UFO Religions

Of Sophistry and Antagonism Toward Fine-Tuning

I found this recent post entitled, “Is This the Dumbest Ever ‘Refutation’ of the Fine-Tuning Argument Ever?” worth the read (and a bit funny). It’s about some very poor thinking on the part of British philosopher Anthony Grayling with respect to his disdain of the fine-tuning argument often associated with the intelligent design movement.

I don’t often post things like this here, but examples like this are worth it. Part of the debate over the likelihood of ET life is linked to the debate over the alleged probability that other planets *must* be out there capable of supporting ET life. The other side is the “rare earth” view — that earth is alone (or probably alone) in being home to intelligent life and even complex life forms. That view is consistent with the fine-tuning argument, which posits earth is capable of supporting life because the universe is “fine-tuned” to make that possible. The term naturally implies intelligent design, but there are some fine-tuning proponents that don’t make God part of the equation.

Technorati Tags: aliens, extraterrestrials, fine-tuning

SETI As Religion

The November 2011 issue of The American Spectator featured an essay of interest to all those who lurk at this blog: “Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Search for God.” I was gratified that the author, Tom Bothell, was familiar enough with the subject matter to note Michael Crichton’s well-placed dismissal of the Drake Equation that ET life enthusiasts breathlessly love to reference. But Bothell also saw the religious bait-and-switch going on with respect to SETI and anything resembling traditional theism. He writes:

The late novelist Michael Crichton gave an entertaining lecture at Caltech in 2003 saying that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a religion. And in a way it is. Carl Sagan, one of its leading promoters, “believed in superior beings in space, creatures so intelligent, so powerful, as to resemble gods.” … That’s religion. The well-known atheist Richard Dawkins shows similar tendencies. He was quoted in the New York Times the other day as saying, “It’s highly plausible that in the universe there are Godlike creatures.” But he was careful to add that “these Gods came into being by an explicable scientific progression of incremental evolution.” (He would not have wanted to see “Gods” capitalized, however.)

These observations and others in regard to the religious commitment of atheist materialists to their quest for non-divine deities make this brief essay worth the read.

Technorati Tags: atheism, drake equation, extraterrestrial, extraterrestrials, God, religion, Sagan, SETI, theism

Probability of ET Life Arbitrarily Small

That’s the verdict of astrobiologists on the MIT Technology Review. Now, despite the iterative hoopla on the web and in the popular media about how there *must* be ET life out there, this isn’t the first time mainstream scientists have argued that the possibility of life elsewhere is remote (see Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee).

My favorite part of the article has to be the smack-down of the Drake equation. I’ve blogged on it before (“Trusting in the Blessed Equation“), chiefly about how amazing it is that this literally contrived-out-thin-air equation has stopped critical thinking on this issue in its tracks. It’s really at the level of religious dogma for ET believers. But as the MIT piece notes (emphasis mine):

The Drake equation is one of those rare mathematical beasts that has leaked into the public consciousness. It estimates the number of extraterrestrial civilisations that we might be able to detect today or in the near future.

The equation was devised by Frank Drake at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1960. He attempted to quantify the number by asking what fraction of stars have planets, what fraction of these might be habitable, then the fraction of these on which life actually evolves and the fraction of these on which life becomes intelligent and so on.

Many of these numbers are little more than wild guesses. For example, the number of ET civilisations we can detect now is hugely sensitive to the fraction that destroy themselves with their own technology, through nuclear war for example. Obviously we have no way of knowing this figure.

. . . the fact that life emerged at least once on Earth is entirely consistent with it only having happened here.So we could be alone, after all.

Let’s please put the Drake equation fantasy to rest. Statistically, it has nothing to offer, and anyone who builds a belief (and a religious worldview) on the “statistical fact” that life must exist elsewhere derived from the Drake Equation is literally arguing from no data at all.

Technorati Tags: drake equation, ET Life, probability, Rare Earth, statistics

Junk DNA as Evidence of ET Life in our Genes? Try Again.

There have been a number of news items and articles recently (last year – I collect them) on how “junk DNA” is now known to not be junk. Here’s an example. As genetic research continues to advance, this previously-assumed junk DNA (called so because it had no discernible function or role) is revealing that it has significant roles to play in what we know as HUMAN life.  And that’s the point for this blog. I can recall several Coast to Coast AM hucksters over the years promoting their ancient astronaut theories on the basis that this “mystery DNA” was alien. It was bunk then, and it’s bunk now.

Note that the above link points our that knowledge of junk DNA is very damaging to a Darwinist understanding of evolution. I word it that way because junk DNA has been used as an argument against intelligent design and a creator (“why would an intelligent creator put a bunch of useless junk in our genetic code?”). Intelligent design does not deny evolution; it denies *purposeless and undirected* evolution.

One last note. I just finished Leslie Kean’s book on UFOs. Outstanding. I will be posting a review here soon.

Could We Tell An Advanced ET from God?

Famous atheist Michael Shermer asks that question here. It’s a good overview of things to think about in this regard. I am in basic agreement that the existence of an advanced ET would be embraced as God by many, perhaps most. But despite the article’s strengths, it misses obvious “tests” — like prove to us, Mr. ET, that you (a) can create matter itself, from nothing; and (b) that you’re the entity who did so aeons ago.  The “aeons” part of that also would require the ET to prove that his species no longer dies (or at least is not capable of death). I list this as an omission since this is part and parcel of any theistic religion’s definition of God. Third, there is the matter of not being part of the material creation. Any theistic religion believes God created all matter – all that is, “visible and invisible” to borrow the New Testament language. Without being able to demonstrate this attribute, ET would not be accepted as God.

Anyway, I could pick at this more, but you get the idea.

Technorati Tags: creation, ET, extraterrestrial, God, theology