It seems Hawking would be very shocked to discover that the idea of "sentient life on other planets" has been considered for centuries in the West even by Theologians. And, of course it's been in popular culture for at least a couple of generations now. I mean, sheesh, Star Trek was created back during the sixties.

Now, in a First Contact situation, we do have to worry about what the aliens may be after. And they may be well advised to worry about us, as well.

Since Juedo-Christianity holds that Creation is comprehensible by humanity, it should be obvious that is compatible with science, where does Hawking think the scientific method was invented, anyway?

By the way look up Godel's Incompleteness Theorems. There exist some questions that mathematics can never prove

So.
Why are you surprised?
I've grown increasingly frustrated with anything that purports to be a rational program on any kind of Earth science; as - without fail - somewhere in the program - even in places where there is no reason for it to be - we will receive a bulletin from the "Church of AGW". Trust me. If it's a program on ancient animal life, we'll be told how the dinosaurs managed to wipe themselves out via "Global Warming". For some reason we're never supposed to notice that the dinosaurs (and our mammalian ancestors) managed to survive for 160 million years in a world that was, on average, degrees warmer than it is now.

Huh. Especially bizarre given that one of Hawkings last comments in his earlier book was, "Is this internal logic so compelling that the universe decided to create itself?" (paraphrased). I took it at the time to be an admission that any such idea is silly. Which it is.
Dafydd, your arguments are correct, but they are well known to any religious child, certainly to any educated religious adult. Atheists can be pretty ignorant about this stuff, thinking that they are smarter than anyone who preceded them.

As to hiding from aliens, equally silly. We already can see planets around nearby star systems. A couple of additional orders of magnitude sensitivity and we'll be able to tell if they are habitable, and indeed to know if they are emitting radio and TV frequencies, and other stuff I haven't thought of. Presumably advanced aliens would be more competent. Better to hope they're friendly, or don't have interstellar travel.

Et al:

Brad Linaweaver and I once collaborated on a tetralogy of SF novels "based" on the Doom video games. I put based in quotation marks because, while the plot of the first book (in which we were just getting our feet wet, never having novelized a game before) was taken fairly directly from the game, for books 2-4, we simply wrote pure space opera with only a miniscule connection to the supposed source. (That's why readers like the last three books best -- and gamers can only stand to read the first.)

But the logic of the game itself compelled us to have an interstellar war, and Brad and I made the conscious decision to come up with an actually logical rationale for such a thing to come about.

I daresay I'm much more qualified to speak on the topic than is Stephen Hawking, for all his degrees and awards: He knows far less about science fiction than I know about physics.

I cannot tell you how Brad and I struggled to come up with any plausible reason why one technological civilization would ever attack another one on another planet. Try it sometime!

The main source of international conflict on Earth has always been a fight over resources and room; but if one has routine and ready access to space, resources are so abundant as to be nearly valueless, save for the utilitarian needs; and there is such a staggering amount of room that even Daniel Boone would feel lonely.

For every planet that has sentient life, there are thousands that do not; some will have some combination of flora, fauna, and microorganisma (I know that's not a real classification but should be clear in context); other planets will be barren but still possess a wealth of minerals, crystals, and other useful chemicals.

In addition, there are likely many times more asteroids than full-sized planets, some condensed from minerals, others various varieties of frozen gases or liquids -- including more water than anyone could possibly need, for you V fans.

Isn't it far easier for an alien civilization to exploit resources not protected or guarded by sentient beings, who might, after all, find a way to fight back effectively? If one has interstellar travel -- a must for interstellar conflict! -- then one has an almost limitless larder at one's backdoor, without the necessity of subduing or ousting any residents.

So what's left? Some kooky religion that requires conquest? But religions too arise from scarcity; and in the post-economic environment of the entire galaxy, it's hard to imagine such a dangerous and destructive religion lasting very long without bringing about its own destruction. After all, nobody can rely upon always being the biggest baddie on a playground of three hundred billion stars sprinkled across eight trillion cubit lightyears. (And even that's restricting ourselves to just one of 170 billion galaxies! If aliens have intergalactic travel, I doubt they would even notice our existence.)

Heck, with natural and artifactual resources everywhere, on uninhabited planets and regions of space, it's even hard to come up with items worth trading for! The only valuable items that spring to mind are:

• Technology
• Art, music, literature
• New philosophies
• Food recipes readily adaptable to one's own nutritional needs
• Personal servants, who likely would charge an arm and a tentacle for the status that such a servant would confer upon his employer: "I'm so rich, I can afford to hire a valet! I just wish he wouldn't be so demanding..."

