If God Were a Space Alien

A Different Kind of Atheism

By

James Hamilton

Smashwords Version 1.1

Copyright 2007 James Hamilton

Introduction

I am saying this right up front. I am an atheist. Does this mean I am certain there is no god? For me it doesn’t. I don’t think that anyone can be absolutely certain of this. Not even Richard Dawkins. I will certainly say that the probability of the existence of any god, that meets any reasonable definition of the term, seems pretty low. And the probability that there is a god that is anything like the major world religions propose is even smaller.

Let’s try to put these probabilities in perspective, relative to other things we “know” about the world. Most of what we think we know from science is uncertain too. Over time science very often progresses by showing that things we thought were true before were not quite right. But some things seem more certain than others. How certain are we that the sun will rise tomorrow morning? I don’t know the exact number, but I would say that this is pretty nearly certain. More certain than that there is no god? I would say yes. Now consider, for example, Einstein’s general theory of relativity. You don’t have to know much about this theory to know how highly regarded it is by scientists. It has been shown by many experiments to be correct. And yet it is almost certainly wrong at extremely small length scales. We don’t have a better theory to replace it yet, so for now, we can think of it as “right”. But I would rate the probability that there is no god as higher than the probability that Einstein was exactly right. So this should give you some idea that I am pretty certain, but not absolutely certain, that there is no god.

Commonly, people who are uncertain about the existence of god call themselves agnostic. In part this is because it is more socially acceptable. In a mostly religious world, it is risky to tell people that they are outright wrong. But, at least in the western world, it is acceptable to have doubts. To be agnostic is to say that you are not going to challenge anyone else’s beliefs. But perhaps the time has come for more people to start challenging religious beliefs. Sam Harris is responsible, at least in part, for convincing me of this. It is not my purpose here to explain why it is so important to challenge religion. Mr. Harris has done that far more eloquently than I could hope to do. But it very much is my purpose to in fact challenge religion, and to do it in a way that I think may be a little different than others have tried. So this is part of the reason that I call myself an atheist without hesitation. But it is not yet the most important reason.

If we leave aside the social issue, and we admit that it would be foolish to assert with certainty that there is no god, then what is the difference between an atheist and an agnostic? Is it just a matter of degree? If so, where do you draw the line? I would like to suggest that an atheist is someone who has a different attitude about the possibility of god. If you come to me with evidence that there is a god, how should I respond? Should I (a) start going to church every Sunday, (b) learn meditation so that I can contact god myself, or (c) study the evidence, and if it seems compelling, then try to figure out what sort of god this is? If you said (c) then you are my kind of atheist.

If you said (a) then I am curious to know why you think I should leap to the conclusion that the evidence will favor a Christian god. Furthermore, why do you want me to worship something that I still know nothing about? I have never understood the psychology behind the worship of anything with power, whether it be a king or a god. It seems to me instead that anything that demands worship is probably not deserving of worship. Furthermore, it seems to me that the Judeo-Christian god is an especially grim creature who has done little or nothing worthy of praise, and plenty that is not. Christopher Hitchens explains in detail the evident unpleasantness of most of the world’s major religions. Let me hasten to point out that my purpose here is not to criticize religions in this way, although it may seem that way at times. Criticism tends to close the mind and raise the natural level of resistance to change. Instead my plan is to use elements of existing religions as evidence for the existence of god, and then to see what that leads us to think about what such a god is like.

Now if you have seen discussions like this before, you will know where I am going with this. You will say: “you are trying to study god using science and logic”. Many eminent philosophers, mostly theologians, but even some reputable scientists, argue that this is impossible because god is, in effect, not part of the “natural” world. Even the eminent Stephen Jay Gould has tried to make science and religion compatible by saying that they are “different ways of knowing”. Many people find these arguments compelling because they do indeed feel a kind of certainty about god that is not based on any actual evidence. Curiously, this kind of certainty is itself a form of evidence, and can be studied as such. Some recent research has begun to address the mechanisms which support this sort of certainty as well as its evolutionary and psychological underpinnings.

In any case, I have never been able to make any sense of these arguments about god and religion occupying a different domain of discourse. It is one of my main goals in writing this to explain why this is so, and, if possible, to convince you that there is only one meaningful domain of discourse. I’ll summarize the argument here, but there is an entire chapter devoted to this topic later, and, in a way, the entire book is really devoted to this topic.

The idea is simple. If we can observe it, it is part of the natural world. If we can’t observe it, it may still exist, but it is irrelevant. If god came to earth and started performing miracles, then everyone would agree that this is evidence that we could study in a scientific way. There would be some who assert that we should not or must not do this, but even they would agree that we could. But what about religious experiences that are only in the mind? You may argue that the mind, or some part of the mind, is not in the natural world. But if you have a religious experience, then you can talk about it. You may find it difficult to articulate exactly how it felt, but I can ask you questions about it, and there is no part of it that would not be accessible in this way. Thus your mind is also part of the natural world, and is accessible to study using science and logic. This doesn’t mean that you have to study it that way. Only that you can. So I’ll leave you with that thought for now, and hope it will encourage you to read on.

