This popped up at PhysOrg yesterday: Australian telescope finds no signs of alien technology in 10 million star systems. It says:
A radio telescope in outback Western Australia has completed the deepest and broadest search at low frequencies for alien technologies, scanning a patch of sky known to include at least 10 million stars.
That sounds fairly conclusive, until you read this:
Professor Tingay [one of the researchers] said even though this was the broadest search yet, he was not shocked by the result. “As Douglas Adams noted in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, ‘space is big, really big’.
“And even though this was a really big study, the amount of space we looked at was the equivalent of trying to find something in the Earth’s oceans but only searching a volume of water equivalent to a large backyard swimming pool.
Besides being a search of a “small” part of the galaxy, there’s also this:
Dr. Tremblay [similar name, but another of the researchers] said the telescope was searching for powerful radio emissions at frequencies similar to FM radio frequencies, that could indicate the presence of an intelligent source.
But of course, no one knows how alien civilizations might communicate. Anyway, the Discovery Institute has leaped upon this news. At their creationist blog they’ve just posted Ouch, Huge Sky Survey Shows No “Alien Technosignatures”. It was written by David Klinghoffer, a Discoveroid “senior fellow” (i.e., flaming, full-blown creationist), who eagerly functions as their journalistic slasher and poo flinger. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:
Klinghoffer begins by quoting a news article about the sky survey — without mentioning the limitations we’ve just pointed out — and then he says this:
I say “ouch” on behalf of materialists, atheists, and Darwinists. Ten million stars and not a hint of alien civilization.
Klinghoffer doesn’t tell his readers what can easily be learned in Wikipedia’s article on the Milky Way: Our own galaxy has between “100–400 billion stars and at least that number of planets.” But he does give us the Discoveroids’ latest position on the likelihood of aliens:
You see, proponents of intelligent design are cool either way. [Yeah, they’re “cool.”] If there are intelligent aliens, their biology would itself have to reflect a designer’s purpose. It would probably have to be much like ours. As Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton has argued, the universe itself is designed to accommodate beings built on something similar to our own plan … .
The Discoveroids’ position has morphed from “no alien life” to “no intelligent aliens” — see this from two and a half years ago: Discoveroids’ Latest View on Alien Life — to this new “cool either way” position. After that announcement he tells us:
But materialists [fools like you, dear reader] require a very different scenario, where life, including intelligent life, springs up like weeds, without purpose, reflecting no such design. One famous estimate predicts “a million civilizations in our galaxy at or beyond the earth’s present level of technological development.”
For that estimate, Klinghoffer links to this 1997 article in Scientific American by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Then he continues:
In an unplanned cosmos, alien intelligence ought to be evident and discoverable. As science historian Michael Keas has noted, the hope of intelligent ETs is a quasi-spiritual one, offering the possibility of future “ET enlightenment,” salvation from the stars. An iconic depiction of this is the final sequence in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
You’ve probably seen the movie, so we’ll skip Klinghoffer’s description of that final sequence. He concludes his article with this:
Design theory can accommodate a unique status for human beings in the cosmos, or not. For materialism to be true, we must not be special. The truth, which has never pointed in that direction, hurts.
So there you are. The Discoveroids no longer have a position on intelligent aliens. They’re “cool” either way. But you, you Darwinist fool, say you must have them. So who looks like an idiot now?
Copyright © 2020. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
And, of course, there’s nothing that requires that there be alien life, and some researchers suspect that there won’t me any, or that it will be radically different from what we find on Earth.
I say “ouch” on behalf of cdesign proponentsists, design filter experts, and born-again philosophers of science. Twenty-five years on and still not a hint of an actual theory.
I say “ouch” every time I picture David Klinghoffer as the lawyer in ‘Jurassic Park’, cowering on the toilet and getting chewed up by a CG T. rex.
And when the shark in ‘Jaws’ climbs up on the boat and bites Klinghoffer in half — “ouch” again.
