The second step

Time is nothing more than a convenient convention that humans have adopted so that everyone can keep track of stuff. It really makes no difference at all what method one uses to keep an eye on things, so long as everyone agrees. Andrew Dickson White, in his book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) improves on the work started by James Ussher in the seventeenth century. White comments on John Lightfoot’s use of the James Ussher’s chronology by informing a waiting world that “in the seventeenth century, in his great work, Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and one of the most eminent Hebrew scholars of his time, declared, as the result of his most profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures, that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine of the clock in the morning.[i]” How remarkable that God finished His creation just in time for a bit of breakfast[ii]. Now you can go about your day with confidence that God is in his Heaven and all is right with the world. Sorta, kinda.

Dinosaurs roamed the earth for a long time, from the Triassic Period to the Cretaceous. They were a successful bunch of critters; they were around for almost 200 million years so I guess it would be appropriate to say that they roamed the earth for a very, very, very long time. The reasons for their rather abrupt departure to take up residence in museums[iii] around the planet are subject to a lot of debate. Some say that an enormous object hit the planet in the Yucatan peninsula (That has to hurt!), changing the earth’s climate; others say that the dinosaurs simply ate themselves out of their homes. Whatever the reason or reasons for their disappearance, you have to admit that they had a decent run. Humans on the other hand first appeared maybe 200,000 years ago. It appears that humans will have to wait a while before contacting the editors at Guinness World Records so that the human name could be included in their book. That assumes, of course, that we do not kill ourselves off in the not-too-distant future.

[i] Lightfoot took liberties with Ussher’s work however. Ussher’s cosmology had the same date, but nowhere did he specify 9 a.m.

[ii] In a statement that must have infuriated some Creationists, Edward P. Tryon, of Columbia University, said of its creation that, “I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things that happen from time to time.”

[iii] The man credited with changing the primary role of a museum from a purely academic one to a recreational one to which ordinary people would be allowed access is Englishman Richard Owen. Owen achieved this distinction by virtue of the fact that he was given the job of directing London’s Natural History Museum. What makes Owen unique is that he got this position in spite of his extremely well documented, career-long fondness for stealing other people’s work. In 1846, the Royal Society gave Owen a medal. It was for a paper that he had presented on an extinct mollusk. Granted, it was a brilliant paper. Nevertheless, Channing Pierce had presented the same paper to the same society in 1840.