Perhaps you are starting to wonder what this book has to do with space aliens. That is the main title, after all. You’ll soon find out. The first chapter is mainly about space aliens. Furthermore, space aliens keep coming up in later chapters as well. There have been many suggestions over recent years to the effect that space aliens of the distant past may have been responsible for (a) bringing life to earth, (b) bring humans to earth, (c) staying here and becoming humans, (d) staying just long enough to plant the idea of god in the minds of primitive humans. And so on. I will not be making any suggestions of this sort.

Instead, the reason I like to talk about space aliens is to get you to think about what god does, assuming you believe in god. I claim that many people have thought more about what space aliens do than about what god does. Presumably everyone agrees that if space aliens came to earth, or if they are already here, then they do something that is, in principle, observable. Certainly in popular depictions they are always observable, even if all they do is take over the minds of other people. So the fundamental question I want to ask is this: if a space alien came to earth, how would you know it wasn’t god? Your first reaction might be “that’s ridiculous (or blasphemous) – god is not a space alien”. But you would still have to explain – to me – how you would tell the difference, and in the process we would learn something about what god is like. Then as we go on through later chapters, and we explore the different things that people may think god does, we will constantly raise the question: could a space alien be doing this? In the final analysis you may accuse me of simply renaming “god” to be “space alien”. So be it. I got you to think about what god does in the process. Mission accomplished. I am not really trying to convince you that god actually is a space alien.

So who am I to be writing about space aliens and god? What are my credentials? Am I famous for anything, so that I think you should pay attention to me? Am I trained in philosophy, or theology, or perhaps psychology? Perhaps I am a science fiction writer. I am none of these things. Perhaps you think I am some kind of nut that you would see at a science fiction convention or at an alien abduction meeting. I am not that either. At least I am not that kind of nut, anyway. Instead, I am just the guy next door or the guy across the bar. I am hopeful that you may be drawn in by my way of thinking, and not be distracted by whether I am famous for something else. I do hope you find that my way of thinking about god is helpful and complementary to some of the other god books that have been published recently. Perhaps the actual philosophers and theologians will find it naïve relative to other works in their fields. Then they might correct me and we will all have more to think about.

Chapter 2: Alien Contact

Before we start, let me try to explain why I am starting out by discussing space aliens. I am not about to suggest that god is really a little green man from another planet. I want to get people to think about what their god is like. Many of today’s religions include the idea that god was manifestly present on earth at one or more times in the past. In Christianity, the central tenet of the faith is that god himself was here in the form of a man named Jesus. At the time, not many people could tell that he was god. But now, millions of people claim to know for certain that if you don’t believe Jesus was god, you will spend eternity in hell. Some people believe that god will return. Many of them even believe that the return is immanent. But even if you don’t think god is coming to earth any time soon, you probably still believe that he could come, but just chooses not to. It is also possible that real space aliens will visit us some day. Of course some religions claim that god only made intelligent life once and it is us. If you believe that, then anything that comes to earth must be god, since there are, by definition, no space aliens. For the rest of you, if something unusual showed up on earth, you would have the job of deciding whether it was space aliens or god. How you would decide says a lot about what you think god is like, and that is the point of my writing this chapter. For me the job is easy. It is almost certainly space aliens, no matter what. For the religious among you, I am hopeful that going through this thought process might nudge you in the direction of thinking the same thing.

In our first series of thought experiments, we consider various sorts of visits to earth by aliens. Many depictions of alien visits are, of course, familiar from film, literature, and so on. Curiously, these descriptions rarely imagine the aliens claiming or appearing to have the status of gods. It has occasionally been suggested that distant past visits might account for ancient mythology, but people somehow imagine that modern alien visits would surely be recognizable as aliens. They may have advanced technology, but we imagine that it will be understood as just that – advanced technology. Arthur C. Clark famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” With this thought in mind let us consider some of the common alien images and perhaps some less common ones as well. Into each scenario we will inject the question: “could the alien(s) be god(s)?”

Reptiles and Gods

Consider one of the common alien visits we see in movies: ugly reptilian creatures arrive in spaceships. It is a massive invasion, and their expressed intent is to kill or enslave humans. They shoot at us with recognizable weapons of mass destruction. Naturally we mobilize our armed forces and the world comes together to fight the aliens. Somehow, against all odds, we find a way to win.

Now just change the plot slightly. They still mean to enslave us, but what they say is “We are gods and you must worship us.” They provide specifications for the churches and rituals we are to use. How would we respond? Although there might be a few believers, it seems very likely that the response would be something like this: you are not gods – you are space aliens, and we are going to fight you to the death.

Why is this response so likely? I think that the main reason is that everything in this scenario is recognizably part of the natural world as we might understand it. There is nothing supernatural, spiritual, or mystical about these aliens. They are visible real-world creatures who come in spaceships and shoot at us with fancy weapons. We can easily imagine that if we were to build spaceships and travel to another planet the situation would look much the same. Furthermore, the aliens are ugly (they obviously did not create us in their image), and they don’t seem to like us much. These factors also contribute to their lack of godliness.

