Drake Equations and ‘It Ain’t Gunna Happen’ Science Fiction
Posted on 28 July 2011
A reader whom I will, for the sake of anonymity, refer to merely as ‘Curmudgeon’ (albeit his real name is Homer Snodgrass of 12 Manitowish Avenue, Mammoth Falls, Wisconsin, 54545, and his social security number is 1205-119-8577, and the PIN number of his bank card is 4560) holds the opinion that too many modern persons of the youthful persuasion (he refers to them as “kids!” or “punks!”) are devoted to science fictional ideas as a thinly disguised substitute for spiritual longings.
‘Curmudgeon’ reads and promotes what he calls the ‘It Ain’t Gunna Happen’ School of science fiction. This school is remarkably similar to the Mundane Movement of Really Boring Self-Righteous Left-Leaning Science Fiction, being mostly a list of things that ain’t gunna happen.
Here is a summary of his manifesto:
(1) There will be no colonization of space, either O’Neil or otherwise, for the same reason no one lives in a submarine at the bottom of a trench in the Arctic sea;
(2) we are never meeting any intelligent extraterrestrial life;
(3) or if we do, they will be incomprehensible, so much so that even the question of whether they are truly ‘intelligent’ or not will be debatable;
(4) there will be no faster than light travel – It is not just a good idea, it’s the Law;
(5) medicine may shift where the top of the bell curve falls, but human beings are not going to live much past 80 or 90;
(6) psionics is just magic wearing a lab coat;
(7) time travel is less possible and less realistic than fairy unicorn sparkly magic;
(8) The Soviets and the Red Chinese and Cubans all promised and vowed to bring about modern, scientifically-run secular humanist utopias very much along the lines of Gene Roddenberry’s ideas. (So… how is that workin’ out for ya’? What is the murder count now for the Utopians? Upwards of 110,000,000? Let’s give the idea one more try!)
Now, for some reason, my friend Curmudgeon thinks I am of his school of science fiction. I am not.
In fact, I am a founding member of the Space Princess school of science fiction writing, which, to date, includes me and a writer named Edward Willet: Albeit we two have retroactively included every big name Willet and I can think of into our movement against their will and over their strong objections, if they ever had any female royalty from outerspace in any story.
Inductees include Edgar Rice Burroughs, who invented Dejah Thoris, and Robert Heinlein, who invented Her Wisdom CCIV aka Star the Sexy-Space Empress, and Michael Moorcock, whose hero, Kane of Old Mars, traveled back into a previous eon of Martian existence to meet his space princess Shizala. In other media, STAR WARS and BUCK ROGERS and FLASH GORDON and TEEN TITANS all include space princesses of one sort or another, including Princess Leia, Princess Ardala, Princess Aura, and Koriand’r of Vega (Starfire to you non-T-heads).
My school of writing contradicts Curmudgeon’s ‘It Ain’t Gunna Happen’ school at nearly every point.
You see, I have made a more advanced study of the latest finding from astronomers and cosmophiloanthropohotogenic scientists, and so there are certain points of which he may be unaware.
(1) Space colonization not only is possible, but Venus is occupied by bathing beauties who need Earthmen to fend off the vicious space-dinosaurs, and Mars is occupied by Amazonian nudists who lounge about the dead sea bottoms and in the jeweled, deserted, antique cities, yearning for Earthman love. For some reason, these advanced alien societies all prefer to use swords rather than firearms;
(2) Not only is their life on other planets, and Earthlike life, and mammalian life, but the females look exactly as voluptuously mammalian as our most beautiful actresses and models, if not more so. Calling these beautiful women unintelligent is very rude!
(3) Well, I agree that female logic is sometimes hard to follow, but I would not call their intelligence ‘debatable.’ After all, it takes some skill to clean and cook a space-dinosaur into a hearty steak dinner after an Earthman has bested the monster naked armed only with a trusty space-sword!
(4) Faster than light travel is not only possible, it is necessary, since otherwise space princesses from Spica, or the other stars in the constellation Virgo, cannot be visited, much less rescued, in a human lifespan;
(5) Since all space princesses appear to be between ages 16 and 21 (Earth-years), and since the only form of death allowed on Mars is to plunge into the cold waters of the polar river Iss, the longevity or immortality they possess is fairly well established scientifically. And why would they not share this secret with an earthly rescuer who has just saved them from a space-dinosaur?
(6) Without psionics, there is no way to speak and understand the space princess when you first meet her. Learning a new space-language without psionic aid involves many long and boring sessions with philologists and translators and grammarians, which is all hogwash and humbug. Space Princesses can read minds just enough so that you can talk to them. That is settled.
(7) Time travel cannot be impossible, if an Earthman has visited Mars or another world in the far past, when it was still habitable, and met a space princess there (see the example of Shizala of Vashtu, above.)
(8) To assume any space princess rules a city-state or planet less happy and joy-filled and perfect than, say, Oz under the reign of Ozma, is to insult their abilities as rulers and sovereigns. Utopia is therefore not only not unlikely, it must be inevitable, provided only we stick to adorable feminine monarchic forms of government.
But the unrealistic nature of mundane or “It Ain’t Gunna Happen” science fiction is not my point, nor is it Curmudgeon’s main point. We both agree fiction is fiction, and fact is fact. It is where one is mistaken for the other that we both agree the danger (or at least the amusement at the expense of others) rests.
He holds that science fiction is the closest thing the modern world has to pagan myths, and that like pagan myths, they excite the imagination away from the mundane world and toward the spiritual, but (in this case) not in a good way.
For example, there are many people who believe the flying saucers and big-eyed aliens made up, invented, and contrived from the imaginations of people like me, science fiction writers, are actually real. Among the science fiction community, these people who think our play-pretend is real, technically known as “nutbags”, are people we would like to buy our books, but only because our mercenary impulses outweigh our human sympathy.
But all that to one side: Curmudgeon says that like the pagan poets of old, who made stuff up about the frivolous gods of Olympus, we science fiction writers have made up idle tales that have a particular grip on the imaginations of agnostics and atheists who, because they are human and cannot help it, have a longing for the spiritual reality beyond the grim walls of the mundane world they think of as real life: and this makes the agnostic gullible in certain areas.
Believing in UFO people from Alpha Draconis, or motherships hiding in the tail of the Hale-Bopp Comet, is merely an extreme example of gullibility. There are science fiction inspired beliefs which have actually no scintilla of scientific evidence behind them which the spiritually hungry agnostic takes from science fiction and thinks is literal fact: the most obvious of which is a belief in life on other planets.
I have never met an agnostic who did not believe in life on other planets. There is not an iota of evidence to support such a belief.
