Perry,
I'm glad you appreciate the gentle give and take of polite conversation. Personally, I really have no reason to be nasty, as the JW's have not in any way decimated my life, (I'm what they refer to as an unbelieving mate.) and like I've said on other threads, I was a very gung-ho creationist decades ago and let go of that belief only with the utmost reluctance.
You've stated that Eve was not a clone of Adam and in the spirit of polite conversation, I give you that. A clone (As the term is used by laymen) is by definition an exact copy and therefore would be the same gender as the parent organism.
There is however a huge qualification, inasmuch as the Eve you have described is a clone in all other respects save that of gender. Forty-five of her forty-six chromosomes are identical to Adam's (Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding)
It would be an utter disaster for a man and woman this closely related to produce offspring, which fact is typically sidestepped in creationist circles via the notion of, "Perfection." (i.e. Genetic redundancy was not necessary since Adam and Eve had no genetic flaws whatsoever.)
To be fair, this is science fiction, not theology, but I'll give you this too. Let's assume that Adam (And by extension, Eve) had no harmful recessives whatsoever.
The problem I described still stands. With the exception of the Y chromosome, (Which only has about seventy genes as opposed to more than a thousand in the X) how is it possible for any given portion of Eve's genetic material to be different than Adam's? (Again, as you've described it.)
You stated that, "..there are all sorts of genetic re-configurations possible using any number of segments of DNA that go into action once the process is started with conception."
I understand how this works when the male and female are carrying their own unique sets of alleles. The randomization of meiosis will produce a zygote different than either of the two parents.
How does this work when the parents are genetically identical in every other respect but gender??
Similarly, I agree with you that from, "the moment of conception, the new life is genetically male or female."
I haven't suggested otherwise. Whether you want to or not, you still have chichis, just like I do and Cofty does and every other male. We possess non-functioning mammary glands, which normally require two X chromosomes to develop. We also have a very minuscule uterus that never developed either.
Unless we want to assert that Adam was different in these respects than men are today, which would be more science fiction, the female of the species was clearly designed prior to the creation of Adam and not afterwards as the rib story implies.