This entire picture is quite similar to one which has actually happened. If “creatures” in metal suits arrive in boats from across the ocean, some people might see them as gods. But for others, and eventually also for the believers, it will be war. Once the killing starts, and it is seen that the aliens are mortal, this clinches the case that they are not gods.

What are the lessons to be learned from this thought experiment. We apparently have some expectations, or requirements, that gods must fulfill. They must be supernatural, immortal, and good. There are many more properties we would like our gods to have, but if they fail these basic ones, they are in trouble. One of the most interesting of these is the supernatural. We will have much more to say about this later.

So are there other alien visits that would be more convincing as gods? Clearly the answer is yes. Let us immediately jump to the other end of the spectrum.

The Rapture

Suppose that one day many devout religious christians mysteriously disappear. They vanish right before people’s eyes. At about the same time disasters occur all over the world – earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornados, plane crashes, fires and so on. The earth becomes a living hell for everyone who is left.

All of this and more are predicted, according to some interpretations, by the chapter revelations in the bible. Remarkably, many people seem to believe these things are really about to happen, and soon. If it did happen, then this would constitute strong evidence that perhaps christianity is right after all, and the bible really is the literal word of god.

Now ask yourself what you would think if this were all perpetrated by space aliens. Or, if you prefer, one space alien, or perhaps one main alien along with a number of subordinate aliens (angels). Certainly it is not hard to imagine that space aliens could have the technology to make people disappear, or to cause natural disasters. They did these sorts of things all the time on Star Trek. This is not to suggest that Star Trek is scientifically valid but only that it is easy to imagine.

Chances are that many people would respond to this suggestion with something like “don’t be silly, this isn’t space aliens, this is god.” Just the opposite of the science fiction reptilian space aliens. How can we account for this? I can suggest several possibilities:

• There are no visible aliens or space ships.

• It is just as predicted in the bible. Any minor disagreements would easily be dismissed.

• The idea of space aliens is comical. God is respectable. The majority of people believe in some god, while belief in space aliens is generally considered to be kooky. Since there is no visible evidence of aliens surely it is “simpler”, and much more acceptable, to believe that this is god.

If you are following along in your notes, the assertion that something is due to god is pretty much equivalent to saying that it is due to space aliens. Somehow it sounds different, but we will argue the equivalence in general later on. This is just the second example, so maybe you are not convinced yet. Carry on.

Another thing you may be asking yourself about this example is “why would space aliens do something like this?” What could be their motivation? So you have to answer by asking the equivalent question: why would god do this? According to the bible, it is judgment time. It is not our purpose here to examine the theological justification for the idea of divine judgment. But it definitely is our purpose to wonder why it sounds wrong for space aliens to sit in judgment on humanity whereas there seems to be no problem with the proposition that god would do it.

While you are pondering this, I’ll close this section with a couple of suggestions about why space aliens might do this:

• Space aliens really are god (or god plus angels, if you prefer). Two thousand years ago, and earlier, they sent humanoid life-forms to earth. Some wrote the bible. One was Jesus, and so on. They wrote down in the bible that there was going to be a judgment day. Then they left, and we haven’t seen them since. But now they are back and it is judgment day. If this sounds blasphemous then I can only say that I am happy you are still reading.

• The space aliens have a twisted sense of humor. They use primitive civilizations like ours for entertainment. They have been monitoring us, and have read our literature and seen our television programs. They thought it would be pretty funny to make the biblical predictions come true and watch to see how we react. Later they will vaporize us all.

The Sweet Spot

Now that we have seen two extremes of response, “alien not god”, and “god not alien” our next goal is to see if we can find a sweet spot where we are not sure whether to think that a visitor is god or alien. Let’s try some simple examples first.

Suppose a flying saucer lands on the mall in Washington, DC. A ramp opens up and out comes one of those stock movie aliens – gray skin, skinny, bipedal, large head, blank, lidless almond-shaped eyes, blinking strangely. It has a vaguely beneficent and intelligent appearance. It says, in modern American English: “I am Jesus Christ, son of the god who created you.”

Why is this picture so absurd? Well, to start with, we made him out to look like a known space alien. Any reasonable person would assume this was some sort of Hollywood stunt. So we’ll fix this right away. Make it a modern Caucasian male, and dress him in a western business suit. Most likely the initial reaction would be pretty similar. Aside from the words themselves, everything about this picture shrieks publicity stunt. The geeks in the crowd would be wondering how they did the flying saucer part, but a few others would be thinking about writing angry letters regarding the blasphemy, just as soon as they knew who the perpetrators were.

A few of the observers might be more willing, on further thought, to consider the proposition. After all, if Jesus were to visit us today, wouldn’t he adapt his appearance and language to match modern times? Chances are their biggest problem would be the flying saucer. Surely Jesus wouldn’t come in one of those. But before we lose the space ship, let’s explore a little further in the appearance and speech domain just for completeness.

