Well I confess to being inclined toward the latter. Just looking at
trends over our time frame, it has been our experience that as we
discover more and more about ourselves and the universe we live in, we
have found ourselves being less distinctive or unique, rather than more
so among our own bio-companions here on Earth. And, we are more
interconnected biologically with other things. That's not to diminish
what we represent in terms of ration and choice and creativity and
problem-solving, and so on, but from a biological heritage, we seem to
increasingly find more ways and greater extents to which we are
relatives in our own biosphere.
Aside from that, we have found more and more biological artifacts and
building blocks floating around in our solar system, and even falling
on our little blue marble, AND we are constantly discovering more and
more planets orbiting about distant (but quite nearby in astronomical
terms) suns/stars. And that is just in the vicinity of one rather
ordinary star, one of hundreds of thousands in our own galaxy alone, to
say nothing of the compounding of numbers that comes with the
recognition of immense and increasing numbers of other galaxies. If it
is a part of God's plan to have people-kind in at least one off-center
location in this incomprehensibly large Creation, then why would we not
think that he might (at least possibly!) have expectations of (or
intentions for) other parts of that same Creation? If we are IT, why
are we not somewhere in the center of all this, and why even bother
with such an enormous creation of stars and galaxies and distance and
chemistries (and carbon!!) and such if we are the focal point of
Creation? Perhaps to just impress us? Off-center just to humble us? I
like who and what we are, but that takes more than a little ego to
surmise!
These sorts of considerations lead me to be far more unsure then many
others about our uniqueness (to whatever extent we want to define the
term) in all of Creation. Moreover, I just do not find this possibility
of larger landscapes of emergent life forms precluded by Scripture, as
much as by our own sense of and desire for uniqueness.
When it gets down to probability estimates of the sort mentioned, they
appear meaningless and valueless to me because we simply do not have
enough knowledge to make such estimates. What we do have, though, to
make us suspicious of estimates in these circumstances, is a recent
awareness of structure and complexity that can arise from seemingly
small influences and rules and such (a glimpse afforded us by the
complexity and chaos theorists). So in a nutshell, we don't have a clue
as to how to estimate such probabilities in our universe, given our
state of knowledge. So my sense is that we are at great risk
rationally in offering probabilities given the state of our
understanding of the basics of our universe. I think we should be
suspicious in another way in the face of any estimate of probability of
what God can't accomplish by ANY means, even if it is (shudder)
evolutionary in nature.
Or so it seemeth to me.....
JimA [Friend of ASA]
Just why is it so immense if we are IT and we are not even in the
center?
dawson wayne wrote:
2009/5/10 Jim Armstrong
<jarmstro@qwest.net>
You know, it's hard for me to swallow that a
10^(-1018) probability represents anything even vaguely "realistic". It
basically says that we don't know enough to cough up a realistic
estimate. JimA [Friend of ASA]
By "realistic" I mean that someone is finally admitting that the
odds are pretty small. Even 10^(-100) would have satisfied me for that
matter. I did urge caution. Just as to much talk has sounded like life
should be popping up everywhere in the universe, let's not start
pounding the drum over here like this is some football rally.
Wayne (ASA member)
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Received on Sat May 9 14:08:13 2009