Such intellectual creations would be the only media of exchange, since they are the only new things under the suns.

Far more likely than interstellar conflict is interstellar snubbing: Aliens, who have probably met many different alien civilizations already, would likely see ours as nothing more than "mostly harmless." They would no more want to go slumming on Earth than you or I would enjoy hanging out with remote African pigmy tribes who had never heard of the wheel.

All right, maybe we'd be visited by alien anthropologists (though probably just grad students); but they would likely try to stay out of sight, so as not to spook the primitives.

We would be astonishly lucky to encounter an alien race that cared enough even to tell us that alien races existed!

Dafydd

Dafydd- Thank you for the review.

A small bone to pick. I welcome the famous Gid back to the Big Lizards lair but i sense an error in the syllogism:

Since we humans cannot (be definition) distinguish between a superbeing and the theistic God by any scientific test or measurement known to Man, we must conclude that scientifically, Gid is God.

Therefore, as far as scientific inquiry can tell, God not only can exist but likely does exist in this universe.

I was tracking along fine until the "Gid is God" FUBAR. The fact that two different things are not distinguishable does not make them the same thing. They are two different things but not distinguishable with a limited perspective. For example: A square and a cube are indistinguishable from a single perspective but they are not the same thing.

On the larger point. Mans perspective is limited to the existing space time continuum. Presumable God's is not. Is it even reasonable to suspect that man could grasp the concept of a creator that exists outside of time?

Perhaps a thought experiment: If we created a simulated world with a computer program and populated it with sentient simulated beings. What features would this world have to have in order for the simulated beings to "prove" our "the creators" existence?

jts commented:

They are two different things but not distinguishable with a limited perspective.

Why would aliens come? Well, even in a huge real estate environment like our galaxy wouldn't it still be "location, location , location" ?

seePea-

My reading was that Dafydd was postulating a super being that was sufficiency advanced and capable that we as humans were not able to differentiate between Gid the imposter and the real God.

From this postulate he concluded that scientifically, Gid is God. The key word here is scientifically. This bit of sophistry allows him to say that if science can't distinguish the imposter from the real than they must be the same. He is correct to say that scientifically the two are the same (or indistinguishable) but he errs when he goes on to say without qualification that Gid is God. Scientifically indistinguishable isn't the same as identical. Science approaches truth but it does reveal truth.

As for .99999... equaling 1. A defining characteristic of the number 1 is that any number multiplied by 1 equals itself. Under this definition .999999... doesn't qualify. I will grant you that depending on the purpose we are free to treat them as the same and get functional equivalency.

Dafydd may be saying that Gid is actually close to God’s power but I heard him say that Gid was only advanced enough to fool us mere mortals. Not a god like actuality.

jts: do you agree that math is a science? if you do, then .999... does equal 1.

My favorite proof is the following

    x = 0.999...

    10x = 9.999...

Subtract the two paired items

    10x      - 1x      = 9x 

    9.999... - 0.999...= 9.000...

Resulting in 9x = 9.000...., solving for x, x=1

Saying that the existence of God is something you don't know IMO is more intellectual honest and stating that one does not believe in God period while rejecting the reality that, that stand is as much of a belief system as it's antithesis

Jls, seaPea:

Every statement within the Gid-God Syllogism is meant to be parsed entirely within the realm of scientific reasoning, not within the realm of the spiritual or religious, whether or not I use the adjective; I try to eschew verbosity.

When you make the statement that Gid is not God, you are making a metaphysical statement, not a logical or scientific one.

You're also pulling a fast one: The only reason you feel comfortable insisting that Gid is not God is that you're reading it on this blog -- then applying the external information that I just invented Gid, obtained by noticing that no Gid had actually appeared, just my hypothetical. (Actually I didn't; we discussed Gid extensively in a Philosophy of Religion class I took at university mumblety-mumble years ago.)

But if you met a real-life Gid, by definition, you yourself could not tell the difference between Him and God. You would be confronted by a being who called Himself God, who could do everything you imagine God could do, who knew everything you could imagine God knowing.

On what basis do you "know" He's a fake? How do you know He's not the real God?

You would know no more than the rest of us.