What if we give him long brown hair and dress him in a long white gown and sandals. We give him a halo. Instead of modern English, he speaks King James English. Surely at this point quite a few people would have bells going off in their heads. They could ignore the flying saucer because this exactly matches the image of Christ that is burned into their memory from church walls, Sunday school, bibles and other religious books. So this is obviously god, not a space alien.

So how ridiculous is this? We have to assume that, for whatever reason, Jesus wishes to appear as his historical self rather than a modern human. But we know that the historical Jesus, if there was one, was probably not white, did not have brown hair, and spoke Aramaic. In spite of this language problem, there are many people who, to this day, think that King James English is the true language of Christianity. We are left to suppose that, on the occasion of this new visit, the most important thing to Jesus is that people believe that he is indeed Jesus. To achieve this, he simply takes on the appearance that people have in their minds. So if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, and not a space alien. It’s a cartoon duck though. A real duck would be something else again.

God or Kook

Now let’s discuss the elimination of the flying saucer. Of course this means any kind of space ship. A space ship is a sure tip-off that this is aliens. So we have to have some way of getting him here without one. Of course there are lots of ways, but we’ll start with the idea that he just shows up one day and we don’t know how he got here. If he looks like a normal human, then we have an additional choice besides god or space alien: kook.

So one day you see some guy in the park. You have never seen him before. He is surrounded by a small group of people and, out of curiosity, you join the group and listen for a while. It turns out that he claims to be Jesus. He looks like an otherwise normal guy – not deranged or anything. And he does have a sort of charisma. This happens in real life, of course. And remarkably, a few people are sometimes convinced, and a cult forms.

But you are not convinced. You know there is a slim chance that it is true, but you are certainly not going to give up your life and follow someone who is almost certainly just crazy. This is just a kook. There is no reason to think that it is a space alien, and the probability is very low that it is god.

What if he dresses like Jesus and speaks King James English? Still not convinced? Of course not – that would be easy. After a bit of thought you decide that it was possibly more convincing the first way. But what if he does miracles? It would obviously depend on the sort of miracles. Simple magic tricks won’t do at all. Healing sick people is troublesome too, because there are plenty of faith healers around already. Although quite a few people believe that at least some of them are truly directing the power of god, probably most people believe that they are frauds.

We need big miracles. If he points a ray gun at a building and the building falls down, then it is certainly a space alien. Jesus wouldn’t need or use a ray gun. What if he just points his finger and the building falls down. Now maybe it could be god, but we’re not so sure. Destroying buildings somehow doesn’t seem godlike, even if they are “bad” buildings. It seems more like something space aliens would do. This despite the idea that god would create a hell on earth for the sinners that he doesn’t take to heaven during the rapture.

What it he raises his arms to the sky and suddenly dark clouds gather, lightning flashes, and hail begins to fall. Now we’re talking god. There is no reason to think that space aliens couldn’t do this, or that god couldn’t, or wouldn’t destroy buildings. Surely god, if he were all-powerful, could do anything space aliens could do, or for that matter, anything we could imagine. It seems that to be godlike the miracles would need to be the sorts of things that people thought godlike 2000 years ago, like controlling the weather. If it is too high tech, people will think it is space aliens.

The Arrival

When we did away with the space ship, we just had the god or aliens show up in the park. We didn’t say how he got here. Perhaps he was born here, just like a human but with very superhuman powers, and he just chose today to go public. Perhaps he comes from a long line of secretly alien or godly beings going back thousands of years. Or perhaps aliens or gods implanted a baby alien/god in a normal human woman. Both gods (counting satan here as a kind of god) and space aliens do this sort of thing all the time in movies. So this method of arrival seems acceptably godlike, but is also quite popular among space aliens. We are told, of course, that the first Jesus came this way, so there is a good chance that if he comes again, he might use the same method.

But suppose that he has to get here, fully grown, from whatever planet or heaven he comes from, and that there are witnesses. It can’t be in a spaceship, of course, so what other methods are there? If we see a shimmering yellow glow in the shape of a human, and then the glow fades and Jesus is there, then we know this is not really Jesus, but someone from Star Trek, dressed in a Jesus outfit, which is no doubt standard issue for starships in case they encounter primitive cultures. We have been conditioned by television to think that this is obviously a space alien. What if he just appears, instantaneously? One second there is nothing, and suddenly there is a man there. I think the nod still goes to space alien because this just doesn’t seem properly godlike.

The next possibility for your consideration is the puff of smoke, possibly accompanied by a flash or lightning and a thunderclap. When the smoke clears, Jesus is there. Now this could be god all right. We could believe this, even though any good magician could probably do this trick. God could do better. What we need is the arrival on a cloud, up in the sky, with sunbeams, rainbows, and angels, followed by a descent to earth.

