by Joan d’Arc
In his Book of the Damned, Charles Fort wrote, "the notion of things dropping in upon this Earth from externality is as unsettling and as unwelcome to Science as tin horns blowing in upon a musician's relatively symmetric composition." He wrote, "I think of as many different kinds of visitors to this earth as there are visitors to New York, to a jail, or to a church."
One of the most persistent arguments against the reality of the Visitor Experience (alien visitation or abduction) is based on the Darwinian presumption that if the accidental, unguided evolution of the human form occurred on Earth, it is mathematically improbable that it could have occurred on another planet. The current consensus reality is, therefore, based on a Science of Exclusionism; the isolation of the Earth from its universal relations. Materialist doctrines describe the world as a closed system: isolated humankind on an isolated oasis in an isolated consciousness. In modern science, nothing enters this closed world from Externality.
NASA's "Astrobiology Roadmap" website illustrates NASA's focus on the search for past or present life on Mars and Europa, two solar system bodies that once supported water. Among the goals of Astrobiology are: to determine what makes a planet habitable and how common these worlds are in the Universe, how to recognize the signature of life on other worlds, how life arose on the Earth, and what are its future limits.
Part of understanding how life arose on Earth includes the possibility that "it arrived at Earth from elsewhere." The Astrobiology website claims, "terrestrial life is the only form of life that we know, and it appears to have arisen from a common ancestor." The discipline, known as Ballistic Panspermia, is apparently open to the concession that this ancestor (i.e. microbe) arrived in a meteor, but within the current Western cosmology, meteors, comets and other "smart rocks" are the only celestial flying objects that might harbor signs of life, i.e. microbial life.
But can the "seed" of life grow into a civilization of intelligent humanoids without intelligent guidance? Astrobiology clearly states that science has not ascertained whether life from one world can "establish an evolutionary trajectory" on another. Nonetheless, its goals include "the potential to engineer new life forms adapted to live on other worlds" and to "understand the human-directed processes by which life can migrate from one world to another." This theory is known as Directed Panspermia.
Our Dusty Exile
It has been asserted that NASA holds a "religious conviction" toward space exploration, a conviction based on a centuries-old Christian belief that scientific technology is divinely inspired to take us closer to God. According to David Noble, in The Religion of Technology, NASA's goals are based on Jules Verne's implication that the nearer we go to the stars the more immortal we become. In fact, Ray Bradbury has stated, "At aerospace or NASA gatherings, Verne is the verb that moves us to Space." Indeed, through Verne we have "romanced ourselves to the Moon" and through science fiction writers like H.G. Wells, we might "finally be freed from our 'dusty exile' on earth" (Noble 117),
The ultimate survival of a technological civilization lies in dispersing its genetic material into the Universe; seeding itself into unoccupied niches. While NASA is obviously following the dictates of this Darwinian theoretical stance in its study of "human directed" cosmic migration of life, it does not recognize (at least openly) that such could have already occurred. Neither does it openly recognize the anthropomorphic evidence that would indicate that such an intelligently orchestrated migratory pattern has been ongoing within our own solar system and on our own planet.
As we can safely deduce from the above discussion, NASA is interested in "life" in the solar system, but it is clearly interested in microbial life, not intelligent life (i.e. humanoid). The Darwinian evolutionary paradigm is the controlling factor, and is the reason for major cover-ups of potentially man-made artifacts on the moon and Mars. Indeed, the Brookings Report, commissioned by NASA in 1959 and presented Congress in 1961, warned that intelligently designed artifacts discovered on planets investigated by unmanned space probes would lead to the “disintegration of civilization.” The document recommended censorship of any future discovery of artifacts on planetary surfaces, fearing “religious fanaticism” would wreak havoc on social institutions. It is obvious that the discovery of humanoid intelligence would upset Scientism's apple cart: Darwinian Evolution. But have we put the cart before the horse?
The long outdated "Fermi Paradox" states that Earth contains the only advanced civilization in the galaxy, "since if there were others we would know about them." Conversely, other scientists have estimated that there could be billions of advanced technological civilizations in the galaxy.
The Space Travel Argument
The Space Travel Argument Against the Existence of ETI (Space Travel Argument), explained in detail by Barrow & Tipler in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, begins with the telling statement that those who propose that extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) probably exists in the Universe tend to be physicists and astronomers, and those who tend to argue against the probability for ETI are more likely to be evolutionary biologists. Thus, its insular premise is steadfastly grounded on the theory of Darwinian natural selection, the adaptation of creatures to their local habitats. As we will see, this local theory is then applied universally.
