Attack of the Super-Intelligent Purple Space Squid Creators

Incautiously, Dawkins brings up the idea that aliens might have seeded life on earth; so-called directed panspermia.

[Bluenose]

Of course all this hypothesis does is to remove the question of abiogenesis one step away. It does not remove it completely, for where did the super intelligens purple space squids come from? Eventually even in this unlikely scenario, we come to a point where life must have started somewhere.

To consider this hypothesis seriously we introduce a whole lot more assumptions and unnccessary complication, based upon no evidence at all, only the wishful thinking of some who cannot conceive of life arising here on Earth.

Remember Richard Dawkins was asked if there was any evidence to disprove this idea. Of course there was not, just like there is no ecidence to disprove the invisible pink unicorn. However, there is also no evidence to support the idea, so a simple application of Occams Razor means that in the lack of any supporing evidence we do not need to consider a hypothesis until and unless some evidence for it does come to light.

WARNING: Do not hold your breath waiting for evidence of super intelligent purple space squids, kiddies, it is bad for your health.

[Darwins Stepchild]

Bluenose wrote:

Of course all this hypothesis does is to remove the question of abiogenesis one step away. It does not remove it completely, for where did the super intelligens purple space squids come from? Eventually even in this unlikely scenario, we come to a point where life must have started somewhere.
To consider this hypothesis seriously we introduce a whole lot more assumptions and unnccessary complication, based upon no evidence at all, only the wishful thinking of some who cannot conceive of life arising here on Earth.
Remember Richard Dawkins was asked if there was any evidence to disprove this idea. Of course there was not, just like there is no ecidence to disprove the invisible pink unicorn. However, there is also no evidence to support the idea, so a simple application of Occams Razor means that in the lack of any supporing evidence we do not need to consider a hypothesis until and unless some evidence for it does come to light.
WARNING: Do not hold your breath waiting for evidence of super intelligent purple space squids, kiddies, it is bad for your health.

Of course, one SHOULD consider the question that Dawkins was asked..."Was there any conceivable scenario that would involve an intelligent designer?" Dawkins responded with the directed panspermia scenario as the only such possibility he could see. That does NOT mean Dawkins finds it likely.

[Bluenose]

Darwins Stepchild wrote:

<quoted text>
Of course, one SHOULD consider the question that Dawkins was asked..."Was there any conceivable scenario that would involve an intelligent designer?" Dawkins responded with the directed panspermia scenario as the only such possibility he could see. That does NOT mean Dawkins finds it likely.

Fairnuff. Still, it would still only remove the question of origins one step. It does not help the GODDIDIT crowd, because there is still the question of where did the space aliens come from. If life was seeded here by someone else, that someone else originated , obviously, someWHERE else. Wherever that might be, we come up against the same questions. Life got started somewhere. And there is still an absolute lack of evidence to support the space alien hypothesis anyway. There's that wretched Occam again...

For what its worth, I think it highly likely that life has emerged on very many planets. I use the assumption of mediocrity to make this claim. The sun is, after all, a run of the mill star, like countless others throughout the galaxy and indeed, no doubt, the universe. We already have found many extra solar planets in the tiny proportion of our own galaxy that we are capable of making such observations for. It seems therefore that there must be countless billions of "solar systems" throughout the galaxy and the universe. The odds do not have to be very high for this to translate into a very large number of plates supporting life, more if we find that systems other than carbon based chemistry will work.

The assumption of mediocrity is entirely reasonable, after all, what evidence is there that our particular neighbourhood is special in any way, it seems rather mediocre to me, on a galactic scale. So, the assumption of mediocrity leads me to think it likely that there is life all over the place. Nothing special happened here. This may be unpopular in certain circles, but too bad, so sad.

BTW, I am not putting this forward in any attempt to justify alien visitation of Earth. There could be very many millions of technological civilisations in the galaxy and they still would be so far apart that any chance of communication would be almost zero. Actual travel between them is inconceivable until and unless some form of FTL travel is discovered. The fact that the Earth is not regularly visited by alien spacecraft makes it seem unlikely that such a technology is possible. Of course, maybe they observe the Federation Prime Directive. LOL!

[Bluenose]

That's planets suporting life. Although I suppose plates might work, perhaps the Discworld is not fiction after all!

