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

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

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

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.

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

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

Some years ago I read a book called “Lying for God”. It was a systematic emotionally laden deconstruction of YEC. I wondered with disbelief at the time, whether people who are YECs really would knowingly lie to promote their understanding of the world. That was a long time ago, and since then I have frequently come across many people who spout what seem to me to be lies to uphold all sorts of worldviews.

It was with this background that I was intrigued by a headline in New Scientist “Biologists create self replicating RNA molecule“. This piece of writing is unashamedly designed to promote the RNA world wishful thinking hypothesis of the spontaneous generation of life.

Yeah, there’s some good science. Spontaneous generation.

Although this doesn’t directly relate to the religious thinking that wants an extraterrestrial replacement for God, it would serve that wish.

Technorati Tags: evolution, extraterrestrial, intelligent design, spontaneous generation, theism

Technorati Tags: ET Life, extraterrestrial, science, SETI, speculation

For starters, it’s a bit surprising, perhaps even suspicious, that there was no huge press conference for this, as was the case with the arseno-DNA event that was roundly criticized within the science community (kudos to Dr. Todd Wood for that reminder). That could mean NASA is being overly cautious about this one, or that they are simply testing the waters. At any rate, such off-the-radar handling of this issue at least says that the interpretation of the data offered to the eager public is far from certain. I hope one item about the whole claim does not escape logic.  These are *fossil* bacteria, not living bacteria.  If the science is valid, then what it proves is that at one time there was bacterial life elsewhere. It does not prove that (a) it exists now, though that would seem reasonable; or (b) that it ever evolved into anything intelligent (for you evolution devotees, evolution is not self directing (!) — it must factor in environment, and no two environments or set of such conditions (like earth’s) is identical. But, it’s sad to say, the people who’d want this to be true for religious reasons (the ancient astronaut religion) will likely throw logic (and the need for actual data) to the wind.  Another case of “this idea is in my head so that must mean it’s real” thinking, for which the UFO community is famous.

It’s hard to disagree with P. Z. Meyers’ assessment of the journal’s site (I have been on it and through it).  But we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. I don’t expect scientists to know much about web design or aesthetics. The people whose work populates the site are credentialed, And they are doing the right thing by soliciting the review of other experts and scientists.  That’s how it’s supposed to work. But the editorial standards are apparently not very good. As one scientist from the University of British Columbia notes:

The journal proudly announces that it is obtaining and will publish 100 post-publication reviews.  But did it bother getting any pre-publication reviews?  It will be shutting down in a few months, after only two years of on-line publication (the 13 ‘volumes’ are really just 13 issues).  Its presentation standards are pretty bad – there doesn’t seem to have been any effort at copy-editing or formatting the text for publication (not even any page numbers).

Chandra Wickramasinghe is the journal’s Executive Editor for Astrobiology, and presumably is the Editor responsible for this article.  I heard him give a talk pushing panspermia about 10 years ago (the audience was an undergraduate science society at Oxford).  The talk was very slick but dreadfully bad as science.  The evidence he cited to support his arguments wasn’t actually untrue, but he twisted everything to make his arguments seem stronger than they were.  He argued like a lawyer – his only goal seemed to be convincing the audience that his conclusion was correct, regardless of the contrary evidence that an unbiased consideration of the evidence would provide.  Thus I wouldn’t trust his scientific judgment about anything concerning astrobiology.

Ouch. Take note of that, panspermia enthusiasts. (Wickramasinghe is basically the patron saint of panspermia theory).

Scientists have already weighed in (and of course to much less fanfare). Aside from the comments above about the journal, the same UBC scientist has this as her bottom line (click here for her analysis and reasons):

The Ivuna meteorite sample showed a couple of micron-scale squiggles, one of which contained about 2.5-fold more carbon than the background.  One of the five Orguil samples had at least one patch of clustered fibers; these contained more sulfur and magnesium than the background, and less silicon.  As evidence for life this is pathetic, no better than that presented by McKay’s group for the ALH84001 Martian meteorite in 1996.

Ouch again; that one might leave a mark.

