interpretation (the Ark was really a space ship). While many of the theories aren't very well falsifiable, the fact that they would be plausible renders the 'it can't have been anything other than a god' argument ineffective.

25 posted on 06/03/2008 8:54:27 PM PDT by supercat
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BTW, when the article talks about “Y chromosome Adam”, why not “Y chromosome Noah”? Is not he the progenitor of all post-diluvian people?


26 posted on 06/03/2008 8:58:27 PM PDT by supercat
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