History question I've been pondering

[PacificBlue]

I read today on CNN.com about an asteroid that hit the earth more than a billion years ago. If the bible is only several hundred years old...were there people here before us? Where did we come from? What was God doing that whole time?

geez...I really hope I'm not going to get hit by lightening.

 

[LukkyKnight]

It was about 3.5 billion for the one lately in the news. Made a layer of iridium and a rain of glass, so they say. My theory is it was necessary to bring us to the current point.

 

[Jedi_Outcast]

he was sitting around watching the dinosaurs and saying to himself "I hope they do something interesting soon"

 

[PacificBlue]

It was about 3.5 billion for the one lately in the news. Made a layer of iridium and a rain of glass, so they say. My theory is it was necessary to bring us to the current point.

The whole thing makes my brain hurt and I feel somewhat guilty for questioning my belief system but I also feel that it is way past time to do just that.

 

[LukkyKnight]

Your dinos are typically thought to have been around a mere 225 million years back, not much before that. We're talking 12-15 times farther back.

 

[medjay]

I read today on CNN.com about an asteroid that hit the earth more than a billion years ago. If the bible is only several hundred years old...were there people here before us? Where did we come from? What was God doing that whole time?

geez...I really hope I'm not going to get hit by lightening.

In the future we will invent time machines and send humans back in time to populate the planet. Of course something goes wrong and all the records are lost which is why we know nothing of this groundbreaking experiment.

 

[hogjack]

Consistently wrong

...somewhere along the line historians, theologians, acamedicians, and scientists got very confused.

A billion years ago it was a very bad case of hemoroids that hit everything on Earth. Very bad... eventually wiped out just about every living thing except for an early humanoid line.

The asteroid story is oft repeated but don't buy it. That's one of those myths that becomes fact for various disciplines.

 

[RhumbRunner13]

PB, there have been many "impact events" in Earth's history and to some degree most of the larger greatly altered life on Earth. The most notable at this time is a very large comet or astroid that impacted near the Yucatan and was so devastating that all the dinosaurs were wiped out.

Here is a link that will get you started on the different "ages" of the Earth. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cenozoic/cenozoic.html

You can link from this article on the Cenozoic to the previous eras.

Rhumb

 

[PacificBlue]

PB, there have been many "impact events" in Earth's history and to some degree most of the larger greatly altered life on Earth. The most notable at this time is a very large comet or astroid that impacted near the Yucatan and was so devastating that all the dinosaurs were wiped out.

Here is a link that will get you started on the different "ages" of the Earth. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cenozoic/cenozoic.html

You can link from this article on the Cenozoic to the previous eras.

Rhumb

Thank you for the website. I'll check it out tomorrow when my brain is functioning better and be back with questions most likely.

 

[LukkyKnight]

PB, there have been many "impact events" in Earth's history and to some degree most of the larger greatly altered life on Earth. The most notable at this time is a very large comet or astroid that impacted near the Yucatan and was so devastating that all the dinosaurs were wiped out.

This one she's describing is actually thought to have been significantly larger, but so much earlier there were no dinos to wipe out... in fact, virtually no landmasses yet. So, the impact on life was not so devastatingly obvious, but it's still fairly notable.

 

[Weird Harold]

I read today on CNN.com about an asteroid that hit the earth more than a billion years ago. If the bible is only several hundred years old...were there people here before us? Where did we come from? What was God doing that whole time?

geez...I really hope I'm not going to get hit by lightening.

Here's alink to MSNBC's story on "a catastrophe that would be billed as the oldest-known meteor impact on Earth."
http://www.msnbc.com/news/797736.asp?pne=11947&0ct=-300&cp1=1

This is NOT the one that killed the dinosaurs. The most advance life on earth at the time was probably single celled if even that advanced.

Although, if this link from Space.com is correct, then it might be the one that's responsible for Literotica.
http://www******.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/origin_sex_010710.html

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

I read today on CNN.com about an asteroid that hit the earth more than a billion years ago. If the bible is only several hundred years old...were there people here before us? Where did we come from? What was God doing that whole time?

The Bible is supposedly about 6 thousand years old if you count from the time that the story begins and do not account for the 7 time periods it takes to "create" the earth. If you believe that the author of Genesis was Moses, as some do, then the Bible is about 3500 years old from when Genesis was written. Others have argued for a later creation by other authors which would make it about 2800-2900 years old.

So, the Bible is not "only several hundred years old" by anyone's count.

