FreeThought Fort Wayne

I’m circling October 3, 2008 on my calendar.

I might even take the day off, even though I’m really only concerned with the 15 minutes or so before and after 8:31 and 40 seconds A.M.

Am I that excited for Halloween? Maybe, but that’s irrelevant. Marking the one-month countdown to the General Election? Again, exciting, but no. So, what’s the significance? I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, I’d like to talk about time and perspective. We as humans tend to drastically overstate our role in the history of the planet. It’s difficult for us to wrap our heads around the age of the Earth, let alone the age of the universe. When we discuss something like evolution, we can’t truly understand how it really works unless we understand the enormity of time - specifically, the 4.5 billion years or so that the planet has existed in a form somewhat similar to what we know today. We expect that if evolution is true, we must see new species arise within our lifetime, or else there’s no way that all of this life could have “randomly” evolved over the life of the earth.

I’m 31 years old. I don’t think of myself as terribly accomplished, but when you start to consider the mundane successes, things really add up quickly. Since I was born, I have grown over 50 inches in height, and (unfortunately) over 200 lbs in weight. I’ve probably consumed over 20 million calories. I’ve completed around 18 calendar years of educational instruction, culminating in a bachelor’s degree (with honors - not to brag, though). I’ve held about a dozen jobs. I’ve earned hundreds of thousands of dollars. (I’ve spent more than that - but the balance sheet is starting to even out.) I’ve written, spoken, and listened to more words than I know how to accurately count. I’ve met thousands of people. I’ve convinced a few of the females I’ve met to sleep with me. I convinced one of them to marry me. I’ve seen over a thousand movies and read a few hundred books. I’ve taught myself how to juggle.

The list goes on, but I’ll now share something I haven’t accomplished: I haven’t seen my first billion seconds. That milestone occurs sometime around 8:31:40 A.M. on October 3, 2008. So here’s the perspective: On that future date, to compare my almost-32-year-old life to the age of the planet, each second would have to last 4.5 years. Over an olympiad. Using such a comparison, the dinosaurs didn’t die out until last April. We tool-using humans don’t show up until after September 30, 2008. Most of my neighbors will have had their October 3, 2008 morning coffee well before Stonehenge and the Pyramids were constructed, and before a fella named Caesar showed up. If I take a bathroom break or get sucked into a morning talk show conversation on October 3, I could very well miss the entire history of the United States. A sneeze and it’s subsequent “bless you” could cause me to miss my own birth.

Excepting my own personal experiences, this is not a new conversation. If you express the age of the earth against more understandable time frames, the results are astounding. The messages here are A. Temporally speaking we are very, very tiny, and B. Evolution had plenty of time in which to work.

(Play around for yourself here.)