Viraj's Weblog

From Francis Collins' Language of God:

A major part of the problem in accepting the theory of evolution is that it requires one to grasp the significance of extremely long periods of time involved in the process. Such intervals are unimaginably beyond individual experience. One way to reduce the eons of history into a more comprehensible form is to imagine what would happen if the 4.5 billion years of the earth's existence, from initial formation to today, were instead compressed into a tweny-four-hour day. If the earth was formed at 12:01 AM, then life would appear at about 3:30 AM. After a long day of slow progression to multicellular organisms, the Cambrian explosion would finally occur at about 9 PM. Later that evening, dinosaurs would roam the earth. Their extinction would occur at 11:40 PM, at which time the mammals would begin to expand.

The divergence of branches leading to chimps and humans would occur with only one minute and seventeen seconds remaining in the day, and anatomically modern humans would appear with just 3 seconds left. The life of a middle-aged human on earth today would occupy only the last millisecond (one-thousandth of a second). It is not surprising that many of us have a great deal of difficulty contemplating evolutionary time.

We occupy a meager 3 seconds in this timeline. Think about your life lasting 1 millisecond. This really conveys the insignificance of our presence, and yet also the significance of our accomplishments within such a short time.