[Bob of Quantum-Faith]

I like your "it's just plain vanilla, and therefore common" argument.

One thing that most religionists get from their religion, is a huge ego-boost. They get to believe that they are "special" and "unique" and all that. Lets them pat themselves on their collective backs and so forth.

This huge, bloated ego cannot stand the notion that life is not only common, but so ordinary that humans are less significant than a grain of sand on a beach....

...as far as the Universe is concerned.

The more rabid/zealous a believer is-- the bigger their ego.

And, with a large ego comes arrogance to match.

[Darwins Stepchild]

Bluenose wrote:

That's planets suporting life. Although I suppose plates might work, perhaps the Discworld is not fiction after all!

Oh, I agree that panspermia does not answer the question of the origin of life. It could be an answer to "the origin of life on Earth", which is a different question.

One interesting aspect of panspermia is that it would address one creationist complaint...that there just wasn't enough time for a bacteria cell to develop (though that is a very weak argument since no one knows how long such development would take) because life developing elsewhere in the galaxy extends the time period by several billion years.

[polymath257]

Bluenose wrote:

For what its worth, I think it highly likely that life has emerged on very many planets. I use the assumption of mediocrity to make this claim. The sun is, after all, a run of the mill star, like countless others throughout the galaxy and indeed, no doubt, the universe. We already have found many extra solar planets in the tiny proportion of our own galaxy that we are capable of making such observations for. It seems therefore that there must be countless billions of "solar systems" throughout the galaxy and the universe. The odds do not have to be very high for this to translate into a very large number of plates supporting life, more if we find that systems other than carbon based chemistry will work.

The assumption of mediocrity is entirely reasonable, after all, what evidence is there that our particular neighbourhood is special in any way, it seems rather mediocre to me, on a galactic scale.

I do think some care is needed here. Our environment *is* special in a couple of ways: we are in a spiral galaxy and we are at a medium distance from the center of our galaxy.

That we are in a spiral galaxy is important because the ellipticals tend not to have the heavier elements (like carbon) is great supply. Astronomers call anything heavier than helium a 'metal', so we say that ellipticals have low metalicity. Spirals are the galaxies that have the metals, and hence are the likely places for life. This is significant because there tend to be more ellipticals in large galactic clusters than in small ones, so spirals are slightly less common in the overall scheme of things.

Second, even in a spiral galaxy, the distribution of metals is not uniform. They tend to exist in the arms and not in the core or in the halos. So it is relevant that we are not closer in to the center of even our galaxy.

So, the assumption of mediocrity leads me to think it likely that there is life all over the place. Nothing special happened here. This may be unpopular in certain circles, but too bad, so sad.

I actually have a slightly different take on this. Life on earth got going rather quickly once the planet cooled down enough to have liquid water. So, I suspect that *life* is actually quite common in spiral galaxies. However,*eucaryotic* life took quite a while to produce and multi-cellular life even longer. Of the total time life has existed on earth, all but 1/6 has been as single celled organisms. This, to me, suggests that multi-cellularity is difficult and is probably not as common as bacterial life.

BTW, I am not putting this forward in any attempt to justify alien visitation of Earth. There could be very many millions of technological civilisations in the galaxy and they still would be so far apart that any chance of communication would be almost zero. Actual travel between them is inconceivable until and unless some form of FTL travel is discovered. The fact that the Earth is not regularly visited by alien spacecraft makes it seem unlikely that such a technology is possible. Of course, maybe they observe the Federation Prime Directive. LOL!

I actually go further here also. How long do you think intelligent life lasts on any given planet? Modern humans have been around 1-200,000 years, but we have only had agriculture for 10,000 and radio for 100. How much longer do you give us? another 10,000 years? If this is an expected span for technological species, the chances that two technological species exist in a galaxy at the same time drop quite a bit. No, we are not 'special' in that intelligent life probably has existed and will exist again once we are gone, but we may still be the only ones in our galaxy.

[The Dude]

polymath257 wrote:

<quoted text>If this is an expected span for technological species, the chances that two technological species exist in a galaxy at the same time drop quite a bit. No, we are not 'special' in that intelligent life probably has existed and will exist again once we are gone, but we may still be the only ones in our galaxy.

Aw, now I feel lonely!

:-(