The Human Response

Enough of this silliness. The space aliens are here. What are we to do? If you have ever seen any science fiction movies about aliens, you know what the choices are. First you determine whether they are hostile or friendly. If they are hostile, then you have a war. If they are friendly then you try to learn from them, arrange trade and technology exchange, and so on.

It is hardly my purpose here to explore the possible outcomes of a visit by space aliens. Rather, it is to wonder why the response should be any different if the visit was from god. If slimy reptiles came in spaceships and demanded worship and obedience, it is hard to believe that we would just say “ok, tell us what kind of churches you would like.” Perhaps if they made it clear that if we didn’t obey they would vaporize the planet, then we would do this. But we would do so grudgingly, and we would continuously look for ways to somehow defeat them. If they told us they could read our minds, and they would punish us if we did not truly love them, still we could not love them, and we would have to suffer for it. But by some elusive reasoning, love, obedience and worship, or eternal suffering, are what several of the world’s major religions tell us are required by a god we can’t even see. Perhaps once we get to know the aliens better, some of us at least will find that they are lovable after all. Like beauty and the beast.

But if the aliens are really god, is he hostile or friendly? [Note: it is tempting to substitute “she” here, but I have found this too distracting.] If this is the Judeo-Christian god or the Islamic god, then there is quite a lot of evidence in favor of hostility. We are told that he loves us, but the deeds suggest that this is really tough love. Just the idea that we are doomed to eternal suffering merely for doubting his existence seems rather nasty. We wish to grant ourselves many freedoms, but not, apparently, the freedom to doubt god.

If god has come for judgment day, then apparently he means to kill us all. Because what happens when we die: we go to heaven or to hell. On judgment day, he takes the faithful to heaven, and, conveniently for god, earth becomes hell, so no special action is needed. Logically this sounds equivalent to extinction of the species. Everyone is denied the remainder of his natural life on earth, and is immediately given life after death, which must presume that death has occurred for all. Couldn’t he just wait? God will be around for eternity after all.

If it doesn’t seem to be judgment day, but we are convinced that god is here, then perhaps we should look to religious texts or to actual history for clues about his intentions. The bible is filled with many instances of mass murder done by god. Examples include Noah’s flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, plagues and other bad things in Egypt, and more. When he helps out, it is often in the form of assistance in war, i.e. killing enemies of the believers. Sure, he does say “Thou shalt not kill”, but then this apparently doesn’t apply to punishment that is required for various offenses, most notably non-belief. I haven’t done a complete count, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, but it seems likely that god does more bad things than good, on balance.

So if we decide that god is hostile, what do we do? We have been told that god is all-powerful, omniscient, and omni-everything. Furthermore, we have told that everything he does is really for some greater good, no matter how it looks to us. Our puny brains are simply incapable of seeing the big picture. Under these circumstances, resistance is surely futile. Out best hope might seem to be going to church (or whatever god tells us to do, now that he is here to tell us in person) and hope that this will minimize our punishment.

But it is not universally human nature to simply succumb to hostile domination. Surely some will resist. Surely part of the resistance would involve studying the properties of this hostile god. Is he really all-powerful? What does this mean? Can he violate the laws of physics as we know them? For example, can he communicate with remote parts of himself at greater than light speed? If so, are the laws of physics just something that he enforces on humans? Is he then subject to no physical constraints at all? Is this even a reasonable possibility, from a metaphysical perspective?

Those of us who are left here on earth won’t know anything about the heaven where the faithful were taken. But we can surely investigate the properties of the hell that earth has become. One interesting question is whether we can die. Unless we somehow lose the ability to damage our bodies, then we would surely want to know what happens if someone’s body is, for example, cremated. Are there other levels of hell that our souls go to, or are we somehow reincarnated in the earth-hell.

The main question, of course, would be whether there is any possibility of defeating god, or at least escaping. Presumably we would find that all of our weapons are useless against his physical manifestation here on earth, but we would still try what we could. Perhaps we could do some damage, but then we would want to see how the physical manifestation related to the infinite being we are told is the real god.

What about escape? Perhaps we would be prevented from building rockets. But what if we did, and we went to Mars? Would there be a hell there too, and would god be there? Would the entire universe be hell? Or perhaps the entire universe would be gone, and Mars along with it. Either way, these are all very interesting questions, to which we would surely want to know the answers. This could involve a lot of new physics.

Now consider the possibility that the aliens are friendly. This would make us more likely to think they are aliens rather than gods, because, as discussed above, the god or gods of most of the major religions seem more hostile than friendly. Be that as it may, how would we respond to a friendly visit? There presumably would not be any demand for worship, as this does not seem consistent with being friendly. Their technological superiority may be such that some people might be inclined to worship them anyway. For others, however, there will be many, many questions.

Since these gods are friendly, presumably they will be willing to answer at least some questions. They may decline to share all of their technology, on the grounds that we might misuse it. But we might suppose that they could divulge the basic extent of their powers, and perhaps enlighten us about basic physics, as well as other sciences. The underlying principle here is that they are part of the same natural universe as we are, and are therefore subject to the same laws of nature. We’ll have a lot more to say about this principle later on.

