Would the discovery of E T cause the collapse of religion

[_Phillip]

Kevin,

Have you read Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter? Its sci-fi novel that has deals with some pretty vast timescales as well.

[_asbestosman]

Amputation does nothing to alter a person's DNA.

However, if your point is that by "correcting" their appearance, it makes them more likely to reproduce and therefore pass on their mutation... well, we'll only get more of that, not less. But this still indicates that we're having a conscious effect on our own evolution, albeit a tiny one, I suspect.

All true, but one thing I have in mind is that as we increase the tools of biotechnology we are likely to use them to actually alter DNA to avoid those differences before birth.

[_Phillip]

And for those who like the really outlandish improbable stuff there is The Sparrow by Mary Russell. From the Amazon page:

In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being "human." When the lone survivor of the expedition, Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth in 2059, he will try to explain what went wrong... Words like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer.

[_Sethbag]

Kevin, I like the ideas, except for the time scales. Too many billions. We went from exceedingly primitive prokaryotes to human beings and every other species on Earth in under two billion years. The idea that anything even remotely resembling a species from today would exist in much the same form 309 billion years later is untenable.

True, but there's a significant difference between then and now: biotechnology. Even without that, humans have played a huge role in shaping species--domesticated plants and animals. As for the selective pressure in humans, we tend to do much to "correct" the appearance of anyone who has significant differences such as someone born with extra appendages / fingers.

If you compare what our ancestors looked like 300 million years ago (reptiles had just been invented) with what we look like now, then if you could slow down the rate of genetic change in people to just 1/1000th of the rate we've seen historically, we'd still see as great a change again between now and the time Kevin's story is set in.

And I'm not sure you could even slow that rate of change anyhow. We are analog creatures, not digital. There cannot be the kind of precise reproduction you can get with digital data. Still, I like the ideas in his story, I don't mean to come across as too critical of it.

[_Sethbag]

As to the OP: in the LDS environment I grew up in, it was commonly believed that there were homo sapiens on tons and tons of planets out there in the universe. They looked like us, naturally, because we look like God (created in his physical image - not a metaphor), and we and they are brothers and sisters. I was taught that we were apparently the only planet on which the inhabitants would be so wicked as to crucify their own God (which I now see as crudely anti-semitic)

Just to point it out here, you were a Chapel Mormon my friend. Some Internet Mormons might say they heard this and rejected it, but most will lie and claim they've never heard this.

Yeah, well I'm old enough that when I was growing up there was no internet. At best there might have been a few Sunstone Mormons who might try to disavow this teaching, but everyone I knew at church took this kind of stuff for granted.

[_KevinSim]

Have you read Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter? Its sci-fi novel that has deals with some pretty vast timescales as well.

I haven't, though I did read his book Ark. That was a great book, though I've got to confess I suffered from Jack McDevitt withdrawal; McDevitt wrote about (in my opinion) extremely interesting subjects, and although his characters used profanity, it was nothing compared to the profanity Baxter uses.

But you've got me interested; I'll check out Manifold: Time from my local library as soon as I finish the book I'm currently reading.

Regarding statements some posters have made to the effect that in 309 billion years humans will have evolved beyond recognition, what do all of you think is the first evolutionary change that will happen to humans, and when do you think it will occur? In 100 million years will humanity be shorter on average than it is now, or taller? Will the ratio of the lengths of its arms to its legs be larger or smaller? Will there be noticeable differences in the way a human nose forms? Will human ears vanish altogether? I'm curious what you guys think.

In my actual story at one point a sizeable minority evolves to have two additional arms, but that variation eventually dies out. Also, at one point an evolved group develops telepathy, and there's so much of a cultural division over that that a war ensues. The telepaths, with a definite advantage to the non-evolved, appear to be winning the galactic war, but their advantage turns into a disadvantage; by then tens of billions of years have passed; the telepaths feel the age of the species more keenly than the non-evolved; they grow apathetic, stop fighting, and end up dying out themselves.

Anyhow, let me know what all of you think.