> But intuitively it just seems as though 5 billion years and a large number of experimental creatures is not enough time or fodder to get mechanisms as complex as the eye or liver or even a little virus.
You have an intuitive understanding of 5 billion years? Wow. Most people can't wrap their minds around a few decades and the changes that they bring.
"You have an intuitive understanding of 5 billion years? Wow. Most people can't wrap their minds around a few decades and the changes that they bring.
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Excellent point. My family on my father's side is Mormon, although my father is not. So, I remember visiting his Mother a few times. She was very much into the geneology of the family, and had done years of research, trying to get information farther and farther back.
When she died, she had only managed about 8 generations before herself, and a lot of that was pretty sketchy. This, with the help of the LDS geneology records.
We generally think about generations as being around 20-30 years long, or something like that. So, at most, she was able to go back no more than 200 years before there was no trace in the records of ancestors.
200 years.
Nobody has an intuitive feeling about billions of years, or even millions. We know a little bit about the times a couple thousand years a go, but not a lot. We can look back in human history for maybe 4-5000 years, but at that point, we're dealing with artifacts, not language, for the most part.
Well, that's not far, is it. If we look at how shadowy our knowledge of 2,000 years is, think about 1000 of those time periods to equal 2 million years. 1000 times the time since Jesus. What might have happened in each of those 2000 year periods? We have no idea. And that's only 100 generations or so.
And now, look at that 2 million years, and try to imagine 1000 of those 2 million year periods. That gets you to 2 billion years ago. It's incomprehensible.
I have never found it surprising that evolution has taken place in such a long period of time.
You have an intuitive understanding of 5 billion years? Wow. Most people can't wrap their minds around a few decades and the changes that they bring.
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Yeah I should have more strongly qualified that statement as being totally unscientific, I agree. The only rationale I can give for my intuition is studying the scale of changes across geologic time as well as what I have learned about how the universe has evolved over time, that's what, only 20 billion years old?
Or I could just fall back on my Hindu roots and assert that I have a really really really old reincarnated soul... ;D
You have an intuitive understanding of 5 billion years? Wow. Most people can't wrap their minds around a few decades and the changes that they bring.
---
Yeah I should have more strongly qualified that statement as being totally unscientific, I agree. The only rationale I can give for my intuition is studying the scale of changes across geologic time as well as what I have learned about how the universe has evolved over time, that's what, only 20 billion years old?
Or I could just fall back on my Hindu roots and assert that I have a really really really old reincarnated soul... ;D