The one thing we really don’t want to hear from them would be that our brains are too primitive to understand them, their science or their technology, and that therefore they cannot answer most of our questions. It is certainly conceivable that this is actually true, in which case they would certainly be right in telling us. But still we would plead for help in understanding what the fundamental limitations are. If you crave knowledge, then you cannot easily settle for knowing that it is somehow inaccessible.

Summing Up

Is there a lesson to be learned from all this? The real point of the chapter is to introduce, in a rather light-hearted manner, some thought experiments that will get you to start thinking about what god is like. Here I mean your god, and what you personally think. I claim that many people have thought more about what space aliens are like than about what god is like. If you are a Christian, then you have spent some time contemplating the life of Jesus. And you probably have some pretty good ideas about how god wants you and other people to behave. But what about god himself (or herself)?

In this chapter we have imagined that god comes to earth in some form. The central question of the chapter is whether you could tell whether a “visitor” is (a) god, (b) kook or (c) space alien. If the visitor is a slimy green reptile, then you immediately say space alien. If the visitor is a humanoid, but does no miracles then you would probably say kook, although you should never underestimate the power of kooks with charisma. But if the visitor is humanoid and does miracles, and makes no claim to being a space alien, then I claim that there is no way you could tell. If you are religious, then the answer is likely to depend on what the visitor says and does. How well does this conform to your ideas about god? But even a humanoid that conforms perfectly to your idea of god could still be a space alien. Who is to say that advanced space aliens would not have evolved to be some sort of invisible energy form that occupies a large volume of space and can manifest as human if desired. How godlike is that?

Now you may well say that you are quite certain that god is no space alien. Perhaps you have some personal experience that convinces you of this, and it has nothing to do with any earthly manifestation of god. We’ll have more to say about this in future chapters. But for me the answer is simpler. We can only act based on what we do experience. If what we experience is indistinguishable from space aliens, then I choose to think that it probably is space aliens, since that seems like the simplest explanation. And why would I want to worship space aliens?

Chapter 3: Intelligent Design

Previously we considered the scenario of an alien visit sometime in the near future. In this chapter we address the question of whether aliens (or gods) have been present on earth in the past. More specifically, the question is whether life on earth has developed entirely through evolution and natural selection or whether there has been some contribution from an “intelligent“ entity or entities. If we want to be open minded about this issue the best response may not be to dismiss intelligent design as unscientific. Instead we can accept the possibility and then probe further, by asking questions such as “Do you mean space aliens”.

Do You Mean Space Aliens?

Advocates of intelligent design generally distinguish themselves from creationists by asserting that the intelligence they are referring to is not necessarily the Christian god. If it is not god, we must surely be curious about the nature of this intelligence. Oddly enough, this question rarely seems to arise in the debates. There are some reasons that it is avoided, which we’ll discuss shortly, but first lets address the question directly. Could it be space aliens? If the ID proponent denies this possibility or finds it laughable, we suspect that he is really a creationist in disguise.

But some ID proponents do accept the possibility of space aliens. Once we get this far though, we naturally have many more questions. Before we start to dig in, here is a list of the many questions that need to be addressed on this topic:

• What are the problems with the theory of evolution that are said to require intelligent design?

• If we accept these problems, what sort of intelligence would it take to fix them?

• Independent of the above, how might we arrive at life as we know it without evolution? How about with a little evolution and a lot of intelligence? How about with a lot of evolution and some help from intelligence?

• If it is not god and it is not space aliens, are there other possibilities?

• Why is it that the debates we hear and read about never seem to address these questions?

Before starting on the questions, we need to set some ground rules. The rules are that the only part of science we are directly questioning is evolution. Other parts, like basic physics, astrophysics (e.g. the big bang theory), geology, paleontology, and so on, we will basically accept, although we may push on them here and there. We make this rule not because it is necessarily true, but just to focus and limit the discussion. A strict creationist would deny most of this because it conflicts with the bible, but we are not discussing creationism, after all. All of the theories of science are open to discussion, of course, but we simply do not propose to do that here.

The Problems with Evolution

ID advocates are fond of saying that “evolution is only a theory, not a fact”. Evolution advocates respond, correctly, that nothing in science is fact, and that theory is as good as it gets. Still, many scientific theories do have problems. From time to time, these problems rise to a level that the theory needs to be modified. Certainly the theory of evolution is far from complete and perfect. So we can well ask whether this theory has enough problems that it needs serious modifications. If it does, then the next question is what sort of modifications would be appropriate. But first, the problems.

The basic problem in evolution theory is to explain how it actually produced life as we know it, including homo sapiens. No one can really dispute the theories of genetics, reproduction, or even some level of natural selection. All of these are easily demonstrated in the lab and in nature by experiment. It has been shown, for example, that the beaks of Darwin’s finches will change size and shape depending on the available food sources.