Who can forget when our hero Davey K gets blown to bits on the beaches of Normandy during the D-day landings? “Ouch-ouch.”
I’m very sensitive to Klinghoffer’s pain.
The usual DI guff. “Heads I win, tails you lose”. If a decipherable and coherent radio transmission were found, that would be interesting, but no problem for ID. If not, ditto. The DI is not dumb enough to nail its colours to the mast on life, especially intelligent life, not existing outside Earth. Leave that to the mouth-breathers over at AiG and whatever the Creation Science and Bananaman crowd is calling itself these days.
Glad to see Western Australia actually getting mentioned in the scientific news. We inhabit a backwater, out here.
Recent article on this general topic: Are aliens hiding in plain sight?
I’m not convinced that the creationists of the DI would be quite so sanguine about alien life if, say, an invasion force of technologically-advanced extraterrestrials arrived as heavily-armed missionaries intent on stamping out our heretical beliefs in our vast pantheon of local gods, demanding at lazer-point that we worship their One True God–the Cosmic Aardvark.
Curmy and I would fare ok in such a pass, but the Creationists and the rest of you? Not so much…
Unlike local deities, the Cosmic Aardvark makes no theological demands. He bestows the blessing of wisdom upon those who are aware of his existence, and he leaves all others free to blunder around in darkness.
Aha! The Cosmic Aardvark theologically demands that we are aware of his existence! Or he punishes us by holding back his wisdom!
Nothing good can come from deities, as the Ancient Greeks already understood.
But are aliens OK with the Discovery Institute?
Our Curmudgeon reverently notes:
Yes, we know that — we have it on the authority of Holy Stricture itself, particularly II Epistle to the Myrmidions 53:108 and Ureterotomy 76:42 — but I wasn’t talking about a return visit by the Cosmic Aardvark Itself (ardently though I look forward to that blessed event!).
No, the scenario I intended was a visit from theocratically-crazed distorters of the Cosmic Aardvark’s great and wise teachings; that’s the sort of thing which lesser sentient beings are notorious for doing with their deities.
So imagine an invasion by armed and invincible ‘Evantgelical’ sects, like Seventh Day Aardvarkists from a planet orbiting Betelgeuse, or the Mennontermites of Alpha Centauri, or even the Probosciscrucians from Uranus…
You see how Holy Truth is distorted! Some evil demon, offended by my praise of the Cosmic Aardvark, has screwed up html tag thingies yet again!
I am truly persecuted as a disciple of the TRVTH! Dare I hope for a miraculous cure from above?
[Voice from above:] All is well, my son.
Laurette M wants to know
An excellent question–and I believe I know the answer, which also solves the long-standing puzzle of the mysterious disappearance from the DI of the Venerable Gerb, whom I and so many others here continue to pine for daily.
Probably, a scouting part of advanced extraterrestrials scooped him on board their flying saucer with a powerful tractor beam and took him back for study on their home world orbiting Proxima Centauri. There, on the assumption he was representative of the dominant species of our planet, they concluded we were far too benighted and dogmatic to bother with.
But it’s sad to think of the Gerb now confined to a zoo on a distant exoplanet, still babbling about how wrong Judge Jones called it in Kitzmiller v. Dover, and admantly arguing with those extraterrestrials’ findings that 98.5% of our DNA is junk.
I have no evidence whatsoever that this is true, which is precisely the same threshold of truth used by the DI itself.
But spare a thought for the man, who has saved us from conquest by space aliens. The Gerb lied for our sins.
Ouch, Huge Biology Survey Shows No Sign of Design
Dateline: Disco Tute (above the gym, use the side door. thx)
“It is a disappointing result,” lamented not-a-Dr. Kankerwanker, “but we are undaunted.”
