Notes on emergence; or, an alien love story; starring Carl Sagan

The closing down of the Allen telescope array was a sad event for SETI fans. The whole search for extraterrestrial life (with its speculations about aliens) is an intriguing one; and one I think reveals a lot about human psychology.

Quotes and comments;

1. 'Bob McDonald, commenting on CBC News, feels SETI is worth a lot more than the tens of millions spent on the royal wedding. Just two to three million could have been used to keep SETI going. “That tiny sum pays for a group of very intelligent and highly accomplished people to look for the answer to a fundamental human question, while many times that amount will be spent on security alone for the wedding of two people who have not really accomplished that much.” [2.]

2. 'One of the fundamental unanswered questions in science is whether there is life beyond Earth. [2.]

- I'm interested in why he (or anyone) thinks this is a 'fundamental human question'. Is it? Why is it? How do we explain this? If nothing makes sense apart from evolution (and of course pizza) what's the evolutionary explanation for SETI? What could this possibly have to do with reproduction success rates? Give a slight tug on evolution theory and it unravels. E. theory can't explain this odd human passion; nor can it explain most of the important things in human experience.

If all is merely matter in motion how do we explain that a bit of matter here on earth cares about bits of matter in outer space, in the rest of the universe. That makes no sense to me. Matter doesn't care about anything. The fact McDonald cares about finding aliens is all the evidence he needs to know materialism is a fallacious idea. Materialism is as illusory as green tentacled aliens. If he'd analyze what he said he'd see this.

The materialist can't account for human experience, but instead of curing him of his delusion he pays no attention to this damning bit of knowledge. What he does instead is to say; well, I do care, therefore this creationist is wrong. i.e. he doesn't doubt his materialism, just takes it for granted as true.
If pressed he offers up the idea of emergence. i.e. "yes, it's true Mr. creationist, that matter doesn't care, but people do, and people have emerged from matter and are (obviously you twit) different from matter." The concept of emergence is used to knock down all arguments against materialism.

The concept of emergence is just a ruse in my opinion; nothing but a label on ignorance; a meaningless concept when used in this matter. What we aren't given is an account of how it is philosophical concern (not to mention obsession) can happen in a materialist universe; ie. how does the impersonal become personal. To merely say ''well it emerged I guess'' is to say nothing at all.

3. "The chances of aliens finding the Voyagers in the vast emptiness of space are small—some say infinitesimal—but we took our jobs seriously," recalls team member Ann Druyan. "From the moment when Carl first broached the project to Tim Ferris and me, it felt mythic." [3.]

- It felt mythic she says. I'm not sure what mythic feels like, but how is it a bit of matter can feel 'mythic' about aliens? I don't know how people can believe the theory of cosmic [Cosmos] evolution. The theory demands that a rock transform into a living organism capable of feeling 'nostalgic' for remote life forms it has never seen. I see no way that's possible. The endless stories on how this might have happened (i.e. OOL research) don't impress me in the slightest; one might say they're mythic. (Actually I take back what I said earlier. I do know what it feels like to experience the mythic; I experience it when I read OOL stories.)

Materialism can't give a cogent account for the Voyager love story. (It can't give a good account of much at all when it comes to human experience.) How is it such a worldview is so popular when it fails so badly to offer foundational explanations? Why is it people don't care about this? Why do they care more about phantoms called aliens and nothing about philosophical consistency or cohesion?

4. "I remember sitting around the kitchen table making these huge decisions about what to put on and what to leave off," recalls Druyan. "We couldn't help but appreciate the enormous responsibility to create a cultural Noah's Ark with a shelf life of hundreds of millions of years." [3.]

- They didn't seem to take their responsibility all that seriously when you consider they might have given some alien race the opportunity to wipe out the entire human race. They violated a basic principle; namely don't take a needless risk. What right did they have to put everyone at risk by their publicity stunt?

Remember; these people are merely bits of matter in terms of materialism; a good materialist has to explain all this behavior (thought, etc.) solely in terms of physics. (No wonder they want to contact aliens, no mere human is up to the above task :=}
Maybe the SETI quest isn't really about finding aliens per se; but about finding someone who can explain OOL; someone who can give a believable account of what is now only a miracle. (Though I would argue that a rock [planet earth] managing to build and send out a space ship would be a miracle in itself.)

Among the gifts Voyager bears is 'the brain waves of a young women in love.' (No SF magazine cover of an alien attacking a bimbo? What a missed opportunity.)

5. "I had this idea," recalls Druyan, "that we should put someone's EEG on the record. We know that EEG patterns register some changes in thought. Would it be possible, I wondered, for a highly advanced technology of several million years from now to actually decipher human thoughts?" [3.]

- It doesn't get wackier than that (he said hopefully). How anyone can conflate squiggles on a page with thought I don't know. (Thus reductionism makes fools out of anyone who comes in 'contact' with it.