Curmudgeon holds that the ideas about the existence of extraterrestrial life, especially superior intelligent life, the optimism of futuristic utopias, medical advances leading to expanded lifespans, augmented intelligences, or even immortality are ersatz stand-ins or “NutraSweet” for the unity of nature remembered from Eden, where Adam and Eve could talk with fuzzy animals with the acumen of Doctor Dolittle or a Disney Princesses; for the communion with other created intelligences such as angels; for the paradise and glorified bodies of the true immortality promised the faithful in the New Jerusalem.
His main complaint (aside from “get off my yard!”) is that the youths think the ideas are not science fiction but science fact, and in them they place their hope and around them fabricate their abortive secular eschatology.
As I said above, I am not of this school. I personally have received telepathic visions from Carson Napier of Venus, or ‘Amtor’ as its natives call it, not to mention having sensed the astral form of Lord Chong of Phaolon, a city beneath of sun called the Green Star, and also I have listened with awe to the tapes Geoffrey Dean brought back from Africa, containing the narrative of Dray Prescot of Antares. More I dare not say, lest a skeptical world scoff!
It is enough for now to state that I do not, and in good conscience can not hold with the opinions of my friend Curmudgeon.
Despite our clear differences of opinion and approach on this topic, my friend Curmudgeon is always tickled when some additional advance of the scientific field shows that the daydreams of the secular eschatologists to be so much balloon-oil and opium-smoke.
Hence it is with pleasure that he sees article like the following. Allow me to post a link, quote a quote, and tell you what is wrong with the world: I am, after all, blogging.
http://www.space.com/12421-alien-life-rare-universe-extraterrestrials-seti.html
Scientists engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) work under the assumption that there is, in fact, intelligent life out there to be found. A new analysis may crush their optimism.
To calculate the likelihood that they’ll make radio contact with extraterrestrials, SETI scientists use what’s known as the Drake Equation. Formulated in the 1960s by Frank Drake of the SETI Institute in California, it approximates the number of radio-transmitting civilizations in our galaxy at any one time by multiplying a string of factors: the number of stars, the fraction that have planets, the fraction of those that are habitable, the probability of life arising on such planets, its likelihood of becoming intelligent and so on.
The values of almost all these factors are highly speculative.
That last sentence is a masterpiece of understatement. Later, the article says:
In the equation, the probability of life arising on suitably habitable planets (ones with water, rocky surfaces and atmospheres) is almost always taken to be 100 percent.
But in a new paper published on arXiv.org, astrophysicist David Spiegel at Princeton University and physicist Edwin Turner at the University of Tokyo argue that this thinking is dead wrong. Using a statistical method called Bayesian reasoning, they argue that the life here on Earth could be common, or it could be extremely rare — there’s no reason to prefer one conclusion over the other….
My curmudgeonly friend Homer Snodgrass writes:
I feel affirmed in my okayness. Won’t stop the human imagination from populating the star with Barsoomians and Klingons, thank God. But still, my curmudgeonly heart always thrills just a little bit when material secular eschatology receive a knee to the groin from the sciences.
My comment:
Of course, being in contact, due to my communion with beautiful half-clad Space Princesses named Allura, Amora, Pulchritudia and Vesseril the Beautiful, but also with certain semi-nude but entirely gorgeous Empresses and Duchesses and Countesses from the star Alpha Virginis called Spica (which is Latin for ‘The Spicy Star’), who have names like Sensua, Volupta, Nubilia, Erato and Adora, I am aware of certain sad facts my friend Homer is not. To him I wrote in sorrow:
Unfortunately, the Green Lady of Perelendra and the sorns of Malacandra were planning on coming to Earth to visit Jerusalem, since Earth is the most famous planet in the Milky Way, having been only one of three where there was a confirmed incarnation, and notorious for being the only one so depraved that the Creator was killed here. (The aliens are believe it was a quick and painless death, so, um, if they show up, don’t tell anyone and hide your crucifixes.)
In any case, as I say, the various non-secular aliens while approaching this world, eager to contact us and learn the secrets of salvation, have used their Vulcan mild melds to probe the world-spirit, and picked up your negative thought vibrations about how it pleases you that we are all alone in the universe, and so, putting away the fabulous gifts of eatable gold and liquid life-essence and the leaves of the trees that heal nations, they have landed on the dark side of the moon, and entered a thousand year hibernation, to try to make First Contact again sometime around 3011 AD.
This is by no means their first visit. These aliens were first met by Saint Brendon of Ireland in 1011, who thought they were elves and mermaids. Being rational creatures, they were converted to the Roman Catholic faith, and with the priests Brendon duly anointed, they spread the One True Faith to the various nearby stars and star clusters, preaching the gospel to all creatures, spreading the faith beyond the Centaurus Arm and Sagittarius as far as the Lesser and Greater Clouds of Magellan.
Had they landed, their first message (once the scientists are done playing John Williams music at them), would be to mock the atheists and tell them they are primitive and utterly stupid:
“People of Earth, we, the advanced supercivilizations of space, in our state of superior cosmic evolution, long ago left behind such foolish and primitive superstitions as disbelief in the Creator.
“Are you nuts, Earthfools? Can you not see the intelligent order and beauty in the cosmos? Does anyone aside from an intellectual devoted to agnosticism think nature naturally can produce design, efficiency, beauty and elegance?
“Are there not ghosts on your world as there are on all planets? Then where do ghost stories come from? Who would invent such jazz if it were not real?
“Ho ho! Only very backward and silly planets, people who pick their nose and lick the boogers, have such odd and unscientific thought-forms as atheism and agnosticism.
“Like the Boy Scouts, we do not allow any atheists into the Galactic Confederation of Way Cool Futuristic Worlds. Nor do we permit no-fault divorce, gay marriage, or priestesses in orders, child-murder, or the use of contraception, except in the case of your Captain Kirk, who otherwise would spread venereal space-disease.
“Your world my meet with your Planetary Confessor, and do whatever world-wide century-long Penance he assigns before you can enter the Cosmic Communion! We do not accept planets not in a state of grace!”
(What? You think all the space aliens are going to have the same world view as Gene Roddenberry? C’mon.)
“The other requirement for elevation to Cosmic Oneness with the Galactic Union is that you must give up on vegetarianism. Not even naturally herbivorous species put up with such nonsense: and the people from the star Vega, the Vegans, are annoyed at being mistaken for Vegans. So get your act together, Earthlings! Snap out of it! Repent! The Kingdom of Heaven has Landed!”
Yes, I am afraid that is what would have happened had not cosmic killjoys broadcast such negative thought waves telling the crowded universe (chock full of Eldil) to go away and leave us alone.
