together in the first place"

Dear Fred,

This statemnet from your post particularly resonated with me. According to cosmology, what brought the dust together was the gravitational pull of dark matter. Since dark matter does not couple to ordinary matter except via gravity, it clustered together long before the temperature of the universe decreased to the point where 'dust' could respond to grtavitational pull.

So the settling of 'dust'- really hydrogen and a little helium into galaxies and stars happened because of dark matter. Now that really interests me because I believe on the basis on physics that dark matter is the realm of heaven and the supernatural. In fact I believe that it is primarily a super fliud of axions. See the Dark Matter article on www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com

So my view of the development of life forms, consistent with Theosophy and other religious thought, is that the essence of life forms, like the soul, first was created in dark matter, which then became the template for similar developments in physical matter.

For example, one interpretation of the Garden of Eden story is that god created the soul of man and woman in dark matter and subsequently transmitted them into physical lifeforms. This makes the Eden story consistent with earlier creation story in Genesis.

So this is a form of creationist thinking that does not run counter to established scientific facts such as the age of the earth and the universe. On a God & Science, the common objective should be to make a synthesis of the two approaches to reality, not to tear down one or the other.

Regards,

Richard