6. "My feelings as a 27 year old woman, madly fallen in love, they're on that record,” says Druyan. "It's forever. It'll be true 100 million years from now. For me Voyager is a kind of joy so powerful, it robs you of your fear of death." [3.]

- I won't pretend I understand that, but I see evidence here that the SETI project is somehow connected with the idea of immortality, and or the fear of death.

I don't know how she can conflate an image of brain wave patterns with her feelings of being in love. I guess we could call this an example of Reductionism playing the trickster.

7. 'It has been pointed out that the most probable finders of Voyager will be … us. Eventually, technology may allow humans to overtake and recover the distant probes. In that case, they will be reduced to mere time capsules from the year 1977. [3.]

- If we do catch up with it, maybe we could switch the Beatles for the Rolling Stones, or some Dylan :=}

8. 'Arthur C. Clarke recognized this possibility and suggested adding a note to the Golden Record: "Please leave me alone; let me go on to the stars." [3.]

- I note that he said leave 'me' alone. i.e. this is evidence people into SETI are projecting their own psychologies onto Voyager (etc.) It's not really about aliens but about them. It's about their search for something.

Apparently some people want materialism to be true so badly that they're not 'capable' of critically examining the theory, of accepting the sheer impossibility of it, or of examining the oddity of a bit of matter caring about other bits of matter. (Is it that they want materialism to be true? or is it that they don't want God to exist? What's the stronger drive? Maybe they're so connected that it's impossible to say.)
Whatever the love story here is, it's not love for God. It's love for self or love for aliens; since there are no aliens as far as we know, it can only be love for self.
Maybe that's not it; maybe what's going on here is a desire to defend materialism, a desire to defend the act of rejecting God. Maybe the SETI types want to discover aliens to prove to themselves (and everyone else) that they are right about a-theism. Maybe they get involved out of guilt.

9. ''Notwithstanding the low odds of interception, the Voyager Record served as a statement of earthlings to earthlings. The video clip from NASA ends, “What are the odds of a race of primates evolving sentience, developing spaceflight, and sending the sound of barking dogs into the cosmos? Expect the unexpected indeed.“ [1.]

- How do you 'evolve' a passion for ETs? That would appear to be impossible would it not?
What are the odds? Zero; (or as close to zero as you can get).

Summary;
What I think we see in the search for extraterrestrial life, is the search for a substitute for God. We see this search played out in the pages of sf, with its myriad of 'god machines' (called such by the authors themselves) and awesome relics, and awe inspiring aliens. [4.] Evidence for the Bible's claim (echoed by Calvin) that all men know god is the fact aliens have all the attributes of God. e.g. they're at least nearly omniscient; nearly omnipotent; can read minds, send thoughts telepathically, predict the future, etc.

Augustine said 'all men are restless till they find thee' and that man had a God shaped vacuum in his heart. How big the hole in man's heart is, can be seen by the fact it takes the whole universe to even begin to get the job done. I suspect the project to find aliens will only be successful as long as its unsuccessful; that if aliens are found man will still be restless, still need something to fill the hole in his heart.

Cosmic evolution doesn't come remotely close to being able to explain this search for God (or for a god substitute). There's no possible reason man needs such an ability and capacity of this kind, if he's just an animal. (I can't imagine animals care about the SETI project; I can't imagine any of them are sad one of the projects got shut down.)

Men scan the skies for signs of ET, when they'd be better off scanning their own consciousness. The SETI project is all the evidence anyone could need that Materialism is a false metaphysics.

Mike Johnson

Notes;
1. SETI in Reverse Creation/Evolution Headlines 04/29/2011
April 29, 2011 — The SETI Institute has had to close down its search with the Allen Telescope Array (08/12/2010) due to lack of funds.'
2. Big questions and big weddings - Bob McDonald
- the money wasted (surely not) on the Royal wedding could have been better spent on the Allen project complained McDonald.
- how could he say these people haven't done very much? They wave beautifully, they wear clothes well, they smile wonderfully. I could name any number of things they do.
3. Voyager, the love story, April 29, 2011 By Dr. Tony Phillips
- there's nothing like the love for an alien to arouse the human imagination, and send his emotions soaring.
4. Much SF is concerned with presenting the reader with an object or being that the reader can be in awe of. As humans we hunger for the awesome. Here's an example of this 'awesome' storytelling; from 'Alone' by Robert Reed [Godlike Machines ed. J. Strahan]

'The hull was gray and smooth, gray and empty, and in every direction it fell away gradually,
vanishing where the cold black of the sky pretended to touch what was real.
What was real was the Great Ship. Nothing else enjoyed substance or true value.
Nothing else in Creation could be felt, much less understood. The Ship was a
sphere of perfect hyperfiber, world-sized and enduring, while the sky was only
a boundless vacuum punctuated with lost stars and the occasional swirls of
distant galaxies.