Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Alice on May 29, 2011 at 5:23am

Hi Bwambale - I'll have a look for you - regarding the amount of time humans have been on earth - as we are evolving all the time it's hard to say how long we have been on earth, because really we are ancestors of the first life on earth with a continual chain of life from then on - I don't know the exact figures for this stuff - but I'm sure I can find it online - so I'll get back to you... :)

 

Regarding Angels - it's a nice mythology - or story - but I agree there are no such things as Angels and I'm not sure how or why this myth started - but I'm sure there is a story about this also.

Permalink Reply by Grace Fitzpatrick on May 29, 2011 at 5:24am

This is the best human evolution timeline from a reputable source that I could find quickly:  http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010723/timeline.html   Here's another from wikipedia of the cosmic calender:  http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010723/timeline.html    I tried to find the really neat one Carl Sagan had on his show, but I couldn't find it quickly. 

 

There may be flying people on some other plane of existence, but since we don't interact with other planes of existence, why worry about it?  It's like living in the middle of the Sahara desert and living in terror of being eaten by a shark.  Of course, unlike angels sharks are demonstratively real.  If angels start biting people, maybe then I'll start believing and worrying about them. 

Permalink Reply by Alice on May 29, 2011 at 6:08am

flying people on another plane of existence?  I doubt it - it's a very long shot - I presume that you are meaning that another type of life that resembles human beings but with wings, might have evolved on another planet in another solar system a long way off.  I doubt it, because humans have evolved the way they have based on genes and usefulness - and I can't see how an upright walking person would evolved wings when they are quite fine walking - although it is a possibility I suppose on another planet with different circumstances and evolutionary directions - although to find another human like life would be quite amazing I think - a very long shot on it's own, never mind with wings also...

Permalink Reply by Grace Fitzpatrick on May 29, 2011 at 8:22am

There is this idea that our reality is but a thin layer of among many realities.  As far as I know, this is not a scientific theory, but a theory of people who go around thinking what is reality?  In the reality that we all currently share,  it is unlikely there are winged people.

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on May 29, 2011 at 11:12am

Essentially, you'd have to make SO many other modifications to our physiology, the flying humans wouldn't look much like us.  The classic view is taking a human and sticking wings on the back.  Bingo, angel.

 

Something like that wouldn't be able to fly.  You can sort of see it when you look at bats.  Their wings are freaking huge, compared to their body.  Birds only manage to pull off the lower wing-to-body ratio because of their hallow bones.

 

I think my point was that in order to get humans with wings on their backs, you'd have to step back very far in our evolutionary history, to the point that what emerged after the tweaks you made would not look anything like us.

 

The biggest problem I see is that vertebrates tend to be quadrupedal.  Angels would be hexapedal.  The way you'd gain wings through Evolution is by turning the arms into them.

Permalink Reply by Napoleon Bonaparte on May 29, 2011 at 1:09pm

I agree.

Flying mammals have extended light bone in the front limbs/fingers with attached tissue to form wings and first appeared about 50 million years ago. Gliding mammals preceded flying mammals and instead have tissue connecting the front and hind limbs to form a gliding plane. Flying and gliding mammals evolved from early tree-dwelling mammals as did our primate ancestors. It was around this time (60 million years +) that mammals began to diversify and limbs became wings, flippers, dexterous hands or disappeared and so on. When our primate ancestors left the trees and later became bipedal only 4 million or so years ago it was apparent that primates would never fly or glide and certainly wouldn't become hexapedal.

Permalink Reply by Alice on May 29, 2011 at 7:08pm

Bwambale - Yes - I'd recommend Dawkin's book - The Greatest Show on Earth - as a great read to understanding the science behind evolution - so that you have a better understanding of how humans have evolved and therefore what the possibilities are - in that you would better understand the parameters of possibilities in terms of evolution to understand what Joseph is saying here... :)

 

In other words - if you read this book it makes more sense why angels aren't a possibility - in terms of evolution and evidence.

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on May 30, 2011 at 12:58pm

Yeah, my point wasn't even about evidence ... but that even allowing for the most out there science-fiction concepts, it just doesn't work.  Even if you could get past the issue of figuring out the mechanism for visions to pass between alternate timelines, within some sort of alternate history setup, you still wouldn't get something that would be interpreted as what has become angels, within the Christian mythology, without stepping back about 500 million years (the Cambrian Explosion) and rejiggering things from there.  Step forward to the present era, and thanks to chaos theory, you'd have nothing even approaching human beings, with wings or not.

 

Far more rational to imagine someone who saw a huge bird and got a little deluded, then spun it around in their mind to explain to themselves what they saw, until they ended up with angels.

Permalink Reply by Alice on May 29, 2011 at 5:30am

Here on Wiki is a timeline of evolution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

 

This is a time line of Human evolution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

 

So the first life appears 4,000,000,000 years ago - so that's 4 billion years ago I think

 

160 ka	Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens idaltu) in Ethiopia, Awash River, Herto village, practice mortuary rituals and butcher hippos. Potential earliest evidence of behavioral modernityconsistent with the continuity hypothesis including use of red ochre and fishing.[25]
150 ka	Mitochondrial Eve is a woman that lived in East Africa. She is the statistically expected most recent female ancestor common to all mitochondrial lineages in humans alive today. Note that there is no evidence of any characteristic or genetic drift that significantly differentiated her from the contemporary social group she lived with at the time. Her ancestors were homo sapiens and her mother had the same mtDNA.
70 ka	Appearance of mitochondrial haplogroup L2. Behavioral modernity according to the "great leap forward" theory.[26]
60 ka	Y-chromosomal Adam lives in Africa. He is the most recent common ancestor from whom all male human Y chromosomes are descended. Appearance of mitochondrial haplogroups M and N, which participate in the migration out of Africa. Homo sapiens that leave Africa in this wave start interbreeding with the Neanderthals they encounter.[27][28]
50 ka	Migration to South Asia. M168 mutation (carried by all non-African males). Beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. mt-haplogroups U, K.
40 ka	Migration to Australia[29] and Europe (Cro-Magnon).
25 ka	The independent Neanderthal lineage dies out. Y-Haplogroup R2; mt-haplogroups J, X.
12 ka	Beginning of the Mesolithic / Holocene. Y-Haplogroup R1a; mt-haplogroups V, T. Evolution of light skin in Europeans (SLC24A5). Homo floresiensis dies out, leaving Homo sapiens as the only living species of the genus Homo.

 

Permalink Reply by Alice on May 29, 2011 at 6:09am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism

 

This might be interesting for you to read also... :)

Permalink Reply by Napoleon Bonaparte on May 29, 2011 at 9:07am

The supernatural does not exist. There are no ghosts, devils, angels, easter bunnies, gods or fairies.

Our species evolved in Africa and spread out over the world from about 60,000 or so years ago. We seem to have followed an easterly equatorial path because we reached Australia before venturing into Europe and the Bearing Straites route into America.

I recommend The Incredible Human Journey by Dr. Alice Roberts which was made into a television series which is now viewable on YouTube. She is the best looking academic I have ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gkiX7m1m_c

Permalink Reply by Tommy on May 29, 2011 at 6:56pm

I assume the timeline is starting to grow more accurate as we learn more. Really wasn't long ago I was hearing 2 million and now we know that only scratches the surface. I would not be shocked to find it extends even further than the 6 million they think it is. As far as angels, demons, devils, ghost and the closet monster they exist no more than gods, voodoo or a rational religion. However being a child of the 60' and 70's I did fly a lot and I did mistake my first wife for and angel. That may be when I first realized they really don't exist. :)

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