We Humans Took Nature 2.1 Billion Years to Create
By   Shlomo Maital


  
  2.1-Billion-Year-Old Fossil:  Evidence of Earliest Moving Life-Form

  A New York Times report, summarizing a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes a 2.1 billion year old fossil, that could be evidence of the earliest living thing that actually moved.   According to this account:
   About 2.1 billion years ago, a blob-like creature inched along on an early Earth. As the organism moved, it carved out tunnels, which may be the earliest evidence of a moving critter on the planet.    Until this discovery, the earliest evidence of motility — that is, an organism’s ability to move independently using its own metabolic energy — dated to about 570 million years ago, according to fossils from different locations. That’s a good 1.5 billion years younger than the new finding.
    Here is why I find this so amazing.  We humans have been on this earth, more or less as we are now, for only about 50,000 years.  But that blink of an eye was preceded by 2.1 billion years of evolution, starting with ‘blob like creatures inching along” and evolving, through natural selection, patiently, inexorably, into what we are today.   From one cell, to multi-cell, to fish, to mammals, to us…. With infinite step by step patience.
Many religious people take issue with this view of Creation.  I find that it strengthens belief  in a Divine Creator, rather than weakens it.  What an incredibly brilliant, patient, focused system,  evolution, able to generate divinely-inspired human beings and patiently take its time doing so, for 2 billion years.   
 I wonder whether this system of evolution, constantly improving species and races, has come to an end for humans.  Are we improving, evolutionarily, or are we degrading?