It would have been great fun, and you ruined it for all of us!
Thanks a lot, Curmudgeon Guy!
You may ask, but what about the bad news for SETI efforts? What do I think of the article?
Honestly, I don’t think much of it.
The writer of the article is being much to deferential and kind to the SETI scientists allegedly using the Drake ‘equation’ for anything but a good laugh. The equation is of course nothing of the kind. It is a laundry list, woefully incomplete, of some of the things Drake idly daydreamed may or may not be necessary for intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations interesting in mutual contract to exist.
HERE are the factors in the Drake (ahem) Equation:
R = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
f-p = the fraction of those stars that have planets
n-e = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
f-ℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
f-i = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
f-c = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
Anyone can make a laundry list of any kind to suit himself.
In fact, let me add two additional factors:
n-g = the number of congregations of life forms whose society or civilization requires a form of legal organization we would recognize as a government.
f-m = the fraction of the above governments that are hereditary or constitutional monarchies.
f-spncss = the fraction of the above monarchs who, due to a recognizably bisexual biology, can and have brought forth daughters.
f-yowsababe! = the fraction of the above daughters who are above average in intelligence, courage and physical good looks by Eurocentric terrestrial standards of beauty, nubile and of mating age, who are either nudists or scantily clad.
We can call this the Space Princess Equation, which defines how likely we are to find an attractive yet nubile Space Princess.
What makes my equation any less scientific than Drake’s?
Drake reasons for his Drake Equation that since life emerges by chance, and since the same fundamental laws apply to the entire universe, and because those laws engendered the genesis of life on Earth, they must readily spawn life elsewhere, too.
If earth-life arose by chance, then when those same factors wherever they are present by chance again must lead to the same result, right?
Fine! I reason for my Space Princess Equation that since life, including really attractive nubile and fertile young mammalian upright bipeds who look like film starlets and happen to be the daughters of monarchs, emerges by chance, and since the same fundamental laws apply to the entire universe, and because those laws engendered the genesis of life on Earth, they must readily spawn life elsewhere, too.
If earth-princesses arose by chance, then those same factors wherever they are present by chance again must lead to the same result, namely really attractive nubile and fertile young mammalian upright bipeds who look like film starlets and happen to be the daughters of monarchs.
Is there anything wrong with my logic that is also not equally wrong with Drake’s logic?
All I did was take his factor of earthly-type life and add several more specific factors of earthly-type life. The same conditions must lead to the same results, right? We do have attractive female members of royal families here on Earth, such as Grace Kelly of Monaco, or Rania of Jordan, do we not? So if the number of inhabited worlds among the countless galaxies of the cosmos is large enough, the chances of finding a space princess among them are good!
Yes, of course this logic is bogus.
Since we have only one data point to work with, to wit, Earth, and no example of any life of any kind whatever, not even microscopic, existing in any extra-terrestrial environment or ever having had done, we have exactly no evidence, none, nada, zip, zero, goose egg, on which to base a speculative percentage for any of the factors in the laundry list. Any one of them could be anything from impossible to inevitable, unique to ubiquitous.
As a thought experiment, factor Earth out of the equation, and then run the numbers for how many planets brought forth life, and how often life somehow becomes intelligent and how often that life develops radio technology, how often they broadcast intelligent signals. The number will be zero. No known world has life, intelligent life, technological civilization, or radio-technological civilization. Hence the rate cannot be known nor guessed, can it?
I have not read their paper, but I will go out on a limb and venture to say that David Spiegel and Edwin Turner have wasted their time proving by means of complex Bayesian reasoning what common sense could tell you instantly: when you have not run one hundred trials of the test, you cannot establish the percentage (that is, per centum, for each one hundred) of the trial outcome. Your ability to establish a reliable percentage is less if you have only fifty trials, and it hovers right around the zero mark when you have only one. A line of any angle and a curve of any shape can be drawn through a single point placed on a Cartesian graph.
Do you think I am being too harsh? Consider this: the number of civilizations on our own planet, Earth, which took the time and trouble and effort to contact the New World and establish colonies, as best we can tell, is two: Leif Ericson found Greenland, and Columbus found the Carib Islands. As it turns out, both these men believed in Doomsday. The Pagan thought the world would end in Ragnarok, the Christian in Armageddon.
Therefore, if I were to establish an ‘equation’ just like the Drake Equation for describing intercontinental First Contact rather than Interstellar, my equation must list ‘Belief in Doomsday’ as one of the factors, and it must be pegged at nearly one hundred percent. For, lo and behold, the next five explorers to set foot on the New World were all Christian, ergo all satisfied the Doomsday factor! My equation is perfect! That is real science for you!
No, to be a real equation, you have to do more than scribble meaningless numbers on a napkin. You have to establish an invariant relation (an equality (hence the name ‘equation’)) between two factors in a function, and, in order to be science, that function has to describe or model the way some real physical thing in the real world really behaves, like a falling rock or the pattern of grown of leaves on a stem. Something you can count.
Am I being too harsh? As of the time of this writing, we have discovered nine planets in the solar system, including our own (I am counting Pluto. Don’t annoy me, or I will count Eris as well) and 563 exosolar planets, for a grand total of lots. Right now, the factor in the Drake Equation which counts the ratio of inhabited to uninhabited planets stands at over 500 to 1.
Do you want to throw in various moons? As a member of the Space Princess movement, I must point out that one of our unwilling members, Lin Carter, assures us that Darloona of Shondakar exists on Callisto, a moon of Jupiter, which is inhabited. Edgar Rice Burroughs assures us that Nah-ee-lah is from the buried lunar city called Laythe and daughter of it’s Jemadar or sovereign. (Unlike that pettifogger HG Wells, who said the moon was peopled by socialist bugs ruled by a Grand Lunar rather than by attractive young and nubile royalty. Hmph!) Less reputable scientists speculate that liquid water may exist on Io, and other conditions favorable for life.
So, throwing those numbers into the mix, we have add another 160 or so bodies in this solar system, and the factor stands at upwards of 700 to 1.
This is not to mention forms of life that can exist in deep space far from any planetary body, evolved in ways unimagined by rules of biochemistry unexamined, such as the Black Cloud of Hoyle or the Silkie of van Vogt, or the various energy beings, Organians and Mentrones and Q, cluttering up the Star Trek universe.
Well, does that tell us that life is relatively rare? We have over 700 instances and only one winner.