Back to the syllogism; here's some annotation:

1. Scientists themselves argue that if two things cannot be distinguished by any known scientific test or measurement, then as far as science is concerned, they are the same thing.
2. Gid and God cannot be distinguished by any known scientific test or measurement (by definition).
3. Thus, as far as science is concerned, Gid and God are the same thing (see 1).
4. If any intelligent life exists elsewhere within the galaxy besides Earth, then Gid is very likely to exist. (It wouldn't take much advancement over us; a scant ten thousand years of additional technological and scientific innovation would probably do the trick.)
5. Therefore, solely within the realm of science, since Gid is very likely to exist, God is very likely to exist (see 3).

Although it's a big puckish, I am making a serious point: If we are not alone in Universe (or in the galaxy), then there is very probably at least one being whom we mere humans cannot distinguish from God. (For a visual-arts rendering, think of the Q in Star Trek.)

Thus, far from science being able to prove that there is no God in this universe, well-informed speculation implies that something indistinguishable from God does exist -- not just "could exist" -- in this universe.

Until the scientific community faces up to this syllogism and either (a) accepts it, or (b) demonstrates why the logic fails, it has no authority to make lofty pronouncements equating science with atheism.

Nota bene: Being human, I myself would not be able to distinguish Gid from God; hence I would say that Gid is, as near as makes no difference, God.

But I have not sworn fealty to God; so don't expect me to join the Heavenly Crusade.

I don't accept the very concept of kings or princes; aristocracy flies in the face of liberty and equal justice. So unless God is willing to run for election, I won't follow Him <g>.

Dafydd

Dafydd-

Scientists themselves argue that if two things cannot be distinguished by any known scientific test or measurement, then as far as science is concerned, they are the same thing.

Perhaps we have a different notion of Scientific Method. My notion:

We form an hypothesis and make a prediction about reality based on the hypothesis being true.

We engage reality by performing a test and then compare the test results to the predicted outcome.

We modify our hypothesis as required to conform to our newly discovered reality and repeat the procedure.

The net of this process is that we can never conclude that "Gid is God" or any other scientific assertion. We simply fashion an hypothesis that is ever closer to reality by subjecting it to different tests/perspectives.

There is a fundamental difference between “We can’t tell the difference” and “they are the same”. The first recognizes that our perspectives are limited and our hypothesis are contingent. The second suggests the process has ended and there are no further tests possible. The first is a science based argument the second is faith based.

Nota bene: Being human, I myself would not be able to distinguish Gid from God; hence I would say that Gid is, as near as makes no difference, God.

I have no problem with this statement as long as the “as near as makes no difference” implies a purpose and limits the equivalency. It does not make them the same except for the limited purpose. If your intention is to imply "as near as makes no difference for any possible purpose" then i would say that your assertion exceeds your limited (being human) perspective and is not supportable.

-Jls

that was an "L"? sorry , thought it was "jTs".
Anyway, jls wrote:

There is a fundamental difference between “We can’t tell the difference” and “they are the same”. The first recognizes that our perspectives are limited and our hypothesis are contingent. The second suggests the process has ended and there are no further tests possible. The first is a science based argument the second is faith based.

seePea-

I think of math as being a tool of science but i have no issue calling it science if you prefer.

As too the .xx.... notation to indicate an infinite string of repeating characters. I don't find it particularly interesting. It seems to me that one would have to look to the purpose that the tool was being used to determine it's utility. The idea that infinity plus 1 equals infinity strikes a pedantic cord in me. I don't see how it sets any principal that would suggest a square is the same as a cube. (Two different things that appear the same from a limited perspective)

Dafydd , did you watch part 2 ?

SeePea:

Oh yes, I did. (You mean the show about the alien invasion, I deduce.)

I made a paltry few notes; I might still write a short blogpost about it; but it was more or less just what I expected: One brief mention that, oh yeah, there's really no reason why aliens would invade us; then the rest of the show was about how devastating it will be when the aliens invade us.

The good news is they consulted with a couple of science-fiction writers. The bad news is that I've never heard of either of them -- which means they're basically phonies: Charles Gannon, PhD, and David Bartell. I Amazoned them; one of them has about 1.25 books out, and the other is a Kindler.

At least the episode avoided suggesting that the invaders might attack because they're so furious about global warming: "You will be greenilated; Republicans are futile. Exterminate! Exterminate!" (That's the Borg after assimilating Algore and a Dalek.)

Dafydd

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)