From: David Rudiak <DRudiak@aol.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 18:54:54 EST
Fwd Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 07:51:32 -0500
Subject: Re: Cosmic Dancers on History's Stage


From: Dennis Stacy <dstacy@texas.net>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 19:59:53 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 17:16:43 -0500
Subject: Cosmic Dancers on History's Stage [Was: Re:


 >From: David Rudiak <DRudiak@aol.com>
 >Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 21:06:17 EST
 >Subject: Re: British Ufology Has Been Reborn!
 >To: updates@globalserve.net


 >And speaking of your much-vaunted, relentless "march to higher
 >complexity" that can't "be undone," I've now offered to send you
 >a copy of the Davis article something like five or six times.
 >What, exactly, are you so terrified about in refusing same?

Sure Dennis, send it on.  What makes you think I'm terrified to
read it?  You're repeated posturing and breast-beating about
this is beginning to look pretty silly.

(BTW, isn't this the same Paul Davis that Nightline had on as
some sort of "UFO expert" about 4 years ago, in which he made
the remark that he had a "feeling in his bones" that we were the
only intelligent life in not just the galaxy, but the whole damn
Universe?)

Just because the man has a PhD doesn't mean his opinions aren't
heavily influenced by his own transparent "religious beliefs."
People like Davis who take such obviously extreme positions seem
like the heirs to the Catholic hierarchy that nearly burned
Galileo at the stake for proposing we might not be the center of
the Universe.

My personal position on the evolution of intelligence is
detailed in another post.  As I stated there, my guesstimates of
the odds of any given stellar system evolving intelligent life
are comparable to the odds of winning the lottery.  I no more
think intelligent life is the inevitable evolutionary endpoint
of simple bacterial lifeforms than I believe that every person
who owns a lottery ticket wins the lottery.

And the reason I have LONG believed that is because of some of
those precious contingent conditions you've been ranting about
that are likely necessary to move from bacterial to intelligent
life.  (Believe it or not, I have taken a lot of courses in
biology, genetics, and molecular biology in my lifetime, and am
pretty familiar with current thinking on the evolution of life
on Earth.)

E.g., it took two-thirds of Earth's history to evolve the
eucharyotic cell, the basic and necessary building block of all
complex life forms on planet Earth.  That appears to be a major
stumbling block in our history on the road to complex life, and
probably a major obstacle elsewhere as well.  It is by no means
a given that even Earth-like planets with bacterial life will
necessarily make this big evolutionary jump.

Nonetheless, there are so many stars out there, that even with
long odds on the evolution of intelligent life in any given star
system, there could still be many thousands of civilizations out
there in our galaxy alone.  My position is no different than
most SETI scientists, who would doubtlessly bristle at your
repeated accusations that they have no comprehension of what
"contingency" means in the evolution of life.  These are the
same guys who also regularly trash the idea that we might
actually be visited by one of those civilizations, yet have no
problem with the idea that such civilizations might be abundant.

Just because Paul Davis argues one point of view doesn't make it
so.  The man is on the extremely conservative fringe of present
scientific thinking concerning the evolution of life elsewhere
in the Universe.

David Rudiak