Now, you might object that Drake is only concerned with Sol-like stars and Earthlike planets in Earthlike orbits. But this makes the number factor more absurdly meaningless. We have one example of one Earthlike world circling a Sol-like star, and that is Tellus, here, us, Earth, and the instances of it having brought forth life is one-for-one, or one hundred percent.
Well, does this tell us that life (if we restrict it to Earthlike life) is relatively frequent? We have earthlife on Earth: statistically speaking, we are batting a thousand!
No, Virginia, it tells us exactly nothing.
So far as we presently know, each one of these 700 or so bodies could have some form of life on it, that we merely have not yet detected. Could there truly be no silicon-based viral microbes buried underground in an ice cave on the Moon?
On the other hand, each one of the these moons and planets, and every other moon and planet in the Milky Way and in the Local Group, and in the Virgo Cluster, could be as empty of life as the core of the sun. We not only might be the first world were life developed, might be the only one where it ever will.
On the gripping hand, the core of the sun might not only be filled with life, it might be the only place favorable for the most common form of life in the universe, beings who exist in the very high energy states needed to continue their life processes indefinitely. They have not made contact with us because the idea that life can exist in non-luminous non-plasma matter, in solid form, is inconceivable to them, as it is so remarkably unlikely.
The scenario of being the only planet-bound form of material life in a galaxy crammed with life forms burning at the nuclear hearts of stars seems ridiculous, does it not? Of course it is ridiculous. It violates everything we know about how molecular biology works here on Earth, in the environments, at the temperatures and pressures and conditions we know. But my point is that what we know is one and only one case. I submit that our case is also ridiculous, unlikely, impossible and wondrous, and the only reason we believe it is because we ourselves are alive and we live here.
You don’t know the odds. You don’t even really know the factors that factor into the odds.
And, if it were not for a pseudo-religious article of faith prevalent among secularists, you do not know if life existing on a planet is a matter of odds.
Because it is a matter of odds if and only if life arose here due to a toss of the dice, a random combination of blind factors that created life here, not deliberately, but by happenstance.
You can say that you hold this article of faith if you wish, that life emerges from non-life by a non-supernatural blind and inevitable process. Fine. The Norse thought life emerged from a cosmic cow licking ice from a primordial abyss. What? Are you going to ask where the cow came from? Don’t do that, or I will ask you how non-life “emerges” from life, and on what repeatable and non-speculative evidence your article of faith that it is possible at all is based. The Norse were at least canny enough to posit the cow. You posit that it happened by itself, without even a cow to give your myth likelihood.
Do you object that I call it a myth? It is a myth. It is not science, it is not even scientific to believe in spontaneous creation of life from non life. Science is based on rational deduction from observations and predictions to confirm the deductions. Here, no observer saw or even has seen life emerge from non life. It cannot even be done deliberately, much less blindly by an natural process. If it were a natural process, we would see it going on around us at all times.
Men these day snicker at Aristotle for believing life was spontaneously created in offal and rags. He at least had seen bugs come out from dungheaps. Our entire secular myth is based on an idea with even less scientific proof than Aristotle’s, that living things do not emerge spontaneously, but the origin of all living things does emerge spontaneously. Aristotle was consistent enough to think that if spontaneous generation were possible, it would be happening all the time. The modern secularists tell us it happened once and once only.
So, do you think the creation of life on Earth happening one time by the hand of a supernatural agency, a god or a demiurge, is a miracle and therefore science rules it out a priori as impossible? But real scientists do not make a priori statements about events in the material world: only members of the science-worshiping cult do that. And I suggest that their cult belief is incoherent: I submit that to believe in that the creation of life on Earth happening one time by a natural agency is more of a miracle, because it postulates an unique miracle without someone to perform the miracle. Which is more miraculous, a miracle performed by a miracle worker, or a miracle that arises from no cause for no reason and then vanishes again?
Now you may ask, do I believe in life on other worlds?
Believe! Would that I did not! It is not for no reason that I became a member of the Space Princess school of writing science fiction.
It is because of various events, difficult for the uninitiated to imagine, that I was asked to ally myself to a most exclusive gentleman’s club in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York. The peculiar, nay, bizarre prerequisite for membership in the club having been established by its eccentric founder, Captain John Carter of Virginia, is that the man must have experienced a confirmed encounter with worlds beyond our own: an event less rare than the narrow-souled skeptic might credit!
My own encounter, much as I wish it had been merely a dream, was with Vesseril the Beautiful who dwells in the haunted planet Alph beneath the azure light of giant Spica, my fair one, alas! whom I am fated never again to behold!
How lovely she was when last we danced in Vanvalar, the City of Singing Crystal, beneath the nine mystic moon that shine on the Luminous Sea of Thassa! How strange to see Forest of Rebirth, gorgeous with many-colored orchids seeping opiate perfumes, rising in an hour above it own ashes, but then to be struck, burning, beneath the unsteady, weird, blue giant sun of Alpha Virginis!
Treacherous and inconstant star! Were it not for the advanced science the Spicans inherited from their ancestors, the perturbations of that eerie azure Cepheid Variable would long ago have obliterated the life from the twenty inhabited worlds and eighty-one inhabited moons of that system!
I vow revenge upon the Lord of Ghosts, dread and dreaded Xoran Xor, who robbed Vesseril of her memories and imprisoned her in the Onyx Tower of Oblivion, trapped in the high, walled garden of many drug-bearing fountains and rills and hallucinogenic herbs and alluring poppies, all within the shadow of the mystic Amnesia Gong! Yet lightyears and aeons and many cycles of reincarnation part me from my beloved … Yet that is a tale of adventure and tragedy for another time.
So, yes, well do I know, and to my sorrow, that there is earthlike life elsewhere, as wondrous and fair as any vista of beauty seen here on this globe: but this knowledge is not for mortal men, not at our current stage of cosmic evolution.
On the other hand, Drake and those who use his so-called equation do not know. They are not even really making a guess. If you have a yearning for unearthly and transmundane things, writing down that yearning in the form of an incomplete list of variables not one of whose values you know or can estimate does not make it science. I do not mock it, but I do not call it science: It is still just a yearning.
Dear Mr. Wright,
I am in agreement that that non-life cannot give rise to life, since non-being cannot give rise to being. However, I was wondering what is metaphysically necessary of the original cause of life to produce life.
Must it be living? If so, what caused its life?
Must it be supernatural? Is there no possible natural origin of life?
“I am in agreement that that non-life cannot give rise to life, since non-being cannot give rise to being.”
The one doesn’t follow from the other. They aren’t even analogous. Non-living matter is made of molecules. Living matter is made of molecules. What’s so unbelievable about the idea that the idea that self-replication could arise by natural processes?
