In focus is Columbia University Astrobiologist Caleb Scharf’s article, “Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence?,” Science Magazine Nautilus, November 17, 2016 AD.
As I noted in Have atheist scientists found God? my view is that they have yet, they simply replace the term “God” for “Nothing” or “Wave Function” or “Gravity” or chose your vague terminology de jour (a related article is Big Mind Theory).
Caleb Scharf replaces “God” with “aliens” (see Atheist Ancient Aliens) and claim that these “could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics” thus essentially relegating physics and/or the laws thereof as actually being aliens and/or their high tech.
Scharf references Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and Scharf is stating, “Sufficiently advanced alien technology is indistinguishable from physics” as he puts it, “life might not just be in the equations. It might be the equations.”
Basically, I must employ some poop-cultural parlance and state: damn it feels good to be an astrobiologist. I mean imagine basing your career on kicking your feet up on your desk, reading a newspaper and when your boss comes in, every decade or so, you say, “Huh, what? Oh, no, still nothing—hey, I gotta go on sabbatical.” Indeed, I jest but basically Caleb Scharf career is about finding nothing nowhere and thus, he is simply a styled philosopher. Here are some key terms from the article in that regard, “could be…what if…if the cosmos holds other life, and if…we should be considering some very extreme possibilities…might end up…if machines continue to grow exponentially…will one day be able to…Presumably…If so…Indeed, perhaps…These possibilities…thought to be…seem to…hints at…arguments to support this point of view, but of course we don’t really know for sure…have suggested…some component may…could contain…Perhaps…perhaps…perhaps…It’s a stretch, but maybe…possible motivations…Perhaps…How? Beats me…fun possibilities…a pretty exotic idea…it’s still conceivable…we could imagine…could…could go the suggestion…Perhaps…”
Now, you will note that these terms may be acceptable for speculative philosophy but you will find such terminology in peer reviewed science papers—which, by the way, end up being reported as “scientists prove” or “confirm” or “find,” when the paper presents a bottomless pit of assertion upon assertion.
When Ben Stein asked Richard Dawkins, “What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in evolution?” the reply was that “It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved, probably by some kind of Darwinian means, probably to a very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet” and when asked, “How did it [the civilization] get created?” the reply was “By a very slow process.”
Note the two unfounded, unscientific worldview philosophy “faith” based presuppositions are that some utterly alien lifeform “probably” which is a welcomed qualifier came about “by some kind of Darwinian means” and that it was “By a very slow process.” This is not science, it is imaginative tale telling but worse, it is Dawkins demonstrating that Atheism, in his chosen Darwinian form, is thought restricting and so he must keep even his wild speculations within materialistic and/or naturalistic parameters.
Well, Caleb Scharf’s premise seems to be how to set about to “neatly explain why we have yet to see advanced intelligence in the cosmos around us, despite the sheer number of planets it could have arisen on—the so-called Fermi Paradox.” Of course, this presupposes that life just is, it just happens to have happened and thus should have happened in various forms in various locations.
He notes that futurists (a styled aka for Transhumanists) speculate that “life…might end up so beyond our ken that we wouldn’t even realize we were staring at it.” So this opens his speculative door for concluding that life is where we conclude life is not.
Moreover, “Machines…will one day be able to decode the staggering complexity of the living world…Presumably life doesn’t have to be made of atoms and molecules, but could be assembled from any set of building blocks…civilization could then transcribe itself and its entire physical realm into new forms…Upload your world to the huge amount of real estate on the dark side.”
This, again, is based on viewing the life, the universe and everything is an accident. Thus, he reverse engineers it all back to machines decode the living world and thus, developing the ability to create life or manipulate it. Then this crypto-bios, as I will term it, can be built of anything and look like anything so that it is indiscernible to us as life and thus, entire civilizations could be right before our eyes and yet, remain obscured.
He notes that “27 percent…of the mass-energy of the universe…is thought to be unseen, still mysterious stuff…dark, gravitating matter” and that “Some astronomers…have suggested that dark matter has a richer inner life” even though he notes that “we have” not “identified the dark-matter particles.” Actually, his 27% estimate is extremely low as commonly dark matter or dark energy is said to be 96%—give or take this or that amount of unproven, un-evidenced, unobserved stuff.
Now, based on some suggestions by some astronomers—what percentage of astronomers?—Caleb Scharf feels free to teleport into the realm of the unknown and tells us much about it, “dark matter could contain real complexity, and perhaps it is where all technologically advanced life ends up or where most life has always been.”
This should go without saying but this is all an aliens of the gap gap theory. For example, he uses these speculations to explain “the mismatch of astronomical models and observations.”
Now to the universe itself which I stated is thought by Schaft to exist by accident: uncaused, un-designed, etc. about which he notes, “cosmologists don’t know why the cosmic acceleration began when it did. In fact, one explanation with a modicum of traction is that the timing has to do with life—an anthropic argument…maybe there’s something about life itself that affects the cosmos, or maybe those well-evolved denizens decided to tinker with the expansion.” Carefully note that his claim is that this one universe—you know, the only one for which we have evidence—was designed or manipulated but, as with Dawkins above, there is a sort of apparently infinite regress which lets us off of the hook as to why there is something rather than nothing.
He wrote, “our universe must be part of a vast multiverse where the strength of dark energy varies from place to place. We live in one of the places suitable for life like us.” But why “must be”? Apparently because he needs to conclude that elsewhere things are different and since they are different we do not have to play by our rules and can feel free to speculate in any given direction: we live in one of the places suitable for life like us and aliens live in one of the places suitable for life their–it’s all under the big top!
This all ends where it began, “Once we start proposing that life could be part of the solution to cosmic mysteries, there’s no end to the fun possibilities…we don’t recognize advanced life because it forms an integral and unsuspicious part of what we’ve considered to be the natural world.”
In other words, he recognizes some form of design in the universe and places the designer out of our current ability to discern or reach. Thus, he has found God but decides to call Him “aliens.”
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