Archeological evidence indicates that humans have been around for at least several hundred thousand years. Certainly "modern" humans, indistinguishable have been around for over 30,000 years.

As for your question of what God was doing all that time - I imagine lots of things, but I would point out something you don't seem to be considering; time may not pass in the same way for God as it does for us. For one thing, most who believe in God, believe that God exists in a different time frame from us, indeed in a different dimension.

 

[PacificBlue]

Good Point STG. However...was he alone all that time in that different dimension? How did he get there? The whole thing makes my brain hurt.

Christianity couldn't have been the start of everything. Some 'religions' are older than ours. How do we know we are right?

Good grief...just reading through the old testament...the jews have been catching it for years...why?

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

15 Billion Years Ago: An infinite point of mass with infinite density erupts in a singularity. Withing seconds space-time, the elements, and all the laws of physics are formed, and the universe begins to expand and cool. From that moment on there wasn't anything for "God" to do but sit back and watch.

God was fashioned through the ages by men and women who felt that the earth is, was, and always would be a constant Garden with unchanging lands and seas; that all the creatures on earth have always been here; that the stars, some several hundred in number, and no more, were fixed and weren't all that far away, maybe a few hundred miles, and, like the planets, turned on great concentric spheres overhead; that flies and fleas were formed spontaneously out of mud; that humors controlled all disease in the body; that the earth was unmovable and centered and, therefore, important; that personal wickedness caused thunderstorms and volcanos could be placated with fruit; and that all this wonderful Creation was, most obviously, an orchestrated thing with Man placed firmly in the center. Of course we created an Architect, that favored us, loved us, guided us, and expected worship from us.

Humans and Gorillas both evolved separately from an ancestor they shared some 5-6 million years ago. Since that time there have been several different types of humans walking this planet, at the same time. That must have been a strange time. Today there are different kinds of dogs, diferent kinds of horses, but only one type of human. Millions of years ago (even hundreds of thousands of years ago) that wasn't the case. Still, eventually only one species survived to migrate and create teflon -- Homo Sapiens, us.

Some 30,000-100,000 years ago we were populous and successfull enough to begin creating sizable communities, cities, and cultures. Writings some 5000 years old survive, and still guide us today (I'm thinking older than the Bible, with books like the I Ching).

Unfortunately people still tend to look out their front door and see an unmovable Earth with no tectonic plates, and stars that seem close and quiet without the need for star nurseries and curved space, and history is dated by adding the number of begats in the Bible instead of the order of fosills in the strata, and it's agreeable to believe that we're in the center of a tiny cosmos designed for us alone and it is right to give thanks and praise and listen to the Creationists tell us that Evolution is just a "Theory" as if they understood what that means.

Pacific, you don't have to leave the Bible out of the equation to contemplate the true breadth of history - - but in your investigation you might want to find some other books from which to make your start.

As for God, well, there may not have been anything for him to do after the Big Bang, but there's plenty of room for him before it. A lot of faithful physicists put him there.

 

[RosevilleCAguy]

I read today on CNN.com about an asteroid that hit the earth more than a billion years ago. If the bible is only several hundred years old...were there people here before us? Where did we come from? What was God doing that whole time?

geez...I really hope I'm not going to get hit by lightening.

The bible is older that that. God just had trouble finding a publisher.

What God was doing at that time was trying to hit the earth with rocks......(sheesh)

You will NOT get hit by lightning, just another huge fucking rock from space.

 

[WaxNWane]

Christianity couldn't have been the start of everything. Some 'religions' are older than ours. How do we know we are right?

Christianity is, like every religion, derivative. The creation story closely follows a Sumerian story; much of the mythology echoes some Egyptian and Babylonian beliefs. The Christ story has plenty of parallels in earlier religions. Christian holidays follow older pagan ones quite faithfully (no pun intended). Easter, for example - vernal equinox celebration - usually a fertility ritual..birth/rebirth/resurrection. Christmas...winter solstice celebration. The things tied to those holidays, easter bunnies, Christmas trees, etc., have pagan roots. I've had co-workers who won't let their kids go trick or treat on Halloween because it's a 'pagan' holiday. Their business, of course...but they're all pagan holidays at their roots. And, "pagan" is a misnomer, since everybody is someone else's pagans.

Not anything unusual about all that - religions have been copying each other for as far back as we can trace. The Roman religion was a pretty nice copy of the Greeks. The Greek religion can be traced back, too - Phoenicians & Babylonians, if I remember correctly. Those probably go back to preceding ones, too.

