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the notion of sentient life (or any life) elsewhere in the universe. And I remember that Carl Sagan had a hell of a time not being considered a wacko for insisting that space missions include science experiments to search for life. One of the arguments against life developing elsewhere was that no planets had been discovered outside our solar system, and, even if there were planets (not yet discovered), it was argued that the conditions for life involve such a delicate balance--for instance, distance of earth to sun (so as to foster life, not fry it as it was born) --that the history of our solar system and earth, in generating life, was probably unique and not likely replicated elsewhere. I always felt that the mind-boggling numbers in the cosmos made other life inevitable. Think of our sun as one grain of sand; then think of all the other grains of sand on earth (the rest of the universe). The universe is staggeringly, mind-bogglingly BIG--and staggeringly, mind-bogglingly full of OTHER galaxies and other suns. And I thought that "mainstream" science had become "conservative" like the Catholic Church was conservative at the time of Galileo--with Cardinals and Bishops simply refusing to look into the telescope. They could not abide the challenge to conventional wisdom that those with creative, expansive minds presented. It takes imagination to comprehend cosmic numbers and what those numbers more than likely mean. Further, the unconventional view--that there is life everywhere--is the more logical view, and has been since at least Hubble and the discovery of other galaxies. But even scientists (supposed rational thinkers) suffer from the myopia of human beings--our obsessive focus on our own planet, and our own human affairs, and our desire to think of ourselves as the top of the food chain--when in truth, on the cosmic scale, we are mere microbes on a grain of sand, amidst an ocean of grains of sand, which we are only just beginning to glimpse.
The discovery of MANY planets outside of our solar system (by means of more sophisticated equipment and methods) is a huge paradigm shift, very like Galileo's identification of planets within our solar system. I suspect that it is almost too much for human beings to take, and may be responsible for some people reverting to safer, fundamentalist religious beliefs--that we are unique creations, uniquely created and loved by God, and that earth is the center of the universe, the place chosen by God to create life and to endow life with God-like qualities ("in His image")--and stubbornly holding to that view, despite the evidence to the contrary, because it's just to scary to them to face to the truth--that God loves a lot of places, and a lot of different creatures, many of them just like us, with intelligence, consciousness and notions of stewardship, and with achieved power, over the physical environment. (In facing the reality of other sentient life in the universe, we really should have begun here with the dolphins, whales, elephants and gorillas and chimps, which may not have achieved power over the environment on the scale that we have, but certainly possess intelligence and consciousness, and some of which have been creating whole symphonies of language and communication that we are only just beginning to understand.)
You might say that religious fundamentalists are unaware of these discoveries (of many other planets) and the implications of these discoveries. But don't forget that, with modern communications, such discoveries are "in the air" much faster than ever before. They cannot avoid them. There are reports on TV. Their kids know about them. The smarter fundamentalists and their ministers read popular literature and skewed articles from their rightwing "think tanks." They have to keep informed if, for no other reason, to know what to attack in the science curricula of public schools. Today, their focus is evolution--a subject that is, in fact, intimately related to the potential for other sentient life in the universe. I think their fear has less to do with their idea that the theory of evolution degrades human beings into some higher form of monkey, and has much more to do with the probable prevalence of sentient life in the universe--the more hidden fear--initially inspired by Galileo and developments in astronomy--that we are by no means unique in the universe, and are just one sentient species among many. Science fiction writers, of course, have been grappling with this probability for some time (although few conventional scientists have taken it up--Carl Sagan being a notable exception)--and we see the residue of those writers' ideas (and some new ideas) in TV dramas like Star Trek, Stargate, Farscape, Battlestar Galactic and others. Some, as with Gene Roddenberry's first two Star Trek creations (the original Star Trek, and its subsequent movies, and Star Trek: the Next Generation, the TV series) are quite serious attempts to lay out policy for meeting new sentient species, and all of them try to play out the dramatic possibilities of such meetings (some more successfully than others--the later non-Roddenberry Star Treks are just profit-driven exploitations). So these science fiction ideas that have made it into "mainstream" American (mostly American) entertainment ALSO foster notions that we are not unique.
Really and truly, I think this is what the fundamentalists are scared of. It has an earth-based component to it--fear of Europeans, fear of Asians, fear of brown immigrants from Latin America, and, of course, fear of Arabs and Muslims. Fear of the different (gays included). Fear rooted in their belief that whatever is familiar to them is blest by God and uniquely created by God to own the earth and to dominate, and exclude, others. But this fear--and this myopia--I think is being uniquely agitated by astronomical discoveries that may make fearful human beings feel small and insignificant. Being microbes on a grain of sand is not terribly glorious. It is deeply humbling--and DISORIENTING. We will some day--possibly even soon--have to fit ourselves into such a universe, where we are not unique. As Roddenberry knew, that meeting of tribe and tribe can be catastrophic. And the current Bush Junta retrenchment bodes ill for the ability of the human race to make that transition. But let us not be myopic about that, too. The Bush Junta does not represent earth--far from it. The rest of the world is progressing. It is only the United States, and a few locked down Muslim countries that are moving backwards. The Bush Junta itself is a tiny minority of lawless greedbags, and has never, in my opinion, had more than a small minority in support of it, in the U.S. (I think we have suffered one stolen election after another, with our Corporate Rulers now in direct control of election results, by means of their new electronic voting systems, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code!) Let us hope that the human race, as a whole, is able to make the transition from our parochialism as earthlings, to the larger sentient community of our galaxy, and that the glory that we seem to hunger for takes a different, better and more peaceful turn, as we discover and explore the incredible Cosmos that beckons to us. Some of us, in the U.S., are planning a manned mission to Mars. Others among us think that Eve was made from Adam's rib, and cling to that and other "certainties" with fearful (and somewhat scary) absolutism. Our scientific progress and venturesomeness CREATES that fear among the few--just as the strength of our democracy CREATED the reaction to it, by the Corporate Powers, of rigged electronic voting. I think that scientific progress and democracy will win, in the end. We are, in the meantime, a nation of deep contradictions, which we very much need to understand and deal with. (I would recommend "Battlestar Galactic" for its wonderful dramatization of "end times" issues such as the science/religion conflict.)
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