Subject: More on those fossils, etc.

        About those fossils and the question of Noah's Flood, I
pointed out that the flood hypothesis had become discredited in the
early nineteenth century. Before that, of course, they had been
thought by some to be excellent evidence for that great deluge, so
much that Voltaire, who was sort of a Deist and who opposed the
Church, felt forced to discredit them. Interestingly, at the turn of
that century, there were some, like Cuvier, who theorized that the
Flood was only the latest of great catastrophes that had afflicted our
planet. Evidence? He cited not just the Bible, but a lot of other
ancient legends which seemed to indicate floods. It's curious to think
that what is now looked upon as crackpottery (consider Velikovsky) was
once considered sober science. Perhaps the standards of science over
the last century or so are too high :-). In the early nineteenth
century, the main evidence cited for Noah's Flood were various
deposits of gravel found in northerly locales. But the implied flow
patterns of the "water" was from nearby hills, and these deposits are
remarkably similar to deposits left behind by present-day glaciers.
The conclusion: these deposits were left by H2O, but in the solid
rather than the liquid phase. They were left behind by Ice Age
glaciers. One eminent geologist in the mid-nineteenth century as much
as admitted as the earlier theory that they had been due to Noah's
Flood was in error.

        And many of these early-nineteenth-century geologists, like
Cuvier, were creationists, though they believed in special creations
over geological time, rather than all at once. The "creator" (an
"unknown force", they usually called it) must have been coming up with
more advanced models of organisms with time, perhaps. But that was
before Darwin published his convincing case for evolution. As he
points out, if different species are special creations, then the
"creator" must have been terribly uncreative -- one who practices
self-plagiarism on a massive scale. What is the profound purpose in
having us and the chimpanzees have DNA with about 99% matching? Ronald
Reagan, for one, has much more in common with Bonzo the Chimp than he
would care to admit.

        Maybe I was a bit flamey about women, but I really feel
offended by male misogyny. There is the subtext that if I do not hate
women, than I am a traitor to my sex. And I do not want to hate women.
And I don't want to feel that I have to. If not hate, then looking
down upon, or whatever unkind thing.

        As was well pointed out about the origin of our Government,
there is no sign of God's signature on any of this nation's important
documents; the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, etc.
Look at the names of the people who signed. "God" is nowhere to be
found.  Indeed, in a diplomatic message to Malta, George Washington
stated that "the United States is in no way founded upon the Christian
religion."

Here is my "true" signature:

                                                        ^
Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster                    \  ^  /
        loren@moonzappa.llnl.gov                      \ ^ /
One may need to route through any of:                  \^/
        sunlight.llnl.gov                       <<<<<<<<+>>>>>>>>
        lll-lcc.llnl.gov                               /v\
        lll-crg.llnl.gov                              / v \
        star.stanford.edu                            /  v  \
                                                        v
"I'm just a spud boy looking for that real tomato" -- Devo