Sunday 11 June 2023

Evolution

First, natural selection did a very good job of displacing theistic Design arguments by Paley etc.

Secondly, reading about evolution increases our appreciation of Poul Anderson's fictional evolutions of Ythrians, Diomedeans, Starkadians and Didonians, all in his Technic History.

Thirdly:

"...the consensus of modern evolutionists is that the evolution of intelligent life on Earth was not only not foreordained, it is so improbable that it is most unlikely to occur elsewhere in our Galaxy...
"In section 3.2 we shall discuss briefly the reasons evolutionists have for believing intelligence to be an incredibly improbable accident. Additional arguments against the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life will be found in section 8.7 and Chapter 9."

When he discussed this book, Anderson commented that he did not accept these arguments. I will have to read further but, for the time being, I am sceptical of other intelligent species showing up any time soon.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I am inclined to agree with Anderson. I am not so sure that intelligent life elsewhere is THAT improbably rare. Moreover, some of those persistent reports we keep seeing in the US media describes UFOs by witnesses some of whom have to be taken seriously.

Are there people in the UK who also take an interest in alleged UFOs?

Ad astra! Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would love to see a real UFO, up close and personal, a la Anderson's story "Peek! I See You!, but I don't expect that to ever happen. Oh well!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

There certainly are but I am not in touch with any.

Terminologically, UFOs are just Unidentified Flying Objects: phenomena seen in the sky and not yet identified. I have seen one such. It was probably a balloon or something. That any given UFO is a spacecraft of extra-terrestrial origin is a possible explanation although hardly the most probable one. As with all such phenomena, I agree with more research.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Of course I agree with the terminological point you made. But I had in mind only those reports about UFOs believed, or thought to be, of non-human origins.

Ad astra! Sean