As for which one is right, well, that's like asking which flavor of ice cream is right. The ingredients are pretty much the same, so you pick the one you like...though with religion I think most typically take the one they're presented with as children.

But I'm no expert...where's Ms. Collie?

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

Good Point STG. However...was he alone all that time in that different dimension? How did he get there? The whole thing makes my brain hurt.

The answers to that I do not know - in some 50-80 years you will get the chance to ask him, otherwise make up something probable because as far as I am concerned it is not that important to my Christianity.

Christianity couldn't have been the start of everything. Some 'religions' are older than ours.

If you believe in the "Christian God", then God was there to begin with, always had been there and always will be. Christianity itself has officially been around for approximately 2000 years, but you can go back further in the Bible to find references to Christ, so you can say it is in a way at least as old as the Bible. If you understand/believe that God and Christ are essentially one and the same, then in a way Christianity has been around forever.

How do we know we are right?

We don't know - we believe. If you want absolute proof one way or the other then you can either wait until you die or until Christ comes back to earth, whichever comes first. Why do I believe in Christianity? Why do I think it is the "one true religion"? Mostly because that is the way I was raised, but also because it is the one religion that that most closely describes the way our world works philosophically, and in a much looser sense, the way the universe was created, etc.

 

[islandman]

geez...I really hope I'm not going to get hit by lightening.

With an ass like that, sugah, i wouldn't be surprised.

 

[MunchinMark]

I've been very interested in this thread, with it's two themes of 'a very long time ago' and 'what's with religion anyway?' I'm not stupid enough to give my opinion on the latter, but recognisable humans have been around for about 100,000 years. Dinosaurs dissapeared 65,000,000 years ago (an asteroid did indeed hit the Earth at this time). Most multicellular animal groups have an origin between 1000,000,000 years ago (1 American billion, although most people use this now, the old English billion is a million million. The Universe isn't an English billion years old), when a huge ice age almost completely froze the Earth over and 540,000,000 years ago when lots of animals invented hard parts, like shell and bone.

3.5 billion years ago (3500,000,000) colonial bacteria were the most sophisticated living things around. The Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago along with the rest of the solar system.

All of these dates are based on measuring the relative proportions of radioactive elements in old rocks and comparing it to the proportions that were there in the first place.

Asteroids hit us all the time (shooting stars and meteorites). Usually they aren't big enough to cause damage. Sometimes they are big enough but they miss anything that people care about. The Tunguska event of 1912 was probably a piece of comet, it exploded in Siberia leveling trees and cooking reindeer. If it had hit the same latitude a few hours later (so that the Earth had turned a bit) it would have leveled Paris.

And sometimes they hit hard and do a lot of damage.

 

[PacificBlue]

Pacific, you don't have to leave the Bible out of the equation to contemplate the true breadth of history - - but in your investigation you might want to find some other books from which to make your start.

Do you have any recommendations?

 

[MunchinMark]

There are so many different books, because we have a few different subjects here. Perhaps a general book on ancient history, a book on ancient life (lots and lots of these, I can recommend the collected essays of Stephen Jay Gould, who died recently) and a book about astronomy- probably with 'universe' in the title.

'The Science of Discworld' uses the 'Grandfather' as a unit of time to bring time into a human perspective. Taking 50 years as the average difference between a man and his grandchild, Christ was giving free healthcare to dead people just under 40 grandfathers ago. The Pyramids were new 120 grandfathers ago. There are only 2000 grandfathers' worth of recognisably modern humans, out of which only the last 500 knew how to farm.

Abraham supposedly founded Judaism (it could have been a slower process), and set the foundations for the most popular modern faiths only 110 grandfathers ago. After 1890 grandfathers worth of humanity had already lived and died.

 

[gotdatmony]

POLITICS, RELIGION AND WETHER YOU ARE BORN GAY OR NOT,,,ARE PLACES WE DON'T NEED TO BE GOIN.....

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Well, we've already been to a tractor pull, so I'm afraid you'll have to walk from here on. Get out, and thanks for the gas money.

 

[gotdatmony]

Dixon..c'mon...to lump me into a tractor pull catagory, because I am from Texas, is like me dumping you into the sesspool of drug abusing faggot night crawlers, gang bangers,,wanna be stars that hang out is your neck of the woods

And if I did that,,,I feel I would be wrong,,,so I won't

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

So you've never been to a tracor pull? Because Los Angeles actually IS a cesspool of drug abusing faggot night crawlers, gang bangers, and wanna be stars.