God drives a UFO

Billy Saunders asked by e-mail:
“I would like to know your thoughts about "other life" that may be out there in our universe or beyond. Do think that we are the only ones with life?”

I’ll start at the beginning and get onto the possibility of other life in the universe later.
In reference to my equating the “god” entity with an extra-terrestrial life-form: this is my interpretation of some religious people’s claims that god is ‘real’, not just a human psychological function but actually existing ‘somewhere’ beyond Earth as a separate, non-human, super-being. Maybe believers in certain gods wouldn’t refer to theirs as a ‘being’ or a 'life-form' seeing as it’s god (in mono-theistic religions) who created all life. I used the term ‘extra-terrestrial’ because it means ‘beyond Earth’ and the same term is used to refer to other biological life forms in the universe that we might also call ‘aliens’.

I don’t wish to demean mono-theistic religious people by suggesting that their belief in a god is equivalent to believing that an alien in outer space is the CEO of Earth, ie that their god is an alien. In fact I haven’t a clue what they think they are believing in. Some religious loud-mouths do talk in real, concrete terms, however, so if they’re going on about how definitely ‘real’ the god phenomenon is then they’re trapped by their own dogmatism in a universe where ‘extra-terristrial being’ means only one thing, a real, living alien, albeit a Super one who makes planets and other life forms, who is generally telepathic, omniscient, was never born and will never die

On the more spiritual side, away from the bullying fundamentalists, I see religion in general as a response to asking unanswerable questions like “why am I here and where did all this incredible force of nature come from?”. My personal answer is “fuck knows! Natural selection acting on primeval protein soup over a few billion years, I guess” but I can empathise with the general sense of awe and mystery.

As society became more sophisticated in the Iron Age and into the Medieval period (in Europe and the Middle East at least), the natural and emotional feeling of awe and mystery became the property of doctrinal religious power groups. People then lived short lives, couldn’t read and did what they were told by the few people who could, or they were killed. It is from these historical roots (and probably earlier) that religion as a form of government over large populations emerged. And it still exists today despite widespread literacy, mass communication and our scientific knowledge base. The radical fundamentalist G. W. Bush is exhibiting his own ‘god-approved’ power to abuse awe and mystery, only being genocidally inclined he has changed it to ‘shock and awe’, trying to imply that the poor Iraqi peasants will experience mystical ‘awe’ at the sight of the cluster bombs raining down on them just before they are incinerated. And other religious extremists are under the impression that by suicidally blowing up trains, cafés and indeed entire skyscrapers full of innocent people as some kind of gift to their god, that they will slip into a parallel dimension filled with nubile maidens and rivers of honey.

The mind boggles, it really does.
So I’m sorry to be the bearer of disappointing news to any readers who are hanging their hopes on aliens and parallel dimensions, but no, in a nutshhell, none of it is real or true. Why we were born is a mystery. And we’re all going to die. As for your actual card-carrying aliens, then I think that that is anybody’s statistics. We are looking though.

Here are two recent articles on the subject of awe and mystery on a big scale. Firstly, the astronomical quest to listen and look out into our galaxy (forget the universe, that’s too mind-blowingly big).
Secondly a demonstration of the pig-headed ignorance exhibited by the American religious extremists as they stuggle to come to terms with some of the science that shows their religion for what it is: metaphysical spirituality abused at the hands of doctrinally obsessive egomaniacs.


But what if no one's out there at all?

Scientists back new projects to scan the skies for alien life - but confidence in finding it is dwindling

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday May 7, 2006
The Observer

Despite 40 years of effort, it has yet to produce a single result. Millions of pounds have been spent and thousands of man-hours expended, yet Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, remains the great unfulfilled hope of modern astronomy......

'Twenty years ago, scientists were confident there were at least a million alien civilisations in our galaxy,' said..... Dr Ian Morison of Jodrell Bank Observatory. 'No one thinks there can be anything like that number now.'

Scientists' failure to hear ET's call accounts for some of this loss of optimism. For 40 years, radio astronomers have trained their telescopes at stars to try to pick up a single 'Hello, I'm here' signal. Earth's own growing ecological woes have also led astronomers to fear that civilisations, if they do emerge, may be extinguishing themselves in very short timespans.

'I am sure life exists on other worlds,' said Morison. 'But it may be rather primitive. Few other worlds may have the right conditions for complex organisms to evolve as they have on Earth.'

For example, our moon keeps our planet spinning in a stable manner while our sun does not have wild fluctuations in radiation output. On other worlds, battered by radiation bursts and crashing comets, life may be so disrupted that it has remained rooted at the level of amoebas and primitive pond life. This is known as the 'aliens are scum' scenario......

One [new] idea..... involves using Nasa's next manned missions to the moon to search its surface for space debris from alien civilisations. 'We are not talking about digging up monoliths like those in 2001: A Space Odyssey,' he said. 'The idea is to look for microscopic fragments of alien spacecraft.'