I did not precisely say that non-life cannot give rise to life. What I said was (1) the theory that this can be done naturally, without supernatural intervention, does not have any evidence to back it. If it were a natural and repeatable phenomenon, we would see it repeatedly. We have never seen it done. A belief without current evidence is an article of faith. (2) As an article of faith, a faith in spontaneous generation makes less sense than a faith that says life arises from non-life by divine intervention, because spontaneous generation does not posit a cause sufficient to produce the effect.
Hey, where did all the other comments go?! There were 5 or 6 of them last time I checked.
Is it just my computer )that for some reason is not allowing me to see the other things that were written) or did all our comments just vanish?
No, the comments had been lost when I logged in and are still lost now. So it’s probably something to do with the WordPress platform.
You may already have heard that Livejournal has been undergoing a heavy DDOS attack this week; perhaps WordPress, or WordPress’s commenting platform (some blogs use a different platform for their comments than for their main entries), has been targeted as well.
That may explain it. It stinks either way, some of the comments were pretty interesting.
Also, what is ‘DDOS’ attack? I feel I should know this, but can’t quite put my finger on it…
“Direct Denial of Service”. If I understand correctly, it’s basically a form of hacking where you write a virus or automated routine that tries to access every possible address on a host server at once, essentially giving the entire site the equivalent of an old dial-up busy signal.
It wouldn’t be exactly that, if WordPress has been hit (DDOS attacks only make sites inaccessible, they don’t actually erase content), but it says something about the Internet that it’s one of the few places I actually do assume malice before incompetence.
A DDOS attack need not go for any large number of addresses.
It consists of submitting so many requests for service that the server is overloaded and can’t serve anything. Pretty much the same thing as when your computer slows to a crawl because some program is using all the CPU resources.
If multiple addresses are available, it means that many requests can be sent to each address. That makes the attack more efficient, but a server with a single address/port could be DDOS attacked by shoving enough requests down its pipe.
The first ‘D’ is not for ‘Direct’ but for ‘Distributed’. Such an attack works by running a script that asks the attacked server for web pages on several hundred or thousand machines simultaneously, thus creating a huge backlog of not-yet-answered requests. It has to be distributed in this manner because the various backbone services of the internet won’t accept requests from a single IP address at an unlimited rate.
I agree that science *fiction*, a form of escapist literature, is often about technologies and ways of living that do not appear, you know, true to life.
Curmudgeon holds that the ideas about the existence of extraterrestrial life, especially superior intelligent life, the optimism of futuristic utopias, medical advances leading to expanded lifespans, augmented intelligences, or even immortality are ersatz stand-ins or “NutraSweet” for the unity of nature remembered from Eden, where Adam and Eve could talk with fuzzy animals with the acumen of Doctor Dolittle or a Disney Princesses; for the communion with other created intelligences such as angels; for the paradise and glorified bodies of the true immortality promised the faithful in the New Jerusalem.
John Reilly’s law: the end of technology is to recreate the world of the fairy stories.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff300/fv00255.htm
Also, please enroll me in the Space Princess school of science fiction writing, Arabian Nights division. Not just Space Princesses. Harems of Space Princesses.
Regards,
Ric
I raise you one Girl Genius quote.
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205
I’m fairly agnostic, in so far as I admit “I don’t know.” I think that life on other planets may be possible, but that’s hardly a “belief.” It’s not something I think about when I’m dealing with real life.
On the other hand, I enjoy science fiction (well, not as much of it these days, but I used to when it wasn’t so dreary and politically correct) and fantasy, but unlike the people your Curmudgeon knows, I’m somehow able to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Anyway, Curmudgeons who break into your enjoyment of a “fairy tale” to say “that’s not real” are the type of bore known as an “attention hog” around Castle Spleenville. They get very little of what they need from me.
“I’m fairly agnostic, in so far as I admit “I don’t know.” I think that life on other planets may be possible, but that’s hardly a “belief.” It’s not something I think about when I’m dealing with real life. ”
Would it shock you if you found out that Earth was utterly unique in the countless infinities of worlds in the countless galaxies, galactic clusters and superclusters of space? Would this or would this not cause a cognitive dissonance with a belief that life arose on Earth as a by product of a non-deliberate natural process?
“Would it shock you if you found out that Earth was utterly unique in the countless infinities of worlds in the countless galaxies, galactic clusters and superclusters of space?”
No.
“Would this or would this not cause a cognitive dissonance with a belief that life arose on Earth as a by product of a non-deliberate natural process?”
I don’t believe I mentioned what I believe on that score. It’s possible — even probable — that people who are sure that life on Earth came about by accident would experience cognitive dissonance.
I will tell you what, though: I lean more towards the Creator theory. Mostly because of two things: 1) it’s simply more interesting to think that everything was made for a purpose; and 2) when I’m alone I still get the feeling that I have an “audience.” Strict materialists will tell me it’s just my own consciousness fooling me into thinking there’s Another Person there, but strict materialists are bores.
You are a soul after my own heart. One thing I appreciate after becoming a thoroughgoing supernaturalist from having once been an atheist, is that many divisions, such as the decision between truth and happiness, virtue and joy, logic and emotion, interesting theories or practical theories, all become superseded and abolished. (For the record, I was firmly in the camp of truth, virtue, and logic, and against happiness, joy and emotion, which I despised as weakness.)
Imagine my surprise that Christianity resolved so many paradoxes: allowing for self-interest and self-sacrifice both to be practiced to the utmost (your reward in heaven is your self interest, your self sacrifice is merely here on earth, and, in the cosmic scheme of things, minor), allowing for truth and beauty to be as one (if we live in a universe where truth is beauty and beauty is truth, we no longer need to cleave to one and eschew the other, as either cold rationalists or poetical irrationalists are forced to), and so on.
So, yes, the truth turns out also, ultimately, to be the more interesting and more satisfying story, better than a fairy tale, better than you dreamed, better than you hoped.
And the atheists are scoff at dreams are left with an ever shrinking intellectual zone they can occupy, the ever more science learns which tends to confirm what they once dismissed as fable: that there was a moment of creation, the Big Bang, that there was one genetic ancestor to all man, Adam, and so on. Those atheists who are driven by unadmitted spiritual longings to pseudo-religious ideals, such simple ideas as radical materialism, radical Libertarianism, radical Marxism, will eventually find that even their logic no longer serves them, and the paradoxes and self contradictions mount even in the philosophies proud of their scientific self consistency.
“I have never met an agnostic who did not believe in life on other planets. There is not an iota of evidence to support such a belief.”
I suspect you have and didn’t know it. I don’t believe in life on other planets. I also don’t believe there’s no life on other planets. It’s an open question. I’m not particularly unusual in this holding this view.
