Sorry UFO/UAP Enthusiasts: God, Not Aliens, Better Explains the Origin of Life on Earth
The U.S. Navy is set to release its report on UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) this coming Friday, June 25th. The Navy’s announcement is unlikely to settle the controversy about whether intelligent aliens exist somewhere else in the cosmos. Pre-publication leaks about the content of the report confirm that it contains “no evidence to link them [UAP sightings] “to any putative alien visitation.”
Nevertheless, many leading scientists have in recent years been forced to propose that an alien intelligence “seeded” life on earth in order to explain how life first came to be on our planet.
Both evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and the late Francis Crick, for example, have proposed this theory — known as panspermia — to explain how life with its “signature of intelligence” first originated on Earth. Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, explained why he thought it necessary to resort to such a theory. “An honest man,” he argued, “armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that … the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”
In his book Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe, University of Cambridge-trained philosopher of science and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Stephen C. Meyer casts profound doubt on this explanation.
He shows that alien intelligence not only fails to account for the origin of life but also the origin of the universe and its exquisite “fine-tuning” for life. Meyer shows, instead, that recent discoveries about the origin of life and the universe are better explained by “the God hypothesis.” Says Meyer: “Debates about the existence of aliens will no doubt continue, but we now have compelling scientific evidence for the existence a different kind of intelligence — a transcendent intelligence behind, not within, the cosmos.” Most people, he explains, “rightly associate this type of intelligence with God.”
Consider This
- The scientists in the SETI program scanning the heavens for radio signals indicating the presence of extra-terrestrial life are looking for digital information embedded in radio signals. The SETI researchers have not found any such signals, but biologists have found precisely that type of information in the DNA molecule, suggesting that DNA had an intelligent source.
- The discovery of digital information technology inside living cells has created an impasse in origin of life studies. Consequently, some scientists have proposed an alien intelligence as a way to explain the intricate molecular machinery and information processing systems present in cells.
- Even so, this so-called “panspermia” hypothesis fails to explain where the information necessary to explain the origin of life — and the evolution of aliens – elsewhere in the cosmos would have come from.
- In a recent tweet, the world’s most famous scientific atheist, Richard Dawkins, confessed to being knocked “sideways with wonder at the miniaturized intricacy of the data-processing machinery in the living cell.” Dawkins wrote this tweet after watching an animation produced by an Australian medical group showing how cells store and copy the vast amounts digital information present in DNA. Yet Dawkins remains a committed atheist.
- In his new book, Dr. Stephen Meyer explains why the alien design hypothesis fails, and why instead it makes more sense to posit the existence of a personal God for the origin of life as well as the origin of the universe.
Relevant Quotes
Richard Dawkins in an interview in the film Expelled:
Well, it could come about in the following way: it could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved — by probably some kind of Darwinian means — to a very, very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto (perhaps) this planet. Now, that is a possibility — and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry, molecular biology. You might find a signature of some sort of designer…
And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence would itself have had to have come about by some explicable, or ultimately explicable process. It couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously, that’s the point.”
Crick quote on origin of life from Life Itself:
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”
Bio
Stephen C. Meyer received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. A former geophysicist and college professor, he now directs Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle. He has authored the New York Times best seller Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2013) as well as Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2009), named a Book of the Year by the Times (of London) Literary Supplement in 2009.
He has appeared on national television and radio programs such as The Jim Lehrer News Hour, NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightly News, CBS Sunday Morning, Nightline, Fox News Live, Paula Zahn Now (CNN), Good Morning America, the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS, the Ben Shapiro Sunday Special, One America News Network, and Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson. He has published editorials in national newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The National Post (of Canada), The Daily Telegraph (of London) and The Los Angeles Times, as well as two New York Times front-page stories and attention in other top national media.
New Book
Return of the God Hypothesis is a USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly national bestsellerand available now from Harper One and anywhere books are sold. Learn more about the book at returnofthegodhypothesis.com.