I just finished reading "Invisible Angels". You might want to read David Abram's "The Spell of the Sensuous". He claims, with some justification I think, That the Hebrews invented and the Greeks ran with the idea of "the future". Prior to the Hebrews all(?) cultures assumed (believed) in cycles of time and creation. It was the Hebrews with their monotheistic religion who could envision time as linear with a specified beginning and end.

Marija Gimbutas (Goddess religions in Europe) and Robert Lawlor ( Aboriginal cultures in Australia) confirm that most cultures have viewed time as cyclic.

Cyclic time has a very comfortable feel to it.

Michael T. Caley, Ph.D.

Let's imagine a time 1,000,000 years in the distant future. By then, Earth is basically devoid of all plant and animal life. (Oh, in case you're wondering, the election was never decided.) An alien civilization sends a scout ship to explore this planet. This alien civilization is not "carbon-based life as we know it" and they have no pre-conceived notions as to what kind of life they might find. Their archaeologists decide to do a little excavating and happen to start digging over a very old and very big auto junkyard. Not the typical junkyard perhaps, this is a place where dilapidated cars were just piled up over the years and never cut apart or recycled.

The aliens find in the shallowest strata the steel skeletal remains of 2000 Ford Explorers and Expeditions. A little below that they find the 1991 Ford Probe. Further down the 1965 Mustang. Eventually, they dig down to the Model T that lies in the oldest, deepest strata. The aliens carefully examine the fossilized remains and discover that each layer closer to the surface yielded specimens that were more complex than the layers beneath and hence older. What was originally a hand-crank, manual transmission, manual everything jalopy gave way in time to a fuel-injected, turbo-charged, night-vision-enabled, multiple-cup-holder automatic-everything machine. The aliens reach the conclusion that the early Model-T made adaptations in order to survive. (Originally all cars were black in color, but apparently developed a wide palette of colors in order to appear more attractive to potential mates.)

Because these aliens lack understanding about the nature of life as we know it, they come to the obvious and logical conclusion that automobiles raised themselves up from the primordial garage to roll on four wheels. They realize that automobiles can be shown to be direct descendants of their ancient cousins, the chariot and bicycle.

I've made a few other observations, too, that make me wonder how anyone can believe this world evolved. Last summer, it was touted that man had "unlocked the key to the human genome." Ooooooo! Wow! That's like saying we may have found out where we can buy a good map that might show us what road to take. But we're to believe that DNA evolved. We have no idea how many of the systems in our body work. We have a tough time diagnosing diseases, let alone curing them. Aeronautical engineers would love to create an airframe as complex and flexible as the lowliest bird. (Some birds can apparently change their airfoil and even the shape of their body to best accommodate varying airspeeds.) There are birds that can spot a fish, dive beneath the surface and actually catch the fish in spite of the visual distortion in the surface of the water, and then take off! We can't make a plane that won't crash. Our best robotics engineers are putting everything they've got into trying to get a robot to simply stand on two legs! And don't even think about creating a robot capable of running, jumping and climbing trees. (Using all of their resources, they can't even recreate something like a human hand.) Think about it, Mike. We're told we evolved through natural selection over millions or billions of years. However, our best scientists, in controlled environments can't do more than create incredibly crude, clunky imitations of living machines like the human body. No, this did not evolve. The closer we study the world around us the more obvious it becomes: GOD made us. It is the only logical conclusion.

John B.

I think it's more that we're not very good at recognizing the angels presented to us. You're presuming that e coli is not angelic, I guess. I wonder how you know.

David S.