Dan
No rush. It's not like I have a life. ;-)
But I wanted to say in the meanwhile that you did some really good work there, I appreciate it, and here at my work I am now visibly and symbolically doffing my hat {pause} to you.
Thanks.
Actually, I didn't even include hyperlinks to all the sites that I looked at, because it would have taken too much time. So it could have been even better. Shame about your sucky attitude...
That's pretty much de rigueur for Free Republic, isn't it? ;-) In fact, isn't it for all Internet discussion boards? ;-) It's why no respectable people (present company excluded) post on Internet discussion boards. ;-)--->Except about the "present company excluded".
...and philosophical bias,
No, as I said before, I have no beliefs. Of any kind. I don't "believe" in SCIENTIFIC explanations of why the world looks the way it does, any more than I believe in any of the hundreds of religious/mythological explanations for why the world looks the way it does.
What I DO have is a very strong tendency to apply Occam's Razor to explanations of the world:
Occam's Razor explained and discussed
The principle states that "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily."
Or, in the even stronger versions:
Occam's razor is often cited in stronger forms than Occam intended, as in the following statements...
"If you have two theories which both explain the observed facts then you should use the simplest until more evidence comes along"
"The simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations."
"If you have two equally likely solutions to a problem, pick the simplest."
"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."
In this case, if Occam's Razor is applied to figuring out why we have white people, black people, brown people, red people, yellow people...it seems to make much more sense that they evolved that way after being separated for a long, long time...rather than coming from a single family only 4000 years ago.
I respect, and intend to give you a fuller response ASAP.
As I said, no rush. I respect YOUR attempt at giving a fuller response. A friend of mine is a young-earth, Flood, Genesis-exactly-as-written creationist. He never seems to get around to answering my specific questions, such as "What races were the people on the Ark? Were they all one race, and if so, which one?"
Best wishes, Mark
P.S. As I've noted before, I don't really have a serious problem with the alleged Resurrection. I don't see that question as being amenable to being answered by science...and is therefore legitimately a matter for religion, if that's the way one's tastes run.