Arlo, I fail to see how finding life in the Universe will be a Copernican revolution ? Surely we "know" it's there already, waiting to be found. Yawn, tell us something new ? No evidence of non-existence Arlo, lack of evidence of existence. Your logic is slipping.
Contact is a different matter. The revolution would be if they were an evolved intelligence and "taught" us something culturally - taught as in ... conquest-for-resource-exploitation / demolition-for-hyperspace-bypass / eaten-by-dog / ignored-as-being-insignificant (Terry Bissom style) that kind of thing ? Seriously Arlo, I think you have to find a better argument than arrogance for some of the more sophisticated AP's concerning the fine-tuning arguments. You're not arguing with Platt or Ham here ;-) or me, but people like Reese / Deutsch / Wheeler and I'll dig out a few more from the blog. But holidays are OK. BTW I said "finely tuned" - perfectly balanced is someone else's language. Ian On 3/20/08, Arlo Bensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [Ian] > people are thinking very very hard to "conceive" of any conceivable > thing we might call life existing. > > [Arlo] > yes, many have suggested that the evidence of extraterrestial life is > there, we just don't see it as such because we have a narrow > preconceived notion of what it should look like. to paraphrase > pirsig, "e.t. comes knocking on the door and you say 'go away, i'm > looking for e.t.', and so e.t. goes away. puzzling." one sci-fi book > i read once (forget the title at the moment) had the earth "buffered" > by extraterrestials to prevent the earth from contacting/finding > other life forms until it matured enough to make such contact > beneficial. sort of like the prime directive of star trek combined > with a dampening field to prevent the interception of extraterrestial > transmissions. so maybe our "aloneness" is because we are bugs in a > jar. god knows, look around, do YOU think humanity is ready for > contact with another world? > > so my jury is (as always) out on the final verdict as well. > > [Ian] > That's not what I'm saying - some > anthropically-convenient-creationists are maybe. It's not about me, > my ancestors or even humans .... that is just "happenstance" .... its > about an existing living thing of any kind > > [Arlo] > And, as I've said, the only evidence we have of life existing outside > Earth is contested evidence of microbes on asteroids. Until we find > some evidence, ANY evidence, it is unavoidably presumptuous to claim > that the cosmos "is perfectly balanced to support life". What we have > by evidence is a vast cosmos entirely devoid of life except for on > one small planet in one small arm of an otherwise unremarkable > galaxy. And that to me suggests just the opposite, that the cosmos is > NOT balanced to support life, but that in very, very rare occurrences > it may happen despite the otherwise indifference of the greater cosmos. > > I'll go out on a limb and say that the next big "Copernican > revolution" will involve the discovery that we are not alone in the > universe. And maybe this will be something like E.T or maybe > something like ID4. Maybe we will find out we share consciousness > with other evolved beings, or maybe we will find out that to these > other beings we are no better than ants are to us. Either way, next > big revolution. > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
