[meteorite-list] Alien Contact Predicted

[Phil Whitmer]

Hi Darren,

I'm back to join the circle jerk!  Please note: the following are just my 
personal beliefs and I will completely recant it all upon being provided 
credible evidence that I'm full of hooey.



So I'm a stupid Yahwehist?  You're telling me to believe in alien beings 
that live up in the heavens without providing  a single shred of evidence 
for their existence? Are they like angels?  I'm not making any extraordinary 
claims about the existence of any kind of god or other extraterrestrial life 
form, as you are. Martin hit the nail on the head, you're trying to convert 
me to your religion.  Just have faith, you say, you don't need evidence, you 
backward tribal animist ancestor worshipper.  Come join the New Religion! 
Believe all it has to say, even when it oversteps its limits.

Show me some evidence I say, and I get the freakin' Drake Equation?!? 
Believe in the Drake Equation, for it is Holy Writ chime in the chorus of
True Believers. It surely proves there is life out there. The Drake Equation 
is some ink scribbled on some paper, it's not magical runes.  The Book of 
Genesis is some ink scribbled on paper. I have faith in neither one.  I fart 
in the general direction of the drake equation.  You want a real equation? 
How about E=mc2.  Now that one's got some gut to it!

Science can only take you so far.  It's fine for predicting when comets will 
appear, it's piss poor for explaining how life began.  Even Darwin wouldn't 
touch that hot potato! He knew the limits of science.  It's limited by the 
analog computing power of the human brain. You step outside those bounds, 
then you've got a religion.  When you try to take science too far, and 
arrogantly state that you no longer need evidence for your beliefs, how is 
this any different from say, a Cargo Cult?  At this point, nobody knows what 
life is or how it started.  The human mind seems to want to take everything 
back to a single point.  The entire Universe started as a single point. 
Not two or three or a googol, just one. If you believe the mitochondrial DNA 
evidence, the entire human race can be traced back to  a single African 
woman.   All life seems to have started from one single coacervate that 
miraculously figured out the whole permeable membrane, DNA, RNA protein 
thing.  I haven't heard that there were other coacervates, just that single 
one. Really, what would the chances be of two coacervates with the same 
double helix, membrane etc.  No, I don't believe in partial life.  It's all 
or nothing.  That single coacervate with it's double helical strands of 
amino acids was an assemblage of organic compounds one second, the next it 
just popped into life.  And then the horse race began. This is what I was 
taught in high school back in my youth during the hunting gathering days.

Now, if ever there was a miracle, this was it!  And I mean that in a non 
religious sense. As far as I can tell there were 2 other miracles just like 
it. The Universe miraculously popped into existence (there's no other way to 
describe it), and human intelligence popped into existence. Things so 
incredibly rare they never happened before and will never happen again.

I'm always astounded when people act like life popping into existence is no 
big deal. Yeah, shit just happens!  Happens all the time, you just need the 
right building blocks, the right reducing atmosphere, etc.  In fact, I've 
heard that the laws of physics  require it!  It's no big deal, it pops up 
all the time. Are you kidding me? Life popping into existence is the most 
astounding, incrediburgable, tremendous, awesome, strange, weird and 
statistically unlikely thing that ever happened!

This unbelievable singularity only happened once as far as I can see.  Now 
you might believe it's just a casual byproduct of the right building blocks 
being in the right place at the right time.  NOT!   Building blocks are to 
life what tubes of paint are to a Van Gogh painting. Harold Urey showed the 
path to travel with his famous experiment back in the 50's. But you know 
what? In all the time since then, not one single living thing has ever been 
created in a lab. Not even close. Not even a virus (OK they might be 
partially alive, but is anyone proposing a virus as the original life form?) 
So this thing that just casually happens all on its own all over the place, 
can't be produced in a lab?  Why the heck not?  We don't have the technology 
or the equations and formulae and the proper building blocks to do this? 
What exactly is the problem?  Darren, your religion is failing me,  I don't 
think I'll convert.

And furthermore, this thing called life which just has to happen when 
conditions are right, never happened on Mars! Not a speck of life detected. 
Maybe there are microbes living deep in the mantle that live off the 
absorbtion of hydrogen, but again, just conjecture with nothing to back it 
up. So it appears not only did life never arise on Mars, it seem like it's 
too wimpy to make the short jump from Earth. Too bad they couldn't find 
something, because it was the Martian Canals that started the mass belief in 
alien life in the first place.

So, it's my conclusion that while Science, Physics and Math are great for 
building thermonuclear weapons,  when it comes to explaining the origin of 
things, not so great.  When it comes to the really big questions like what 
existed before the Big Bang, where did life come from, does it exist 
elsewhere?, scientists are just making stuff up, just like the religionists. 
And I don't believe any of this made up stuff without the proper evidence. 
And it's not because I'm dumb.  I believe in lots of improbable things that 
I can't see or explain, like electrons, gravity, radio waves, etc.  Why do I 
believe in these things? Because there is very good evidence that they 
exist.

In closing, I would like to quote one of the greatest scientists who ever 
lived:

"Life is not a miracle. It is a natural phenomenon, and can be expected to 
appear whenever there is a planet whose conditions duplicate those of the 
earth."

Now if someone could just show me this planet.......or even a shred of 
evidence for this planet....

Phil Whitmer