Russian scientists have calculated that a civilisation capable of space travel would produce massive amounts of debris, like the space junk - old rocket boosters, lens caps dropped by astronauts - that is building up around Earth today. This alien detritus, which would include microscopic particles shorn from spacecraft, could have drifted across space for billions of years, eventually becoming embedded on our moon and ready for astronauts to dig them up......

But this is not the only new concept on offer...... [another new idea is] surveying the sky for signs of interstellar Morse code. 'We used to think alien civilisations would say "hello" by sending radio signals,' he said. 'However, we have realised they could also do it by beaming out laser pulses, so we have built a telescope that can monitor sections of the sky to pick up these flashes. We have studied 100,000 stars in the last two weeks, but have seen nothing.'

At the same time, Paul Allen - one of the founders of Microsoft - has backed the construction of an array of several hundred radio telescopes in California in a bid to intensify the traditional search for electronic messages from alien civilisations. 'If anyone is beaming signals at us anywhere in our neighbourhood of the galaxy we will pick it up,' added Morison. The trouble with this method is that it will only succeed if aliens are deliberately advertising their existence to the galaxy. Although they may be transmitting radio and TV broadcasts to themselves, these would not be powerful enough to be detected on other worlds.

But why would aliens want to announce their presence, some astronomers ask? 'If researchers on Earth wanted to try that sort of thing, they would have to go to their governments and ask for millions of pounds just to send signals into space without knowing if there was anyone out there to pick them up,' added Morison. 'We wouldn't get very far. I am pretty sure of that. So we will just have to hope our alien counterparts have fared a little better with their paymasters.'

We believe in ET, not ID

The tweedy academics of America have joined my battle to stop a creationist take over of outer space

Seth Shostak
Tuesday April 18, 2006
The Guardian

For me, the battle over teaching creationism in US schools has become achingly personal. Groups seeking to oust the theory of evolution from biology class - or at least hint to students that Darwin's ideas are suspect - are invoking my research to support their crusade. I work with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti), an effort to find sentient beings in space by using massively large antennas to troll for alien radio signals. Any technologically adroit society will be capable of broadcasting to listeners light years away. If there's cosmic company in our galaxy, a radio antenna might just be the way to find it.

Seti sounds quixotic, but it's solid science. Academics differ in estimating when, if ever, we might tease out a faint radio whistle from the cacophony of the cosmos, but they are nearly all of one voice in saying that Seti makes sense.

Few scientists give a thumbs up to creationism or its subtler variant, intelligent design (ID). The basis of ID is that nature is too intricate to have been built bottom-up by natural processes - as British creationists will hear from John Mackay, a former science teacher from Australia who starts a tour of the UK next week. The meandering course of Darwinian evolution couldn't produce a microbe's flagellum, a DNA molecule, or a human eye, say ID's adherents. They proclaim the complexity of these constructions as proof of deliberate blueprinting by a creator, presumably from outside the universe itself.

It's here that they get personal. They say: "If you Seti researchers receive a complex radio signal from space, you'll claim it as proof of intelligent, alien life. Thus your methodology is completely analogous to ours - complexity implying intelligence and deliberate design." And Seti, they pointedly add, enjoys widespread scientific acceptance.

Harsh and offensive. In fact, we are not looking for complex signals, but simple ones (such as a pure radio tone). And we seek this type of signal in places where we suspect planets might exist. It is universally acknowledged that planets don't produce such radio tones; only transmitters do. The analogy with Seti is a poor tactic for defending ID.

Appropriating my day job wasn't the end of the insults. Last year, ID adherents released a one-hour film, Privileged Planet, that caused a minor brouhaha when plans were announced to screen it at Washington's Smithsonian Institution, a few blocks from the Capitol. To my chagrin, I appear in the film, though I say nothing about design, intelligent or otherwise; I simply describe my own research - spliced in, presumably, for the modicum of credibility I bring.

Unlike many Europeans, who find this whole debate faintly farcical, I am not amused. Teaching ID in biology class muddles science with metaphysics. In a country that rides high on technical proficiency, that's serious business.

I was heartened, therefore, to learn that the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society, is finally urging scientists to push back on ID. The stand taken to forestall the demotion of Darwin in the classroom and defend the modest claim that 150 years of research has actually taught us something is braver than it might seem. Taking on the ID crowd takes guts, time and a thick epidermis, especially to weather that segment of the US populace that believes society's ills are probably the evil spawn of burgeoning secularism.

Tweedy academics may view stepping on to the street to face down their opponents as inelegant and threatening. But sometimes confrontation is the only option. The ivory tower brigade has thrown down the gauntlet. It will surely be bloodied and bruised. But America can no longer afford fantasy science.

Yes, we Europeans, including more normal and gentle religious people as well as secularists, do find the creationism debate in the USA “faintly farcical”. And a bit dull and boring too, but then these religious fanatics aren’t trying to sack me, discredit me, alter the syllabus of my college course, take funding away from my research etc which is what their 'debate' involves in America.