[Disclaimer: This is a satirical news piece, just for fun, read at your own risk!]

New Evidence Suggests the Garden of Eden is in Boca Raton

Scientists do about face on Garden of Eden

Revolutionary developments in science happen infrequently. Copernicus upended Ptolemy’s earth-centric model of the universe. Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation. Einstein recalibrated Newtonian physics with his general theory of relativity. Yet none of these developments seem quite as striking as Dr. Dev Olvin Gaffe’s recent discovery that the Garden of Eden is in Boca Raton.

garden of edenEver since Darwin published The Origin of Species nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, scientists have regarded the concept of the Garden of Eden with intense skepticism. For it was widely-accepted that man evolved from apes, over time, through a process of natural selection.

This sentiment has changed. Major figureheads in the field now believe everyone from Galileo to Stephen Hawking were seriously misguided. The Big Bang Theory, for example, is now considered way off-kilter. The Earth isn’t 4.5 Billion years old. Instead it came into being in the 4th millennium B.C., as described in the Book of Genesis, with the dinosaurs emerging shortly thereafter.

The main piece of evidence for Dr. Gaffe’s finding is a mysterious big toe Gaffe found while watering his mother’s geraniums. Gaffe insists it belonged to Adam, the first man.

A detailed lab examination and series of DNA tests revealed this big toe was immortal—thousands of years old and yet showing absolutely no signs of decomposition. What is more there is a tattoo of a disrobed, Nubian goddess beneath the toenail that Gaffe insists is a depiction of Eve. He believes God made Adam and Eve mortal for eating from the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil but messed up with regard to Adam’s big toe. He realizes the concept of a “divine toe error” is difficult to test empirically but insists it is the most “statistically-probable scenario.”

The other convincing piece of evidence is a stump that was formerly the Tree of Life, the trunk having been cut down to make way for The Sea Ranch Club Condos. An examination of said stump revealed it, too, to be roughly 6,000 years old, and, shockingly, to be similarly immortal.

This is not the first time an alternate location for The Garden of Eden has been suggested. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has long insisted the Garden of Eden is in Jackson, Mississippi. The Garden of Odor Food Odor Cream Inc., meanwhile, believes it is in their shipping depot in Minneapolis. What is new here is that the scientific community sponsors these heretical ideas.

“Thanks to Dr. Gaffe, when I want the latest evolutionary news, I listen carefully to sermons by the Pope,” said Homer Zoomerical, editor of The Journal of Evolutionary Biology. These types of statements are shocking, particularly since Zoomerical formerly got in a fist fight with Jerry Falwell over what he considered Falwell’s “idiotic creationist doggerel.”

When asked for a comment the Pope said “praise our Father who art in heaven.” He went on to suggest that it won’t be long before other important biblical sites are found—The Tower of Babble, which he believes is a code word for the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah, which he insists are at Stonehenge, and Noah’s Ark, which he suspects are the waterlogged ruins of the Titanic.

While most scientists have begrudgingly accepted these new ideas, a few have committed suicide, or, even worse, became abstract artists. “50 years of incessant toil destroyed,” said one naturalist, Dr. Gregory Saunders, who left Dr. Gaffe’s lab gnashing his teeth. “To think that the Scopes Trial got it all wrong!” He was asked for further comment but was too busy stretching a canvas and splattering paint upon it in an homage to Jackson Pollock.

Residents of Boca, meanwhile, seemed to be taking the hubbub in stride. Jack and Mindy Horowitz, two retirees hoping to catch the Early Bird Special, were rather sanguine about Dr. Gaffe’s findings. “Boca has always been paradise to us,” they said. “Maybe now it can be paradise to us all.”

Matt Nagin
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