"(which no one seems to have read. Perhaps pete******* will)"

I read it, Bill.


As children, wrong is what we get scolded for. Huge transgressions of family protocols may have the lecture accompanied by a smack on the bum to act as a reminder. Right is what's expected. I fail to see the hand of god in it. The hand of my grandmother, mother, aunt--well, that's a different thing.

The problem with this thread, near as I can figure, is that some folks who understand geology are talking with some other folks who know geology is about rocks and wondering why their points aren't getting through. I think for many of you that means you've had formal education in the subject.

I'm fairly well-read, and my interests are varied. Unfortunately, geology was never one of those interests. Nor was anthropology. Nor for that matter was religion. I will listen to anyone who knows their subject, but I will stop listening when dogmas enter the picture. I've had many two-way conversations with ministers, priests, rabbis, Buddhists, etc. They know their stuff because they studied it. Soon as any of the talk gets to "Lemme tell you the way YOU should see it" I go have a smoke or take a pee, because I do NOT give a rat's ass about listening to someone's view of how I should see god. You want to (I mean anyone here, not just Iona and Pete) tell me the way YOU see god, fine. I'll listen to that. The second you start to say how I should see god, I develop a hearing problem and sometimes a bad attitude that my grandmother would have given me the knuckles for.

Various anthropological or geological dating techniques are not always smack on the money. However, when ya see miles and miles of cliff face that has been weathered by a river (and wind, rain, snow), I'd suppose that the stuff lower down is older than the stuff higher up. That ain't rocket surgery!

I also know that science too has had BIG arguments within the discipline because educated people do on occasion see things differently, and sometimes ruling powers have interfered with the findings of science because they thought it in their own best interest to do so. That said, some things cannot be legislated. Pi would be one helluva lot easier to work with were it equal to three, but it ain't. And the dichotomy I see is this: If I witnessed a pre-neanderthal man turn into a modern man right before my eyes, no one here--religious or scientific--would believe me. And from certain argument positions that's what science people are saying, except instead of it happening in a few moments it happened over a few tens of thousand years. And the religious people say it happened too, except the time frame was six days and nights. At least both groups think it happened. That's a place to start.