Professor Doctor Hehe von Behe echoed Kankerwanker’s remarks, “REMARKS … Remarks … … remarks … …”
Hoho von Bozo continued, “Just like Priceline, biology is big, really, really big. We’ve been crawling all over the bacteria flagellum for decades, but it’s a tiny, tiny thing-a-ma-jig. It’s like if you went to a beach, say, Ipanema where the tall and tan girl goes walking and everyone she passes goes ‘Ahhhhh!’, and you’re, like, hey, man, have you ever really looked at your hand?”
Klankerwanker concurred, “Design! It all makes perfect sense!”
I happened to read the Wikipedia articles on the Azores. The standard history is that the Azores were first visited by humans in the 14th century.
But there are some shapes in the rocks which have been thought of as done by humans, perhaps 2000 years ago, perhaps by visitors, or even inhabitants, from Africa.
Is there any way of applying the methods of ID to determine whether there are signs of design on the Azores?
A big problem (there are many) I see with human exceptionalism is we are running on the same cellular/molecular basis as all life and are therefore influencing and influenced by it at all levels. We now know the gut microbiome has a huge impact on human heath and endoviruses can infect and alter our DNA. The border between species and individuals is fuzzy and getting fuzzier every day. The retreat to Thomism by conservative Christians is not an answer; the appeals to common sense and realism fail when variation is explained away as an artefact and not a cause. I can’t see very many if any absolutes in a biological world.
Much of what is universally accepted in reproductive biology was totally new to the 19th century.
The attempt to fit this new knowledge to old concepts is shown to be futile.
Yet they keep trying – they selectively use science as a means to further theological/political ends (not that they are the only ones to do this). Such as “life” begins at conception or sex or race or IQ is genetically determined. It is an inconsistent mishmash of alternating absolutism of either genetics or environment never acting at the same time on the same things. As if they only hold one cause in their head at a time. So that sex is entirely genetic, but sexual orientation is entirely environmental. Nothing works that way. Just like others have said that mind is not and cannot be separated from bodies.
I maintain that for a proper understanding of dualism (assuming that it makes sense) we should define mind as the part that depends on the brain (ie the body) and soul (again assuming that it makes sense) as the part that does not depend on it. Most apologists (and unsurprisingly, afaIk, all creacrappers) mix the two up. That makes them sitting ducks.
My point… made
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6509/1313
I took one for the team and scanned through Tour’s presentation at Andrews University. On mute. I just clicked through the slides.
My first observation is that Tour is a terrible, Terrible, TERRIBLE presenter. Slide after slide after slide filled with text, often too small to read and jargon clearly over the heads of the audience. Absolutely, pitifully terrible. I can only conclude that Tour was trying to dazzle his audience with big words and tiny print to show how smart Tour was and how stupid everybody else was (including his audience).
My second observation is that Tour is possibly the most arrogant creationist I have ever seen. He spent the first part of the lecture talking about himself, how great his research is, blah, blah, blah, then spent the rest of the lecture trashing all other scientists. He showed random quotes from the 70’s, pointed out the foolishness of evolutionary scientists concerning “punctuated equilibrium,” and a bunch of hoary old chestnuts. Really pathetic.
On the disgusting scale, Tour deserves his own mark way off the edge. AGAIN he trashes Jack Szostak’s little review in Nature (2018) as if it was a peer-reviewed research article which it clear isn’t, and mocks the simplified drawings ONCE AGAIN! This is the same thing he did in Dallas for which he apologized to Szostak, and here he is doing exactly the same thing again although he doesn’t call Szostak a liar this time. However, he ridiculed the work deliberately misleading the audience, something he later accused scientists of doing. This act alone was intellectually and professionally dishonest. But, he did it over and over again throughout the lecture. His theme was “Every scientist is a liar, except James Tour who stands for the Trvth(tm)”
And, finally, at the 1-hour mark came the sermon. Quotes from the Bible admonishing not to believe in false prophets, etc. Science changes but the Bible doesn’t, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Would it be possible to move the above post to the other thread on Tour?
Moving comments from one post to another isn’t a feature built into these blogs.
ok
The dummy who posted it in the wrong place should fix it and pay a 10,000 Quatloo fine!