Quote: "I seem to remember something in Genesis about Forbidden fruit."

I tried to cover that back on page 10 with a bit of whimsy and Terence MacKenna.

Most of the guide books to better living that were written more than few thousand years ago were meant to be very much grounded in reality. And as human behavior goes, many people still find some good guidelines. 

Reading the other posts in this thread, I know everyone is clear where these guidelines have been abused over the centuries, and where a lack of the facts have doomed some to be the ideological prisoners of the best science that the 3rd Century had to offer. 

Sure, there's a big difference between the timeline of the Big Bang and a seven day week of Creation. And a lot of people argue that one must have one or the other. 

I believe that seven days wasn't a literal seven days but I don't think its about the Big Bang at all. I believe its more about our own creative human abilities to identify, judge, and make distinctions and that the early shamans were trying to quantify these abilities into a set of actions that would reap the desired result. And they were all trying to do it without Stephen Hawking or a National Geographic special anywhere in sight. It's been rough and religion has been its own worst enemy at times but I think it has over the long haul made Hawking and the Society possible. 

To me, it seems like its taken a long time to build this tower of babel and we're lucky to live in a time that knows about quarks and black holes. Where Bill can develop his Animotes (very cool btw) and we discuss all this stuff around the world without going kookoo. 

To be sure, in some places today and a thousand years ago we would all have to killed for thinking.

Yes, Bill, I'm trackin' ya, "You can't fool me, its turtles all the way down." ; )