“You can say that you hold this article of faith if you wish, that life emerges from non-life by a non-supernatural blind and inevitable process. Fine.”
I don’t know many non-believers in the supernatural who would use the word “inevitable” in that context. Do you really find it difficult to believe that self-replication could not emerge as the result of natural chemical processes?
“Do you really find it difficult to believe that self-replication could not emerge as the result of natural chemical processes?”
Is life self-replication? That and nothing more? This would seem to be a minimal but not sufficient definition.
We can, of course, debate the definition of the word “life” all we like without coming up with a precise one that everyone would agree with (much as we debate the definition of “science fiction”—which I’m sure you’ve experienced). I’d say the beginning of life is the emergence of a self-replicating molecule. If you don’t care to definition a self-replicating molecule as “alive” surely we can agree that it would be something that natural selection would work on and which, if abiogenesis is possible (and I see no reason to think otherwise), would be the start of the process that would give rise to something none of us would dispute could be called alive.
Are you saying you would not be shocked to discover that Earth was the only planet in the entire sidereal universe with life on it? I am not talking about a grudging intellectual affirmation that such a thing is possible: I am talking about a deep-down gut reaction.
If you tell me that if you discovered that Earth was utterly unique, and all other worlds in their countless myriads were utterly lifeless, and that this did not surprise you or cut at the foundations of your world view, then yes, indeed, if there are any other agnostics or atheist who say so or think so have not been made known to me.
No, I’d be surprised but not shocked. I think we have good reason to think it reasonably likely that life of some sort exists elsewhere in the universe. But we have too little data to say much more than that with confidence.
The primary reasons I think it more likely than not:
The fact that there are billions of galaxies most of which have billions of stars.
The fact that we’ve already found evidence of a great many planets orbiting nearby stars.
These two facts together give us reason to think there are a truly massive number of planets in the universe. The more planets, the more opportunities for conditions favorable to the emergence of life.
Add to that the fact that single-celled life emerged so quickly on earth (which suggests, though hardly confirms, that when the planetary conditions are right that life develops pretty easily) and I think we have good reason to favor the “pro-life” hypothesis.
None of which is enough to rule out the idea that life is a tremendous fluke that’s so far only happened once in our universe.
Of course, a universe peopled, other than us, by slime mold isn’t exactly an exciting prospect. What we really hope for is other intelligent life. As to that I don’t think we have any reason to be confident at all. Even if it does exist I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s so rare that only 1 in 100,000 galaxies have an intelligent life form and that we’re totally alone in the galaxy.
Again, I hope not. But who knows?
It’s interesting, when you think about it, that nearly everyone seems to HOPE there’s intelligent life out there. I can’t recall a single person ever telling me that they hope we’re the only intelligent life in the universe.
That says something good about we humans, I think. Don’t you?
There was this one guy who was not so hopeful:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece
I think it’d be cool myself, but seeing the way we’re going, they’re likely to find us before we them.
I raise my hand.
While its possible that we would enter into a community of love and brotherhood with the ETs, IMHO its more likely that they would be American Indians to us, or we American Indians to them.
Or else interstellar travel isn’t really possible, so the only contact possible if decades-lagged data packets. Which is even more depresseing than the American Indian scenarios.
Why? Jupiter alone gives us more resources then we’ll need for 100,000 years or more. There is currently no reason to think we need interstellar travel for Land or Material. It seems to me that the only reason (given our current knowledge) is information swapping. I don’t understand why that would be depressing.
“…its more likely that they would be American Indians to us, or we American Indians to them….”
As a science fiction writer, I would like to claim credit, I and my fellow writers, for establishing what people think of as ‘likely’ and ‘unlikely’ when it comes to encounters with utterly unknown and possibly unknowable beings.
Part of this is the limitations of common sense: the closest thing we have in our experience of discovering new worlds is the discovery of the New World. Part of it is reasonable guesswork about what civilizations on other worlds might be like: but I submit that such guesswork is based on what science fiction writers imagine for the sake of drama.
I myself it is difficult to wring drama from the scenario, ‘Earth encounters the Superduperaliens, and we are like dogs and swine to them, and they domesticate us rather than conquer us, or they ignore us’ nor from the scenario, ‘We detect the presence of energy use and complex reorganization of matter in several star systems, but we cannot figure out what is the alien beings, and what is their machinery, their biotechnology, their pets, and we cannot make contact with them, even when we stand in the middle of their machinery screaming and shooting off guns. It is not that they ignore us, it is merely that we have more in common with a rutabaga than we do with this life form, which we cannot really tell if it is alive.’
But I cannot say how ‘likely’ either of these scenarios is as opposed to the WAR OF THE WORLDS scenario, or the CHILDHOOD’S END scenario or the OUT FROM THE SILENT PLANET scenario or the Cowboys versus Indians scenario. When there are no cases to study, there is no precedent.
I tend to think contact would be more likely to be harmful than helpful, because I don’t see how — with the speed-of-light barrier — any gain but pure knowledge could ever be achieved. Even information transmitting would likely be less valuable with a lag of decades (optimistically) or centuries+ (assuming more reasonable distances between communicating civilizations) – by the time you got an answer back, your culture would likely have answered the question itself, or wouldn’t care anymore.
I doubt full-on, in-person invasion would ever be likely (for the same colossal logistical reasons), but there are other potential ways to do harm. (Saberhagen’s “Berserkers” or similar Von-Neumann-machine weapons, for example. Possibly relativistic kinetic strikes a la THE KILLING STAR, though I’m not sure how feasible that would really be — a civilization based out of lots of self supporting asteroidal/O’Neill colonies would be pretty immune, and you could get to that level pretty quickly — compared to inter-civilization light-times — after your first radio transmissions.)
It strikes me as quite feasible that every civilization capable of transmitting interstellar signals has made this same risk/reward calculation, and thus no one is transmitting, for fear of drawing attention from hypothetical hostiles. (Even if there are in fact no hostiles.)
It strikes me as quite plausible that technological civilization
Actually there is a possibility of our getting some real information about this in the next few years. The Kepler satellite has found a large number of extra-solar planets, by detecting when they pass between their star and us: 1000+ systems with planets so far. Most planets not suprisingly are unsuitable for our kind of life — too big and too hot. (These are the easiest to detect.) But one or two of these planets are of the right size and distance for oxygen/water based life.
It seems as if it may be possible to go further, and see if there is oxygen in the atmospheres of these planets. Oxygen would be strong evidence, but not of course proof, of life. Of course life and intelligent life are not the same.
