There’s an ongoing PBS TV collection (also many books and also a website) named “Closer To Truth” ;.It’s managed by neuroscientist Robert Lawrence Kuhn. He’s presented in one-on-one interviews and section discussions with the treatment of the treatment of today’s cosmologists, physicists, philosophers, theologians, psychologists, etc. on all the Big Issues encompassing a trilogy of broad topics – Cosmos; Consciousness; God alien labs carts.
It has nothing related to if God actually exists (He doesn’t IMHO), but rather the result that the discovery of ET and particularly ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) could have on the Correct Believers in a supernatural deity – and for sake of brevity, let’s limit God here to the God of the Old and the New Testaments.
Some Correct Believers might fight that God can perform whatsoever God goddamn properly wants to complete, and since God is this egotistical maniac (Thou shall haven’t any other gods before me) that He possibly produced umpteen zillions of inhabited worlds in order to have a googolplex of entities bowing and scraping to Him. Whether J.C. has to get rid of up boldly planning and visiting most of these worlds in turn is neither here or there.
On one other hand some Correct Believers (the more fundamentalist rightwing extremist types) might Bible-thump their platforms and insist that the Bible says no extraterrestrials or the plurality of worlds and ergo those who fight the existence of ET and for other inhabited worlds should probably be burnt at the stake (which has actually happened).
These Correct Believers remember that in line with the Bible humans would be the pinnacle of most of God’s designs, the king of the life, galaxy and every thing hill. Therefore nothing else can occur that could actually slightly problem that pinnacle (and are they set for a nasty surprise when synthetic intelligence eventually puts human intelligence in it’s appropriate [second] place).
Anyhow, if you should be in the former camp, your belief is strengthened; if in the latter camp you’ll possibly only insist it’s all a government inspired, Obama-led leftwing generous conspiracy, and only bury your head in the sands and continue together with your Bible-thumping normalcy. The spiritual fundamentalists tend to be individuals with the ‘my mind is made up; don’t confuse the problem with facts’ brand of particular philosophy.
Why try to find the Higgs Boson? Why try to find the Northwest Passage? Why rise Install Everest? Why try to look for out any such thing about living, the World and every thing? I believe it all boils down to that particular hardwiring in and of our neurons in our brain thingy that needs to know what’s within the mountain and beyond the blue horizon.
We’re interested, like cats, and most of us boldly go into the truly amazing unknown. But it’s not awareness simply for the sake of curiosity. What’s within the mountain might be great, like home to a new food supply (like plenty of mice); a new tearing opening; better shelter or potential mates.
Or, what’s beyond the blue horizon might be poor and unpleasant like a warring tribe or perhaps a competitor cat. When survival is a stake you have to know all you are able to to be prepared. Ditto SETI – the Look for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. There’s awareness of course. Familiarity with if ET exists assists people to cement our place in the higher cosmic system of points, nonetheless it still boils down seriously to survival (even if unacknowledged).
ET might prove to be always a friend, a trading spouse and a way to obtain cosmic knowledge and wisdom. ET might prove to be always a possible danger, and not of necessity only a physical one. They might have a philosophy or worldview that would cause untold instability to our terrestrial way or living – our cultures, etc. We have to know and ergo anticipate to all possible scenarios. We don’t want to blindly hide our brains in the sand and wish extraterrestrial missionaries don’t appear door-knocking World World unannounced.
It’s been recommended that because improvements in engineering occur at an exponential charge rather than at a linear charge, an advanced (i.e. – technological) extraterrestrial tradition that has been actually many hundred to a thousand decades prior to our personal might stick out like a common sore flash in a normally schedule and humdrum cosmos.
Type of that way isolated lighthouse glowing like a beacon in the darkness. If, as SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) practitioners feel, there must be several thousands of highly advanced extraterrestrial civilizations or groups, not just thousands or thousands but countless decades elderly to people in technical improvement, properly, considering the fact that technical growth is exponential, the existence of ET must be obvious to any or all but Blind Freddy.
Yet most of the un-blind Freddies of the world don’t see ET. The most obvious conclusion is that sometimes we are the Common It with regards to a technical society or at the very least leading the pack. We’re more highly advanced than every other alien civilization. I have a problem with that scenario.
There are plenty of examples of exponential growth here on Earth. Biology is one example. Life forms dramatically replicate to generally meet the accessible methods needed to support that living form, but once the gobblers exhaust the methods, the gobblers decline or at the very least stage down if the methods are renewable. One example of this type of living form could be the human species.
Some forms of human engineering are now ‘enjoying’ exponential growth. Medical engineering for one; nanotechnologies are yet another; and the who related areas of synthetic intelligence, computing meltdown power, robotics, the increase and increase of the Web, etc. Significantly related is systems key to human-machine interfacing. Detective systems are growing by leaps and bounds. Dangerous firepower still increases at a quick charge of knots. But not totally all forms of knowledge or forms of engineering are identical in growth.
But, several systems reach a plateau or aren’t raising really fast any longer, actually if they once did. Transportation systems have leveled down – the automobile of today is little different in theory than the Model-T. Plane aircraft don’t enable you to get across the lake any quicker today than they did 30 decades ago. There’s little different in theory involving the Saturn V and the Room Shuttle. Quite quite similar relates to bicycles, boats, and trains.