Jones Beene wrote:
JR: "Since it happened somewhere there is no reason to think it did not
happen again on earth."
Whoa...we have yet to establish any evidence whatsoever that it happened
elsewhere.
You misunderstand my argument, which was admittedly terse. I meant that:
IF we postulate some other species seeded earth with life in an artificial
(or intelligent) manner THEN we have to ask how that other life form appeared.
Did some other form of life seed that one? Bad answer. Somewhere back in
the chain, at some point, some form of life had to appear on its own,
without artificial assistance from any pre-existing form of life.
That first form of life in the chain must have evolved, since there no
other viable scientific theory could explain its origin. Waving your hand
and declaring the the first link in the chain was a product of invisible
"intelligence" is like claiming there may be some unspecified error in a
cold fusion experiment. Neither statement can be tested or falsified, so
both are meaningless.
Gene Mallove wrote a book about this subject, by the way: "The Quickening
Universe."
Although I did not say life "happened" elsewhere, in point of fact, it
seems very likely life has evolved independently on trillions of other
planets, including -- perhaps -- Mars. But it seems extremely unlikely that
extraterrestrials have crossed interstellar space to visit us. Given the
speed of light and the latest theories about which stars are likely to
support life (only a tiny fraction of the total), there are too many target
stars. Imagine it is 500,000 BC, and there are few hundred thousand
primitive people on earth. What are the chances that one will go to the
beach and examine one particular grain of sand, out of all the grains of
sand available? That is approximately how likely it is that some
space-faring civilization has visited and examined our planet.
In any case, if any school of Intelligent Design is viable, I think it must
be this one, and I wholeheartedly support both their petition and their
religion: http://www.venganza.org/
I have nothing more to say about this!
- Jed
