Let me start by saying that I always thought that Uncle H, my mom’s youngest brother, was a fun dude, athletic, good tennis player, etc., and as I got older, a good man and loving father.  In spite of what I’m about to get into, he still is a good man in my mind.  For me, family ties trump differences in ideology (if you let it).

I wasn’t around for the fiery arguments between my father and Uncle H, (I was probably busy ditching SAT prep class or some such thing), but years later, pops gave me a brief synopsis.  It went something like this:

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Uncle H:  “Studies have led biblical scholars to the conclusion that the Earth is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 years old.”

Dad:  “Ok, radiocarbon dating tends to be increasingly unreliable with specimens older than 40,000 years, I’ll give you that.  But with the method of potassium-argon dating, geologists have been able to date rocks to be as old as four billion years old.”

Uncle:  “The scientists are just plain wrong.  The Bible tells me so.”
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So when I read some recent news (nod to *hydrated*) about the roots of the human genome, one of my first thoughts was, “Cripes, if there ever was a …

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