Let me also add that many atheists seem to believe that it is an article of the Christain faith that Earth is the only planet in the universe with life of any kind on it.
“Let me also add that many atheists seem to believe that it is an article of the Christain faith that Earth is the only planet in the universe with life of any kind on it.”
I wrote an article on this very question some time ago, pointing out that life on other planets is not only not contradictory to the Christian faith, but is in some ways consonant with the creativity and majesty of the Creator — the article was reposted to the Richard Dawkins website, and the comments boxes went into a feeding frenzy of hatred, and not one comment, not a single one, was related to the article in any way. The allegedly rational atheists were not willing (or not able) to make a single coherent reply or counter argument. I assume most had not read the whole article (one boasted he had not).
“Let me also add that many atheists seem to believe that it is an article of the Christain faith that Earth is the only planet in the universe with life of any kind on it.”
That IS a position taken by quite a few Christians. Most, though, seem to consider it an open question and see no compelling biblical or theological reason to make an assumption one way or the other.
I think most atheists are aware that this is an issue on which Christians hold a variety of opinions.
“That IS a position taken by quite a few Christians.”
Who? I have never heard this opinion expressed by anybody except a non-Christian characterizing Christians. What Christian says that extraterrestrial life is contrary to Christian faith?
I know of an extreme Young Earth Creationism that would hold that.
On the other hand, demons and angels, are, by their very definition, extraterrestrials, being not of this universe.
That’s an explanation of UFOs, sightings of aliens, and so forth that I’ve heard from more than a few Christians….that it’s demonic activity.
Given the size of space and our current knowledge of the possibility of FTL, I would guess that demons are a more plausible source than aliens are. Not that that’s saying much.
That doesn’t work, Mary. The demons had to get here by either FTL or transdimensional travel, either of which refutes your basic hypothesis.
On what grounds do you base your assertion?
And even if it were true, you offer two possibilities for travel, which naturally makes it more plausible than the aliens, who only get one.
I’d suggest that hallucination, hypnotically facilitated false memories, fraud and other mundane explanations are overwhelmingly more likely than either demons or real extraterrestrials.
Like I said. Not that that’s saying much.
“Who? I have never heard this opinion expressed by anybody except a non-Christian characterizing Christians. What Christian says that extraterrestrial life is contrary to Christian faith?”
I’ve heard it from several christians. But, as I said, they are in the minority. A bit of googling turns up examples with little difficulty. For example (from christiananswers.net):
“Although the subject is not addressed explicitly, the Bible teaches implicitly that the only things He created with intelligence are the angels, man, and the animals….Although our all-powerful God could have created such life had He desired, it seems rather obvious from Scripture that He did not.”—Mark Van Bebber
http://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c012.html
Here’s another essay on the topic by Ken Ham:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n1/believe-in-ufos
Where he says “One can postulate endlessly about possibilities of intelligent life in outer space, but I believe a Christian worldview, built on the Bible, rejects such a possibility. Here is why….” and he then goes on to give his theological reasons for this opinion.
Ken Ham, of course, is a young earth creationist. Maybe you don’t, like me, live in an area where YEC is common. Among Christians with this view, though, the denial of the possibility of extraterrestrials is not at all unusual.
Although, admittedly, what I’ve heard them talk about extraterrestrial life they seem to always have in mind extraterrestrial intelligence. The subject of extraterrestrial bacteria I’ve rarely, if ever, heard discussed. Even YECs may be open to microbes, plants, etc. I should have been more clear from the start on that point.
No offence, David, but when a small sub-set of specifically American Christianity that usually only dates from relatively recently in the 19th century and often from early in the 20th (e.g. the Rapture, Dispensationalism, YEC, etc.) is invoked as representing the views of *all* Christians, then I start to tear out my hair.
Yes, the United States is a big country. Yes, there are a section and quite a sizeable section within Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity (which are not the same thing) who do hold the views you mention. However, they’re not the rest of us!
It’s rather like assuming that Wal-Mart is the exemplar of every supermarket chain in the world. I have no idea what a Wal-Mart is like, but I venture to say that it wouldn’t be the exact same experience as Dunnes Stores over here.
“…..is invoked as representing the views of *all* Christians, then I start to tear out my hair.”
And I tear my hair out when what I said is misrepresented. Here are my words on the subject:
“That IS a position taken by quite a few Christians. Most, though, seem to consider it an open question and see no compelling biblical or theological reason to make an assumption one way or the other. I think most atheists are aware that this is an issue on which Christians hold a variety of opinions.”
How you get out of that comment the idea that I’m saying the minority of Christians who reject the possibility of extraterrestrials represent the views of all christians is hard to fathom.
Seems pretty easy to fathom to me. This is an age of “Guilt by Association” (Except for the actually guilty, ie, the Communists in the State department). So everyone is touchy, correctly so sometimes, as when someone brings up a trivial sliver of Christians with no institutional or political power into a discussion over whether Christians are so anti-science as to have their faith collapse if Extra Terrestrial minds exist. Many see it as an act of bad faith to blur the line between beliefs people in a group hold and beliefs the group holds. For example, quite a few Atheists believe it’s not Rape if she was dressed in an attractive manner, if she was “asking for it”. But I think we can agree that this is not a believe Atheists hold, even though some atheists believe it, and dropping this t*rd into a discussion about Atheist belief would be dishonest, even though it is technically accurate.
But let’s be fair to Mr. Ellis. He did say specifically that the Christians with this view were a minority; in fact, he gave me what I asked for: I said I’d never seen this opinion expressed except by critics of Christianity, and he gave me examples of real actual Christians who said it themselves.
I agree though that it’s justifiable to roll the eyes whenever Christians en masse are depicted in sf as having their faith shattered by the discovery of extraterrestrials. My favourite is a short story (forgot title and author–d’oh!) in which bacteria are discovered under a moon of Saturn and Christian fanatics who don’t believe in extraterrestrial life decide to blow up or otherwise sabotage all efforts at studying or harvesting said bacteria, which makes no sense, since blowing it up does not alter the reality of its discovery. Then let’s not forget Contact, or on second thought, let’s do.
I prefer the semi-famous comic The Sacred and the Profane, which depicts a worldwide religious revival as the result of the discovery of extraterrestrial life. To my mind, that is much more reasonable.
“So everyone is touchy, correctly so sometimes, as when someone brings up a trivial sliver of Christians with no institutional or political power into a discussion over whether Christians are so anti-science as to have their faith collapse if Extra Terrestrial minds exist.”
The issue being discussed is whether some Christians believe, for theological reasons, that no aliens exist. I’ve pointed out that this position is not unusual among young earth creationists. No one, though, is claiming that their faith would collapse if they found out that ETs exist. They’d be far more likely to simply revise their theology than to abandon their religion.
