I love your analyses of the BSG storyline even if I may not agree all of them (the colonials-are-Cylons seem a bit far-fetched to me). I myself felt/preferred the abandoned-Earth theory. That humanity on Earth was wiped out maybe around the same time the old Cylons gained independance and that God looked for a new set of followers and found Cylons rebelling against the polytheistic humans. Starbuck's Viper disproves the former part of my theory at least.

Right now, my current feeling regarding Earth is that the people on Earth don't want to reunite with their Colonial brethern. I got that idea from virus-beacon from Torn. The fact that the people from Earth left such a dangerous marker, to me, meant "Here. You saw what we can do. Don't come closer. We don't want to be found."

Why wouldn't they want to be found? Well, I fully agree your assessment that "the-one-whose-name-can't-be-spoken", the rebellious Lord of Kobol and the Cylon God is all the same. And we all seen how similar the Cylon religion is to the Abrahamic religions (not necessarily a specific one but overall similarities) and although other "pagan" religions exist in the world, the majority of worlds population follows these Abrahamic monotheistic religions. To cut to the point, the people from Earth (a majority of them at least) worshipped this "one true God". They were the ones who followed the rebellious Lord of Kobol. They fought with the other 12 tribes and their gods. And than, (if Earth is the Homeworld) the 12 tribes left Earth, moved to Kobol and the twelve colonies or (if Kobol is the Homeworld) the 13th tribe moved as far away as possible from their polytheistic siblings while the other 12 moved to their own colonies. At any rate, they cut their ties with the Colonials and they don't want to reestablish it. And they are prepared to do anything to keep it that way.

I know there are some flaws with this. Im still not sure how the Cylons or the Final Five fit in to this. The female Hybrid calls the Final Five "the five lights of the apocalypse". The first Hybrid makes a similar reference about Starbuck. But whose apocalypse? The apocalypse of the people from Earth as the fleet comes closer? Or are the Final Five the final weapon of the people from Earth before Colonials finally reach Earth itself?

About the Final Five, maybe its me but to me they always had a somewhat sinister feel with them. Aside the "Five Lights of the apocalypse" remark above, the scenes that had them (the robed figures not Tyrol/Tory/Anders/Tigh) had always that quality. In Rapture, when they are first shown, the background song is not the soft classical song we remember the Opera House with. Instead, the song we hear there has a dark, looming quality. Same in Crossroads Pt II when Six sees them: The classical music of the "shape of things to come" fades and gets distorted as the Final Five become present, replaced by the staticky and oppressive version of the song we will hear in the end of the episode. Ok now I am being very far fetched here but I can't help feeling that the Final Five represent some kind of a danger.