Kurt Vonnegut said it all in Sirens of Titan.
Or maybe we are part of a galactic (or inter-galactic) double blind study.
[snip]
Why can't we step back and look at this philosophically:
Either there has always been life, of life started somewhere (this is like proving there is no greatest negative number (because you can always subtract one again, or that you can count the number of members in a set the size of which you can specify as a particular integer).
Now this is structurally identical, it seems to me, to the fact that every football game ends in either one team winning, or the other team winning, or a draw.
We know all the possibilities. Which one happens to be true will make no difference to any of us (unless we are employed by a university astronomy department or by a football team, or an astronomy journal or sports magazine publisher, etc.).
So why don't we see if there is any use we can make in our lives of our neighbors' beliefs in either the origin of life, or in football -- unless, that is, we maybe have something more interesting and potentially consequential to to?
Let us assume life began on "an alien world". In *that* world, that world is not alien, but rather quotidian. But our rworld is, for us, quotidian. So maybe our world is *the alien world where life began*? It's as good a place as any -- unless this is an instance of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)....
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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