In spite of all this, it is simply incredible that it produced complex multi-cellular forms of life, including, finally, humans. There are many things that are unknown about how this all actually worked. We understand a fair amount about DNA and proteins and so on, but we really don’t know much about how these things all came to be in the first place. All life that we find uses pretty much the same machinery, but we find no record of simpler forms leading to this already rather complex machinery.

The fossil record, while quite rich and getting better every day, still has gaps that lead to uncertainty about common ancestors, intermediate forms of current species, and so on. To pick only the most obvious example, we haven’t really identified a common ancestor between chimpanzees and humans. We do seem to be closing in on this, but the evidence remains sparse and there is, as yet, little agreement among researchers in this area. If you want to believe in ID, you can point to this and say “aha, it is not certain that humans descended from apes”. In fact there is really no dispute among scientists about the basic picture of descent from apes. Only the details are in question. But until the details are actually nailed down, there is wiggle-room for those who want to dispute the basic claims.

Perhaps the most intriguing problem with evolution is how it managed to accomplish large changes. It is not hard to see how natural selection could favor the change in size or shape of a finch’s beak. But how did it come to have a beak in the first place. Or eyes, or wings, or feet. A currently popular hypothesis is that birds evolved from dinosaurs. But this is quite controversial, and, naively, there doesn’t seem to be much resemblance. There are a few examples in the fossil record of possibly transitional forms, but so far not enough to be really convincing.

Among the difficulties facing the evolution of major features is the idea that transitional forms seem likely to be counterproductive. So, for example, if you want to evolve an opposable thumb, you might imagine that you start with a bump. The bump may well be worse than useless, so you would think that it could never evolve into the whole thumb. Instead, the bump would be eliminated by selection. We have never induced major new body features to evolve in the lab. We can do certain things by manipulating the genes, like add extra fingers, or put the wings in the wrong place. But getting new things to evolve by themselves is for now beyond our ability. The assumption is that this occurs either too slowly, or with too low a probability, to be expected to happen during the lifetime of any reasonable experiment.

Speaking of probability, there is one other problem that we need to discuss: what is the probability of evolving life as we know it in three billion years. If we assume that the probability of evolving it is non-zero, then, given an infinite amount of time, the probability of getting humans is one, i.e. certainty. It is often said that if you have a monkey type random letters, eventually it will type a Shakespeare play. But it is pretty unlikely that this will happen even in three billion years. Three billion years is a really, really long time. But the probability of a random sequence of letters being a Shakespeare play is so small that even after three billion years it almost certainly will not happen.

Some people may think that evolution is just like the typing monkey, and that life as we know it is like a Shakespeare play. As it turns out, evolution is not at all like the typing monkey, and the probability of evolving life as we know it is certainly much higher. But we really have no idea exactly how much higher it is, so we really can’t say whether three billion years would be enough or not. If you are inclined to doubt the validity of evolution, then you may find this argument compelling. It is not a proof, however, and I am not aware of any valid way to calculate these probabilities. Despite the high standing of evolution as a scientific theory, too little is known about the actual mechanisms it uses in practice. We don’t even know yet what all of the mechanisms are. New ones are being discovered almost daily.

Are Extraordinary Solutions Needed

Before explicitly discussing space aliens, we must first ask whether extraordinary measures are necessary at all. What sort of extraordinary solutions are we talking about here? In increasing order of disruption, here is my list:

• Completely discarding a theory as being completely wrong. Usually there is a replacement theory that may or may not precede the old one. An example is the theory that heat is carried by a fluid called phlogiston. This is actually the least disruptive, because if a theory is completely wrong it can’t have been used for much.

• Modifying or extending an existing theory – here the existing theory is not found to be completely wrong, but some special cases, perhaps unusual ones, need new theory to be described accurately. General relativity is a case in point. Newton’s theory of gravity is not really wrong. It describes “everyday” reality quite well. But general relativity provides more accurate predictions, especially in extreme cases in involving large masses, for example. This can be fairly disruptive because you have to revisit many results which were previously thought to be correct.

• Invoking space aliens. Of course this hardly ever happens, and no such theory has ever been broadly accepted. Some have been proposed, of course, and we will discuss one of them later. This would be very disruptive. Unless you are quite specific about what exactly the aliens did (or are doing still) there would be considerable confusion about what previous results might have to be revised due to possible alien interference.

• God or other miracles. There is a famous cartoon showing a scientist at a blackboard filled with equations. At the bottom it says “then a miracle happens.” The idea is that the scientist cannot figure out how to complete the work, and so he invokes magic, presumably in jest. Invoking god or magic to explain something is equivalent to giving up. Once you have invoked magic, you are done. It explains nothing, but it completes the job and no further explanation is necessary or possible. God and magic accomplish any required feat without need for any known method or following any known natural laws. In fact if there is a difference between gods and space aliens, this is it: space aliens still have to operate within the bounds of the natural universe, but gods, somehow, may not. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here, but the point is that if we are doing science, we cannot use something which doesn’t play by the rules – hence no gods.

