Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Alien Nation
Our old friend Lane Palmer gets it wrong. Again.
[Lane Palmer] So do you believe in aliens? Are there really races of creatures cruising around the friendly skies kidnapping cattle for “farm” aceutical purposes? ?
Well, I’m not sure - and frankly, I’m not sure I care either. But do you know who does care to know? The answer to this might surprise you - but in my experience, the group of folks who need aliens in their worldview are atheists.
More below the fold...
Lane is talking here about the comment that Dr. Dawkins made in the movie "Expelled". Dr. Dawkins was asked by Ben Stein what it would mean if, hypothetically, intelligent design were true. Dr. Dawkins said - as an example only, and as a specific response to the hypothetical question posed by Stein - that it could be true if aliens had created life on Earth. He did not endorse this view, and he even named an argument that destroyed it.
Lane, on the other hand, chooses to stick his head in the sand, and parrot the Expelled party line - that Dawkins "believes in aliens!" Bawk! Bawk! In other words, he took the bait, then swallowed the hook, the line, the sinker, the pole, the reel, and half the arm of the fisherman.
Great job with that whole "research" thing, Lane. Didn't we go over this before with you a couple of years ago?
[Lane Palmer] Option two is…(cue the suspenseful music)…none other than an alien race who ‘seeded’ life on this planet some 128 gazillion years ago (give or take a few leap years added in).
No, I am most certainly not making this up. Go see (or rent in the future) the movie “Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed” - and at the end you’ll witness Richard Dawkins - author of The God Delusion (hint - this classifies him as an atheist) - essentially take seriously the alien theory as an explanation of where life came from.
You know what? Dawkins himself, in his own response to this canard, called the producers of the movie Expelled 'Liars For Jesus".
Are you a good little "liar for Jesus" Lane?
Here are Dawkins' own words on the matter. (Read the whole thing if you have time. It's very good.):
[Richard Dawkins] My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphatically NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.
So, there you go. I'm fond of Lane, and I truly thought that he might end up being one of those Christians who is, you know, honest.
Apparently not.
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Expelled for Dishoensty
Those who put forth ID as fact find themselves in a conundrum. They can't actually advocate ID without also bearing false witness, thereby expelling themselves from heaven and heading elsewhere. Only through intellectual dishonesty can they advance the central tenents of ID, but in the process violate the commandment, "Thou shall not bear false witness."
Its ironic that they attempt to use waive the banner of self righteousness to lure others into giving up their souls as well.
As for aliens seeding life on earth, someone would have to demonstrate several rather extraordinary and highly improbable facts before it is even relevant to human affairs or the origin of life on earth.
1) That it would be possible to travel faster than the speed of light. This would be necessary for any life form to get to planet earth in anything other than extraordinarily long life-spans, life-spans that are probably beyond the theoretical limit of DNA/RNA based life, which undergo apostatis because of accummulated cell death over time. Animals wouldn't make it, as none reach ages much more than a couple of hundred years (rockfishes of the genus Sebastes), except perhaps bacteria capable of a cloned, nearly inanimate existence. Even if you were a redwood or a bristlecone pine, you still probably wouldn't live long enough, and of course then you would have to grapple with maintaining a light source for the long period of time necessary to travel in deep space.
2) That it would be possible for any life form to able to withstand the shear forces due to accelleration just getting up to the speed of light. If you calculate these forces under realistic estimates of the upper bound for accelleration necessary to maintain the integrity of DNA/RNA based cellular life as we know it, all organisms on earth would simply die of old age before their spaceship even approached this upper bound on accelleration.
3) That some kind of life, probably other than DNA/RNA based, which is highly suceptible to damage by radiation could survive in space for long periods of time.
Hence, while a vanishingly small probability exists that there may actually be a great Italian pizza take out place out there in the cosmos that caters to the whims of intergalactic nomads, who are busy planting their seeds and tending their herds on planets in other solar systems, I wouldn't hold my breath on getting to it (or from it). Even if you made it, the pizza would lilkely be cold.
As a guy who occassionally writes SF,,,,
...I take exception to your post. You assume that these putative aliens (I personally believe life originated here on planet Earth, after all, we are very distantly related to oak trees - honest) have no skills in biotechnology. It is possible to store the DNA for a species AS INFORMATION. When you get where you're going, build the devices you need to create the life you want, then reach into the memory of your quantum computer and build it up from the DNA database. You incubate the life you want, clone it, spread it around Johnny-Appleseed-style, then bug out to the next star system. If you are a very long lived species, or good at building AI, go on slow ships, or send AI robotic ships, under the speed of light. You seed thousands of worlds with microbial life over millions of years, then retrace your steps to see what happened.
None of this is original to me. Over the last twenty years I have read these ideas in science fiction novels...or I have seen them in SF movies and TV shows. The Johnny Appleseed aliens are an old old idea in SF, appearing even in Star Trek episodes.
My solution to your malady is apparent: consume more science fiction!
Thought Experiment
I'm not entirely sure they're lying--I think they just don't get the point of what Dawkins said: The trouble with using thought experiments with people who can't actually think clearly is, well, self-explanatory.
I used to argue, good-naturedly, with a good friend on a various range of topics, political and otherwise. I would occasionally use the reductio ad absurdum type of argument, where you argue the logically extended results of your opponents side. Unfortunately, my opponent would then start arguing about the absurdity of what I was saying, never realizing the point, that my argument was merely an extension of the point she was originally trying to support. Sigh...
Creationism = The Matrix
The most straightforward way for Creationism (as these people want it to be, i.e., with a very young Earth, life-forms formed as they are, etc., etc.) to be true is that we all live in the Matrix. There is a thought experiment for you. If everything is simulated, then fossils could be simulated in the rocks, the light from distant galaxies (proof positive of an old universe if they re real) built into the simulated sky, and so forth, and God is just the runner of the computer program. Of course, with that hypothesis, the world could have started, oh, five minutes ago. After all, if you can put fossils into rocks, you can put memories into people's brains.
I think that Ben Stein is trying to suppress evidence for the Matrix theory, even though not one thing in his movie is against it ! Of course, to the believers in the "5 Minute Matrix" theory, he didn't actually make the movie at all, the simulation was just started with the evidence of his having done so implanted in our heads.
This seems entirely as logical to me as the notion that God implanted fossils in rocks. On the other hand, maybe I was just programmed to think that way.
Uh
Feeble minds. They're in abundance.
That's the unfortunate
That's the unfortunate bi-product of modern society.
Puuuuuuulease. The Catholic
Puuuuuuulease.
The Catholic church, the so called "true church" has admitted that extra terrestrial life might be possible (cue in Star Wars theme)
But wait! Them aliens look anthropomorphically correct.
Have you seen Stein's movie?
It does not appear that you have. I have seen it, and I did not come away with the impression that Richard Dawkins believes aliens created life on Earth, but only rather that he believes the alien theory is a more plausible explanation to the creation of life than any "God" of the world's major religions.
missing the point
It's not what Dawkins believes, it's what the Liars for Jesus say about what Dawkins believes. They are claiming he believes in aliens in order to undercut his opposition to ID.
Advanced civilizations
Carl Sagan gives an idea about the possibility of other civilizations in the galaxy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0PWOJkWgcM&feature=related
Lane should be "Expelled"
"Liars for Jesus" does seem to sum it up rather well.
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