The Anthropic Principle is based on a biological argument: the minimum time required for the evolution of "intelligent observers." The Anthropic Timescale Argument states that the types of processes allowed in the Universe must be of such an age that "slow evolutionary processes will have had time to produce intelligent beings from non-living matter" (Barrow 159).
The Anthropic Principle is a mathematical premise based on the assumption that a "communicating species" would evolve in less than 5 billion years and would eventually begin interstellar travel. This argument contends that "since 1 billion years is quite short in comparison with the age of the Galaxy, it follows from the absence of ETI in the solar system that such space-travelling ETI apparently do not exist, and have never existed in our Galaxy." The authors note that this assumption is logically inferred from observed evidence, and from astrophysical observations and theories; in other words, "absence of evidence is evidence of absence." If an advanced interstellar civilization did exist, "they would also have developed interstellar travel and thus would already be present in our solar system. Since they are not here, this implies that they do not exist" (Barrow 576).
Incredulously, the two footnotes following the statement "they are not here" reference the 1974 book UFO's Explained written by the most popular UFO debunker, Philip Klass. Thus, their proof that interstellar visitors are not here is the highly-regarded opinion of a member of The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), who has been labeled the most negative of the UFO debunkers.
This argument is a tautology: i.e. extraterrestrials are not here and never have been here, because they are not here and never have been here. The Space Travel Argument is a rigidly anthropocentric argument founded on the proposition that human intelligence evolved as a purely local phenomenon on an outback planet and, further, that this accidental (local) event has no Universal (i.e. external) relationship.
It would appear that Barrow & Tipler are happy to let any “evidence” other than radio signals stand as evidence of the absence of ETI. Cosmic signals from ETI might just as well be evidenced by physical structures we have chosen to explain in other ways: such as the complex mathematical fractals which make up crop circle designs, or Old and New World pyramidal structures, which appear to be built as aeronautical guides and are geometrically-aligned with the complex architecture of Mars' Cydonia region. Indeed, serious researchers of these phenomena see this embedded structural geometry as a “deliberate technical communication.” (see Hoagland, Carlotto, McDaniel, et al.)
Von Neumann Probes
The Space Travel Argument utilizes the concept of the self-reproducing universal constructor; a computerized machine "capable of making any device, given the construction materials and a construction program." Such a machine, called a von Neumann probe after its theoretical dad, John von Neumann, is by definition capable of making a copy of itself. A probe sent to another stellar system would include a self-replicating universal constructor with human-level intelligence, capable of self-repair and self-programming, with an electric or solar propulsion system.
The universal constructor would search for construction materials from which to build copies of itself, the rocket engines and other devices needed. Such building materials, for instance, nickel-iron and hydrocarbons, could be found in meteors, asteroids, comets and other space debris. Copies of the probe would be launched at the nearest stars, and the process would be repeated. The probes would then be programmed to explore the stellar system and relay the information back to the original probe.
Von Neumann became the generally recognized father of Artificial Life simulations, and produced some of the first Artificial Life programs, further developing his earlier theory of "self-reproducing cellular automata." Some of this secretive work involved the transfer of human intelligence to machines. After Von Neumann's death, Freeman Dyson went on to develop similar ideas surrounding self-reproducing factories on other planets.
In 1980, NASA began to explore these ideas. The aim of NASA's Self-Reproducing Systems Concept Team was to "examine the feasibility of devising machines capable of production, replication, growth, self-repair, and evolution, machines that could be used to colonize the moon and beyond." After writing a couple of "fanciful proposals" for the creation of a new "silicon species," the team fully expected to receive funding, but instead the money went to President Reagan's Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative (Noble 165-166).
At this point the species engineering project apparently went black, and this is what we're told is going on. Essentially, they took a defunct meme like "strategic defense" and popped "Star Wars" in front of it, and researchers chased the lead down the wrong rabbit hole.
In the end, Barrow & Tipler concede that one possible reason for ETI not to build probes is the fear of losing control of them. They admit it possible that the program that keeps the probe under intelligent control could be accidentally omitted during the reproduction process, with the result that the copy "goes into business for itself."
Continue Reading:
http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/panspermia.html
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