Intelligent Design and SETI
Well it seems some of the scientific community have discovered the need to develop an apologetic for SETI. For those who have never heard of SETI, it stands for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The idea is that alien civilizations could be detected by radio telescopes and enough computing power. The radio telescopes are available to pull all the radio signals out of the sky, and the computing power is provided by millions of individual computers that all run a cool screensaver. When the computer is not being used and the screensaver is on, the power of the computer is being used to detect signs of intelligent life. But how do you detect signs of life? The answer is in some pattern which displays evidence that it was created by an intelligence, due to complexity and regularity.
So far so good. But all of a sudden some scientists have realized just how dangerous this is. If complexity and regularity are a sign of intelligence in the heavens, some misguided folks might get the idea that the same is true here on earth! Some misguided folks may adopt the views of the Intelligent Design movement.
So articles have been published to make sure the public is properly indoctrinated. For example, we are told that regularity is not a sign of intelligence. Well, maybe and maybe not. Regularity itself is not a guarantee of intelligent design (rock crystals and pulsars being examples), but a well cut diamond would be an example. But I'm not sure anyone in the Intelligent Design movement is suggesting that regularity by itself is a definitive sign of intelligence.
Anyway, I stand by the assertion that complexity and regularity would be a sign of intelligent life in the sky and would be a sign of intelligent design here on earth. If the rules apply in one place, they apply in another. I refuse to accept that little green men are science and a creator God is myth if similar evidence is available.
Finally, I do not run the SETI@Home screensaver. Instead I run Folding@Home (http://folding.stanford.edu/), which uses the same principles of distributed computing to try to understand the folding patterns of proteins. If the rules by which proteins fold can be understood, there will be a quantum leap in our understanding of protein biochemistry, and the advances in medical science would be amazing.
So far so good. But all of a sudden some scientists have realized just how dangerous this is. If complexity and regularity are a sign of intelligence in the heavens, some misguided folks might get the idea that the same is true here on earth! Some misguided folks may adopt the views of the Intelligent Design movement.
So articles have been published to make sure the public is properly indoctrinated. For example, we are told that regularity is not a sign of intelligence. Well, maybe and maybe not. Regularity itself is not a guarantee of intelligent design (rock crystals and pulsars being examples), but a well cut diamond would be an example. But I'm not sure anyone in the Intelligent Design movement is suggesting that regularity by itself is a definitive sign of intelligence.
Anyway, I stand by the assertion that complexity and regularity would be a sign of intelligent life in the sky and would be a sign of intelligent design here on earth. If the rules apply in one place, they apply in another. I refuse to accept that little green men are science and a creator God is myth if similar evidence is available.
Finally, I do not run the SETI@Home screensaver. Instead I run Folding@Home (http://folding.stanford.edu/), which uses the same principles of distributed computing to try to understand the folding patterns of proteins. If the rules by which proteins fold can be understood, there will be a quantum leap in our understanding of protein biochemistry, and the advances in medical science would be amazing.
posted by Shawn Abigail at 8:01 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home