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has a balanced piece over at Discover Magazine online on the article. Here is a notable section:

Hoover makes several claims to show that a non-biotic origin for these structures is very unlikely. I am not an expert and won’t cast my vote either way here. This is not the first time Hoover has made such claims; he gave a similar presentation in 2007. There have also been many similar claims in the past. In fact, in the second episode of “Bad Universe” I interviewed NASA astrobiologist Dave McKay, who has also found very interesting features in a Mars meteorite that look a lot like bacteria. However, definitive proof is another matter. McKay’s opinion is that what he found was once alive, but he also was clear that scientifically he could not be sure (I found his skepticism to be well-grounded and at the right level, to be honest).

Probably the biggest bump in the road for showing these things are life-forms is to show they are not the result of Earthly bacteria getting inside the meteorite after it hit. This is very tough to do, though Hoover says this in his paper:

Many of the filaments shown in the figures are clearly embedded in the meteorite rock matrix. Consequently, it is concluded that the Orgueil filaments cannot logically be interpreted as representing filamentous cyanobacteria that invaded the meteorite after its arrival. They are therefore interpreted as the indigenous remains of microfossils that were present in the meteorite rock matrix when the meteorite entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

Clearly, Hoover thinks terrestrial contamination is unlikely. However, contamination, no matter how unlikely, is a more mundane explanation than extraterrestrial life, and Occam’s Razor will always shave very closely here. We have to be very, very clear that contamination was impossible before seriously entertaining the idea that these structures are space-borne life.

I for one appreciate the comment about the *need* to prove that such bacteria are not actually earthly bacteria. I noted that among some other problems for panspermia in my own essay on the subject (it dealt with defining various views of panspermia and the implications for Judeo-Christian theology).

So let’s wait and see, but to this point, we don’t have any real reason to think this will pass muster. Time will tell.

Technorati Tags: alien life, bacteria, cosmology, Hoover, journal, NASA, Panspermia, space

Here’s a bit of commentary regarding the growth of scientific knowledge with respect to so-called “junk-DNA.” It’s becoming increasingly apparent that it isn’t junk. Ancient alien theorists, as readers know, have tried to argue that junk DNA is foreign to the human genome, thereby showing alien tampering with our genetic code. Consider it their version of creationism, and so an important religious tenet for them. Too bad it’s bunk, like all their other proofs.

Oh, and in case one of them says “er…okay…so junk DNA is purposeful…that just shows our alien creators were really good designers…they were really smart” — thanks for making the intelligent design argument, for starters.  But guess what? The standard ancient alien hypothesis isn’t the same as Christian (or Jewish) intelligent design ideas. Why? Because the fundamentalist Sitchinite ancient alien view requires a designer who was part of the fabric of the material world (i.e., a biological organism) who either took from his own DNA to pr0-actively evolve humans (that is Sitchin’s textually indefensible reading of Sumerian-Mesopotamian epics).  This view is ruled out by the fact that the “junk DNA” is human.

Now, other ancient alien theorists could (pardon the pun) junk Sitchin, which would show intelligence (and courage in that sub-culture). He or she could opt for a designer with tinkering skill, sharing no part of his own DNA in the process of modifying humans. But this is nothing more than a faith statement (akin to Judeo-Christian intelligent design). That means the ancient alien idea shows itself once again to be simply a religion — a UFO religion. But there is at least one significant difference between this faith statement and Judeo-Christian intelligent design. The former must assume an ET creator that is part of the material world. That means ETs existence falls into the category of being scientifically testable — in other words, one can apply scientific inquiry and methods to the question of the existence of that creator. And scientists have been doing that. With no success. Therefore, on a scientific basis, the alien view is shown to be invalid to this point. God, on the other hand, is not considered to be part of the material world, but outside it. He is therefore not subject to scientific discovery or invalidation.

The second alien creator view has other problems along these lines, but I don’t care to digress at this point.

Technorati Tags: aliens, creation, genetics, humans, intelligent design, junk DNA

Davies flash of religious coherence appears in his contribution to a new Cambridge title, Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press 2010). For some commentary on how Davies’ admission is inconsistent with the way intelligent design theorists are often treated, see this from Uncommon Descent.

Technorati Tags: Davies, materialism, physics, theism