On 07 Aug 96 13:51:00 EDT, Jim Bell wrote:
[...]
JB>Now then. Let's say it IS a life form. This, it seems to me,
>vindicates both Francis Crick [directed panspermia] and Fred Hoyle
>[Evolution from Space].
If:
1. The meteor is from Mars (it probably is);
2. The form is proven to be a microfossil; and
3. It is proven not to be a contaminant from Earth; and
4. It was eventually shown that life originated on Mars and later
traveleld to Earth or vice-versa
then:
It would support panspermia's claim that living things can survive in
space, at least between two planets 75 million kilometres apart. It
would not necessarily prove that living things can survive in space
across interstellar distances and time, which panspermia claims.
JB>It deals a blow to traditional evolutionists (what, we had
>spontaneous generation in TWO places in the solar system?)
Indeed, the discovery of ETL (extraterrestrial life) would be a
problem for the Dawkin's brand of blind watchmaker Neo-Darwinism,
unless they had a common origin. Dawkins believes that the
origin of life was such a chance event that life may only
exist on Earth:
"Let us, for the sake of discussion, entertain the alternative
assumption that life has arisen only once, ever, and that was here on
Earth. It is tempting to object to this assumption on the following
emotional grounds. Isn't there something terribly medieval about
it?...How very conceited to assume that, out of all the billions of
billions of planets in the universe, our own little backwater of a
world, in our own local backwater of a solar system, in our own local
backwater of a galaxy, should have been singled out for life? Why,
for goodness sake, should it have been our planet? I am genuinely
sorry, for I am heartily thankful that we have escaped from the
small-mindedness of the medieval church and I despise modern
astrologers, but I am afraid that the rhetoric about backwaters in
the previous paragraph is just empty rhetoric. It is entirely
possible that our backwater of a planet is literally the only one
that has ever borne life. The point is that if there were only one
planet that had ever borne life, then it would have to be our planet,
for the very good reason that 'we' are here discussing the question!
If the origin of life is such an improbable event that it happened on
only one planet in the universe, then our planet has to be that
planet." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker", Penguin: London,
1991, p143)
Paul Davies makes the point that "the concept of alien life
is...fundamentally anti-Darwinian":
"It is predicated on the assumption, made almost universally by
biologists, that the course of evolution does not follow any law-like
trend but is purely random. This 'blind watchmaker' thesis is
defended robustly by biologist Richard Dawkins in his book of that
title, and by Stephen Jay Gould in his many books about the theory of
evolution. If the hypothesis is correct, then a feature of life such
as intelligence is a purely chance phenomenon, exceedingly unlikely
to arise elsewhere independently. It implies that if, say, human
beings wiped themselves out, then it is very improbable that another
intelligent species would one day arise on Earth to take our place.
In this case, life on other planets, if it exists at all, would
almost certainly not produce intelligence or social organization.
And many biologists, by extension, suppose that the origin of life
was also purely a contingent event-a chance happening of very low
probability - so that any form of life is unlikely to occur
elsewhere. The concept of alien life is, therefore fundamentally
anti-Darwinian." (Davies P., "Are We Alone?: Philosophical
Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life", Penguin:
London, 1995, pp48-49)
JB>and does nothing to harm Intelligent Design. In fact, it rather
>supports the idea.
Agreed. If life is the result of the free act of an Intelligent
Designer, then life may exist on every suitable planet and moon in
the universe.
JB>What would, assuming once again, it say about God, man and Earth?
>I don't think much. Man would still be a special creation.