Can Space Aliens Fix These Problems

Interestingly, the development of life on earth is one of the few areas where theories involving space aliens have a modicum of respectability. The problem of the initial development of the DNA and protein basis of all current life remains unsolved. Part of the mystery is that we have found no direct evidence of anything on earth preceding the kind of biology we see today. One way out of this dilemma is to imagine that it came from somewhere else.

This idea is called “panspermia”. It doesn’t necessarily involve actual sentient beings coming here in spaceships, although it could. The idea is simply that the basic biology evolved elsewhere, earlier in the history of the universe, and possibly floated here as part of interstellar dust. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of basic organic chemistry in space, both locally, in meteorites, and farther away in the spectral signatures found in interstellar dust clouds. So far nothing as complex as DNA or functional proteins have shown up, but certainly we see amino acids and other basic building blocks.

If we are talking about ID, however, then panspermia by dispersion of, say, bacteria, doesn’t count. We need actual intelligent beings to be involved in some way. Certainly this is possible, for this particular problem (development of the basic biology). They could have come here in space ships, bringing and leaving, intentionally or otherwise, some single-celled creatures. Or if they were sufficiently advanced, they could have designed something specific for earth, perhaps as an experiment, that they thought would do well here.

Could aliens have helped with the other main problem, namely how to evolve the major body features we find around us today? Certainly aliens could have done this, in any of several ways. They could have brought with them all of the species we see today. They could have done this either exactly as they are, including, of course, humans. Or they could have brought with them the basic forms, at some level, and allowed the final details to evolve, much as science currently thinks they do. Or, in either case, they could have designed and created them in place, as part of some plan for planet earth.

One question with regard to all of the space alien assistance is what happened to the aliens. Once again there are multiple tempting possibilities. One is that they just left and have not come back, or at least not yet. Perhaps they will one day return to check up on us (see rapture, in chapter one). Perhaps they are still here and they are either invisible (like god) or they are hiding, maybe not completely successfully, if you are inclined to believe in UFOs. One of the best ideas of all is that we are the aliens, or rather the descendents of the aliens. Somewhere in history we lost track of our extraterrestrial past.

It is easy to imagine all sorts of fantastic stories involving space aliens creating life on earth. Each of them could be the basis of a nice science fiction story. Any one of these stories could very easily be fact. There is only one problem. There is no actual scientific evidence for any of them. Science requires that hypotheses be testable against some form of empirical evidence. People do sometimes invent theories that are so far untested (e.g. string theories of physics). But they must be testable at least in principle, and if they are never actually tested, they will fade away.

What kinds of evidence might we find that space aliens created life on earth? We might find artifacts buried in the ground, such as spaceships, or life-creating tools, assuming we could identify either one of these. But any clearly inorganic artifact, even completely unrecognizable, would be very compelling evidence of something. The best evidence, of course, would be to meet an actual alien, who would then explain to us about the creation of life. Hopefully we would be provided with more than just a story too. If I show up at your door claiming to be a one million year old space alien who created all life, you would obviously think I was a complete nut case.

Another possible form of evidence could involve the discovery of mathematical patterns within existing terrestrial life, that we could somehow prove are “artificial”, and in some way not evolvable. Some people perhaps think that existing life is so miraculous and perfect that it is clearly non-evolvable. But in reality, it is not at all obvious how you could prove such a thing.

One of the most troubling problems with the idea of space aliens assisting with evolution on earth is what created the aliens in the first place. According to the dominant cosmological theory, the big bang, our universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Remember that we are accepting, for the sake of this argument, other parts of science besides evolution. Of this 13.7 billion, the earth has existed for about 4.5 billion years. If we think that it is impossible or improbable that life evolved on earth in 4.5 billion years, how is it possible or probable that aliens evolved in 13.7 billion and then came here to assist in creating life on earth?

If evolution doesn’t work to create life here, then what created the aliens? If we needed intelligent design, then the aliens almost certainly needed it too, so what provided the intelligence for that. If you follow this line of reasoning, you’ll see that, in the final analysis, it can’t be space aliens after all. So it must be god. The reason god can do it is that he is not subject to any of the limitations of time or space, and he can do anything. But this takes the discussion outside the realm of science, which is why we wanted to talk about space aliens in the first place.

Keep in mind that this entire thread is based on the hypothetical idea that evolution does not work and that life required intelligent design. If we could satisfactorily prove that hypothesis, then we can make a convincing argument that the intelligence involved is probably some god (not necessarily any of the gods we know about, by the way – just some god). Of course the position of evolution advocates is that evolution works just fine, and the ID requirement has not been demonstrated.

How Much Evolution is Possible Without Design

There are hundreds of different breeds of dog, varying from the Chihuahua to the Great Dane and everything in between. It is clear that this variation was created by humans in the process of domestication and selective breeding. Although all of these animals do have the same basic body parts, the variation in size, shape, color, hair, and so on is really dramatic. So we know that these traits can evolve through selection, and can do so in a pretty short time. These different dog breeds were created in something less than 10,000 years.