“Many see it as an act of bad faith to blur the line between beliefs people in a group hold and beliefs the group holds. For example, quite a few Atheists believe it’s not Rape if she was dressed in an attractive manner, if she was “asking for it”.”
I’ve said nothing which could reasonably be construed as blurring that line. I specifically pointed out that this position, while it does exist among especially fundamentalist YECs (and probably not even a majority of those), is a view held by only a small minority. Nothing I said suggests that it is fundamental to being a Christian.
Except, of course, that non-Christians believe it as well, and, as you have pointed out, it exists as part of a sliver of a small fraction of a fringe. You have brought up nothing to even imply this is a nominal Christian position, or even unique to Christianity, and are so rather in the position of someone who asks “Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or No.”. When called on it, you respond “What?! I am only asking a question!”. The idea under discussion was not “Do any Christians anywhere, at any time, believe We Are Alone (as opposed to the example you gave, which you admitted was probably empty dogma, to be changed the minute evidence showed otherwise)”. Was was and is being discussed is “Is the Empty Universe concept a postulate of Christianity?”. You gave no examples from the cannon, nor did anyone else. Just a few random freakshows from the Zoo that is the Modern World. Which I could do to “prove” that Atheists are Rapists, yes? I mean, I’m not saying all of them are, Just that “quite a few”, to use your words, of them are. That’s honest, right?
You have brought up nothing to even imply this is a nominal Christian position,
Um, he pointed out two examples of people who deny alien intelligence for biblical reasons. That sounds nominally Christian to me.
I don’t see where the level of hostility you’re leveling here is warranted, especially since you seem to agree with his actual statements.
No, he brought up one example, and then there was cascade failure. First it was “I’ve heard it from several Christians, but still a minority” to “quite a few Christians” and when challenged drops to “a minority, though they are probably open to extra-terrestrial life, just not intelligent” and then “No one, though, is claiming that their faith would collapse if they found out that ETs exist. They’d be far more likely to simply revise their theology than to abandon their religion.”. So we have gone from several Christians believe this, so the Slur is true, to “Ok, they are a tiny minority who don’t actually believe this, why are you picking on me?”. Now, Mr. Ellis knew at the start we were discussing a “everyone knows” slur, and is bright enough to know that supporting that slur at this time would require a high burden of proof, one he did not provide. It is not enough to show that Christians believe this, he has to prove that more Christians believe this then the general population. He failed at this. It is not enough to show that Christians believe this theologically, he needs to give chapter and verse from the Bible, and show that this is the common understanding, as opposed to another “Jonestown” perversion. He didn’t, and so fails here.
As to my being “hostile”, I don’t see that tolerating such slurs, such lies, is going to stop their spread. Some things need to be challenged hard. I contrast this issue, and Mr. Ellis’s “proof”, with the atheists and rape. The first is a dead issue, kept alive only, as far as I can tell, to spin up the Atheists, and the second is an actual issue being discussed by the Atheists right now (is asking a woman up for coffee Rape? The Atheist jury is still out…). If you cannot see the difference between a Red Herring and an actual issue, then what point our dialogue?
You’re not reading him charitably.
Apologies, David, that was not aimed at you so much as lamenting in general the tendency to take “Position X held by Group Y represents entirety of Population Z” that the ‘Christians think only Earth has life’ represents, for one instance.
Please excuse any grumpiness: I had just come over from an example of P.Z. Myers’ ususal charm and courtesy when dealing with a Christian viewpoint, and I’m afraid you got the over-spill of my reaction :-X
“Let me also add that many atheists seem to believe that it is an article of the Christain faith that Earth is the only planet in the universe with life of any kind on it.”
Crikey, yes! Though it may be unfair to atheists to make them the sole holders of such a view. I don’t know how many books I’ve seen (and just a couple of days ago browsing on Amazon was the most recent example) that have something of this kind in the blurb (emphasis mine):
“The crashlanding of the Xyzptlgzz flying saucer in Moo Mesa Junction, an obscure Texan small twon out in the boonies, has turned the affairs of Earth upside down. While world governments grapple with how to greet our alien visitors, and THE CHURCHES MEET TO DISCUSS THE EFFECT THIS WILL HAVE ON THE BIBLE, our heroes get on with being superior enlightened beings and proving to the aliens that we’re not all rednecks round here (although, granted, the Xyzptlgzz did crashland in the midst of a redneck small town, but that’s not the point).”
I can safely say I could count on the fingers of one hand the stories that don’t have religious bodies (by which they always mean Christianity, and usually the Roman Catholic Church, unless they have a specific reason for being ticked-off at the Southern Baptist Convention or the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) getting their knickers in a twist over alien life being discovered because ZOMG! The Bible! Totally overturned!
As you say, there is nothing in the Bible, no, not even Genesis, about Earth being all there is.
I know! We have more important things to do than worry about extraterrestrials and the Bible; like locating the Ring of Tubalcain so we can launch a counterattack against the alien invaders with a crack team of metalbending Opus Dei assassins!
“a crack team of metalbending Opus Dei assassins”
Under the patronage of Ss Dunstan and Eligius, naturally
I myself will now seek to join this space princess movement. (in fact, I knocked on your door from 1am Friday morning until 2pm Monday afternoon to join but I think you weren’t home – I hope you find the manuscript I nailed to your door… and mailbox… and azalea bushes…)
I remember watching a Futurama episode recently that was “discussing” the creation v evolution debate. The Professor (Farnsworth) invented some nanobots to help make a new planet more habitable for him. Of course, the robots evolved into “people” very quickly (because – to quote the robot man, Bender: “Robots do everything better.”). Though it was a relative millions of years for the machines, for the Professor, it was only a week.
It got me to thinking… I mean, as a writer & computer guy, I can appreciate natural selection for its sheer design brilliance. If I wanted to create a system that can persist for as long as possible and will require the least amount of input from me (because I’m a lazy bastard), I don’t think I could improve much over the current world. Which brings to mind: How do we know whether our world is natural or artificial? Certainly our science (at the moment) much operate from the perspective that it’s all natural but it’s an interesting mental exercise to me. Maybe “natural” life in the universe is far FAR different from us (as we are from robots). And the larger question is: how would we learn this? A man cannot find the right answer if he’s not only expecting a wrong one, but the wrong category. (i.e. a man who asks “what is 2 + 2″ and is convinced the answer is a color, will not accept or believe any answer that is a number – and will probably accuse you of dodging the question to boot)
Just some random thought exercises. (loved this post, John)