X-Message-Number: 14446 From: "George Smith" <> References: <> Subject: Re Big Bang dogma and ET contact Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 13:17:59 -0700 Thanks to Mike Perry for the link to Lerner's chief critic at: > http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/lerner_errors.html The only problem I have with the good professor's website (above) is that (1) he offers no opportunity to read what Lerner said in response (no link) and (2) the good professor is on sabbatical and unreachable until June 2001. This critique reads to me more like a repetition of the belief system Lerner criticized. It still requires invoking both "dark matter" which may not exist and relies upon the sudden expansion theory to explain how the universe got bigger than it can be since the Big Bang. The COBE probe validated Lerner's criticisms, as he detailed in the second edition of THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED. This still reads more like a political "debate" with repetition of slogans that an honest critique. Stll in the Drak Ages it would seem. Also, Thomas Donaldson rightly wonders why, if the universe is much much older, perhaps eternal, we do not have evidence of non Earth intelligence. (I would first add that I am still waiting for evidence of Earthly intelligence!) More seriously, to see that there might have been such visitations would first require abandoning the primate peer pressure of denying that such evidence could exist already. That done, there are four hypotheses I could suggest to explain why we seem to have no evidence for Mr. ET (1) The evidence is ignored and reinterpreted. I find it interesting that MOST of our culture's origin stories refer to visitations from "gods" who came to earth and either launched, tinkered or at least taught humanity basic tricks of agriculture and metal smithing.. Von Danikan made this idea popular with his "Chariots of the Gods" and raised the ire of respectable scientists for decades, but it does seem curious that there are so many, many stories about such visitations. When I was in grade school plate tectonics was ridiculed, we all knew that the brain steadily died from birth and "space travel is bunk". I wonder what today's schoolchildren will be told when they are grown up. (2) Clark's Law regarding advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. There is the weird possibility that we would not recognize any sufficiently advanced technology anyway. For example, as an off hand comment Rupert Sheldrake once suggested that the Sun might possibly be conscious based upon the strange observation that some solar activity seems to behave like brainwaves. Human beings still can't seem to "crack" the communication patterns of dolphins, other mammals on our own world. How much harder to discern the thoughts of a star, if such be the case? The more removed an intelligence may be from us over time, the more we might be entirely blind to their immediate presence. (Sun blocker anyone?). And in accord with Clark's Law, the actions of any such advanced technology might be reflected in the miracle stories of many of the world's religions. (3) Human beings may be considered demented or psychotic from more "advanced" intelligent perspectives. Finally, mystics of all cultures and throughout history claim that human beings exist in a "crippled" consciousness which causes us to exist in a sort of sleepwalking condition, out of touch with reality. This might suggest that any truly advanced species would have overcome our delusionary consciousness state such that their manner of perceiving the universe would cease to have much in common with us. Or maybe they were never saddled with this delusionary consciousness state to begin with. This suggestion is most quickly to be rejected by most people I have talked to. Yet it is true that human beings do seem to live their lives in a dissociated state of consciousness such that they seldom operate in the present, in their bodies, behind their eyes, but tend to live from daydream versions of reality. (Memories seem to be rewritten from an exterior viewpoint, for example). If the human state of evolved consciousness is unusual, perhaps caused by our split cerebrum dividing our consciousness, then other intelligences may find us amusing, perhaps even sad, but certainly not capable of sane intercourse. We may be one of the very few intelligent species with a conscious mind accompanied by a separate unconscious mind. Others may be fully conscious without this apparent division. Or, even more simply, there may exist at least four spatial dimensions and, as we human beings only can perceive three, the level of those operating with four makes communication with us incredibly difficult, like discussing color in art with a blind man. (4) We may be the only intelligent life form there is - period. There still remains the possibility that in even an infinite and eternal universe, we are it. No one visits because no one is out there. Cryonics offers the possibility to learn the answers to these questions. George Smith "Quivis est, contradictio!" Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14446