Early Earth more Garden of Edenish than Hellish

The Intelligent Design believers are going to love this:

Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have challenged the belief that the Earth - 4.5 billion years ago - was a violent, hot and hellish place.

A unique method of testing the temperature at which rocks were formed shows the early Earth environment would have been similar to today.

Geologist Professor Mark Harrison says that period in time had been labelled Hadean Eon, "the hellish time".

"The chances are that if you showed up for an afternoon on the early Earth, you would have seen blue oceans and sky, continents sticking out with roughly the same mass that we have today, and a fairly ordered environment."

So, maybe all of that stuff I – we – learned at school about the early Earth was wrong. The early Earth might have been the sort of place it is today, just as God intended. (Don't get me wrong, I'm an atheist but maybe, just maybe...)