The point is that Extraterrestrial Life is not necessarily
Extraterrestrial *Intelligent* Life. The more we know about the
amazing series of "coincindences" that lead to human intelligence,
has made scientists more pessimistic about SETI. Robert Naeye. the
editor of Astronomy magazine, asks "OK, Where Are They?" and
suggests that "Evidence from a variety of scientific fields indicates
that we might be the lonely inhabitants of a vast cosmic ocean":
"Life needs a good sun, a single star that radiates enough energy to
warm a planet. But if a star is too massive, it quickly exhausts its
nuclear fuel....Is the Milky Way Galaxy like planet Earth, with towns
and cities dotting the landscape? Or is Earth more like a lonely
island in a vast galactic ocean, with life- bearing planets and
especially intelligent life separated by vast distances? On the
surface, the most obvious evidence bearing on these questions is the
fact that our home world and host star seem so ordinary. Nicolas
Copernicus shattered the prevailing notion that Earth was seated at
the center of creation. Succeeding generations of astronomers
steadily reinforced the Copernican view as they discovered the true
nature of stars, the remote location of our home world within our
Galaxy, and the existence of galaxies far, far beyond our own. So
pervasive is this view that in the world of modern science, it is
almost considered heresy to assert any special qualities to our solar
system, our planet, or even ourselves. With an estimated 200 billion
stars in the Galaxy and interstellar space filled with the molecules
necessary for life, many scientists and laymen naturally conclude
that we could not be alone-we must share our Galaxy with hundreds,
thousands, or perhaps millions of other civilizations. But on closer
examination, this simple logic falls apart. Recent studies in a
variety of scientific fields suggest that life must pass through a
series of bottlenecks on the road to intelligence. On Earth, a long
sequence of improbable events transpired in just the right way to
bring forth our existence, as if we had won a million-dollar lottery
a million times in a row. Contrary to the prevailing belief, maybe
we are special. Maybe humanity stands alone on a fertile island in
the largely sterile waters of the galactic ocean." (Naeye R., "OK,
Where Are They?", Astronomy, July 1996, Vol. 24, No. 7, p38).
Similarly, the Editorial in this week's New Scientist concludes:
"Whichever way you look at it, we seem left with the depressing
conclusion that advanced civilisations must be very rare. The lesson
from Mars may be that it is easier to create life than it is for it
to evolve to an advanced stage. If ALH84001 really contains Martian
life forms, it may be a lonely message. We may after all be one of
the first advanced civilizations, destined to wander through space
finding plenty of protoplasm, but nobody to talk to." (Editorial.,
"Lonely Little Earthlings", New Scientist, Vol 151, No. 2043, 17
August 1996, p3)
JB>It does give us writers some good SF ideas, though. It's time to
>re-read the Hitchhiker trilogy again....
I think the Mars meteorite could be important. It may be that life
began on Mars and was transported to Earth at the beginning. OTOH it
may be that life began on Earth and was transported to Mars. It would
only be a boost to naturalistic theories of chemical evolution if
life was found on Mars that had a radically different genetic
code (say with the opposite optical activity and/or "letters"). The
argument could then be made that life is probable via a variety of
routes. But until naturalists can say what those routes were,
proponents of ID could justly say that it makes the chemical
evolutionists task harder because there then would be two
improbable origins of life to explain!
But I don't believe that there will be found existing life on Mars
(and hence no genetic code to read) for the same reason that Gaia
theorist Lovelock predicted it wouldn't be found - Mars has an "dead"
atmosphere:
"Indeed, it was by thinking about how to find life on Mars that Jim
Lovelock was led to conclude, first, that there was no point in
sending space probes to look for life on Mars (he pointed out that
the information gathered by our instruments on Earth already told us
it was dead), and secondly, that any visitor from space would have no
difficulty telling that the Earth was alive, long before setting foot
(or tentacle) on the surface of our planet. Lovelock tells how the
realization came to him as a flash of insight in 1965, when he was
working for NASA, designing instruments that would eventually be used
by the Viking Mars probes to sniff the Martian air and look for
traces of life products. He saw that there was no need to go to all
the trouble and expense of sending a probe to Mars to make these
subtle tests, because astronomers already knew that the atmosphere of
Mars is inert and must therefore, he reasoned, signify a dead planet
..The fact that the Earth has an atmosphere rich in oxygen, full
of chemical potential energy and highly reactive, is a sign that
something out of the ordinary, in chemical terms, is happening on our
planet....So a visitor from another star, entering our Solar System,
could use a simple spectroscope to investigate the atmospheres of the
planets, and conclude that while Venus and Mars, which both have
carbon dioxide atmospheres, do not have life, Earth, with its
oxygen-rich atmosphere, must have life." (Gribbin J., "In The
Beginning: The Birth of the Living Universe", Penguin: London,
p118)
God bless.
Steve
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