Intelligent Alien Design

[Richard]

I ran across this article and thought it was interesting. :)

By Thoth

Over the years, there has been a great deal of controversy, suspicion and hostility directed towards the prospect of science one day developing artificial intelligence. This is particularly true if that artificial intelligence might eventually extend beyond circuit boards and computer chips to encompass a biological form of artificial intelligence.

Ideas like these make great sci-fi stories, but may be the flip side of an interesting reality. There is an intriguing possibility that humanity itself may be nothing more than a biological version of a form of artificial intelligence.

A new theory that is beginning to take shape suggests that humanity, and indeed all life, has been left to propagate in an artificial environment known as Earth, perhaps under the watchful eye of the higher intelligence that created us.

Mankind may actually be living proof of intelligent alien design rather than simply a product of random chance and evolution. If we were indeed made in the image of our makers, will we one day be capable of repeating the trick and thus become gods ourselves - and is that part of the grand plan?

Location location location!

The first thing any intelligent life beings would do when creating life is to ensure they had an environment, a planet, capable of sustaining that life. Just as scientists confine their experiments in the controlled setting of the laboratory; it follows that any sufficiently intelligent race of beings embarking on either seeding or genetically manipulating other life forms would do the same.

The fundamental factor that determines a planet’s ability to sustain carbon based life is its location. The late Carl Sangen once observed that due to the reflection of the sunlight, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, almost as if there was some special significance to our planet. That relatively narrow beam of sunlight represents the key to the survival of life on our planet. The Earth is perfectly positioned in every sense of the word. If we were just 5% closer to the sun, temperatures would reach an incredible 900 degrees Fahrenheit, rendering life impossible. Likewise if the Earth was 20% further away, the planet would be a frozen wilderness, too cold to sustain life. Depending on your philosophy, the position of the Earth represents either an amazing example of random chance, or part of a very deliberate blueprint for life.

The position of the Earth isn’t the only factor required to support life, a myriad of other criteria such as an abundance of water, a gravitational field, oxygen rich atmosphere, nearly circular orbit, slow rotation and the presence of a large moon are all vital if life is to be sustained on a planet. When we take into account these elements it seems wise to at least consider the possibility that the Earth isn’t a result of pure chance; she was either placed in her orbit - or perhaps chosen deliberately for her location.

The Artificial Earth and the Hollow Moon

The academic community in general is perhaps understandably hostile to the idea that the Earth is anything other than natural; after all to seriously consider such an idea would be to dramatically rewrite our understanding of science as we know it. Cosmologists have always assumed that the Earth and the moon were created together, probably as the result of a collision, yet there is a growing suspicion that our knowledge of the moon is surprisingly incomplete.

We’ve known since the seventies when a sizable amount of data was gathered from the Lunar Orbiter experiments that the moon may be hollow. The impact from the jettisoned lunar modules unexpectedly caused artificial moon quakes that lasted for up to three hours, supporting the conclusion that the moon has no substantial core. According to scientists who have calculated the moon’s mass, it seems our enigmatic satellite is too light, too big and according to moon rocks that the Apollo missions brought back, too old to be explained by physics or cosmology.

Just as the Earth sits in a perfect position to support life, the moon plays a vital role in supporting that life. The moon acts as our counterbalance, stabilising the movement of the Earth and regulating our tides - without the moon’s influence, Earth would be a very different place. The moon’s gravitational field and precise location means that it also acts as a shield, protecting us from catastrophic meteor impacts that would otherwise have wiped out life on Earth many times over. If extraterrestrials have had a hand in the creation process then this might explain the lunar anomalies that cosmology can’t account for. The moon may well have been placed in her current orbit quite deliberately, not by a supernatural God or chance, but rather by ancient extraterrestrial civilisations that may have long gone, or which may still monitor, manipulate and nurture what is in effect, a massive alien ant farm.

Strange Earth

While the moon appears to lack a core, in contrast the Earth’s core is thought to be a two-part construction, consisting of an inner core of solid iron, which is encased by a molten core. This is a very significant arrangement as it is responsible for generating the all important magnetic field that protects the Earth from the cosmic radiation that constantly bombards our planet. The Earth’s outer core has remained molten for over 4 billion years but there is no satisfactory explanation as to why it has remained so after such an incredible length of time; that fact alone defies scientific explanation. Author Robert Berringer makes the following observation on the subject:

“If someone tells you that radioactive decay keeps the mantle molten, ask him which isotopes have a half life over five billion years and how many gigatons of these rare radioactive isotopes would be required to keep our iron core molten. Most scientific theories say that the solar system formed about five billion years ago, and radioactive materials with very long half lives are rare in the solar system. We don’t know of any significant amount of heat producing radioactive materials with a half life of over a billion years that has ever been found in meteors, asteroids or moon rocks.”

So why has the Earth’s mantle remained in a molten state? According to Berringer, some scientists have calculated that the Earth requires nothing short of a nuclear reactor to keep our iron core molten. It seems that the Earth isn’t just special; it is unique in every sense of the word, from its location to its design and construction. Whether this uniqueness is part of a grand design or a product of random chance remains to be seen.

The Seeds of the Great Debate

The Earth isn’t alone in its uniqueness, all life on our planet is rather exceptional, with humans being the most unique of all and how it all began is a debate that has raged for a hundred and fifty years.

The argument between creationists and evolutionists has raged since naturalist Charles Darwin first published, ‘On the Origin of Species’ in 1859. For the first time, people were faced with two conflicting modes of thought; either life on Earth was created by an all powerful yet unfathomable biblical God in a few short days, or that life on Earth was simply down to random chance and gradual change over millions of years.

Darwin’s work appeared to scientifically establish that evolution by common descent was responsible for the diversification we see in nature and is certainly not without merit, the question is, whether it tells the full story. In many ways, the theory of evolution has become the bible and the belief system of the scientific community, despite the fact that it may offer only a partial answer to the conundrum of creation. While evolution may be the favoured theory amongst the scientific establishment there is a small but significant band of scientists that question the theory of evolution and are instead turning back to intelligent design as being the reason that life has developed the way it has.

The possibility of a third option; that life on earth was deliberately seeded or has been genetically manipulated by extraterrestrial civilisations since the dawn of time never entered the equation. The idea that everything we see as ‘natural’, the Earth, the moon and life itself is in many ways an artificial construct that has been genetically engineered is certainly a disturbing one, but without realising it, we have already taken the first steps towards ‘playing god’ ourselves. As a species, we have developed the ability to create life through artificial insemination and cloning, and simulate intelligence electronically. We practice natural selection ourselves when we breed our animals and cultivate our crops yet despite our own achievements, people find it difficult to accept that there could be other beings who have developed and harnessed the power of creation and who may have had a hand in our creation.

Religion: Mankind’s Red Herring

Because intelligent design and religion are inextricably linked in our minds, sceptics attempt to dismiss the intelligent design theory by saying that to explain the origin of life through a supernatural designer is to explain precisely nothing, as it fails to account for the origin of the designer. In truth, this is akin to saying that even if certain factors point to a person having been murdered we should discount the evidence if we don’t know who committed the crime. It may be more prudent to hope that the evidence eventually leads us to the answer. Whether the lack of evidence confirms the absence of a higher intelligence or is simply indicative of our own inability to penetrate that aspect of our existence will probably always be open to debate.

In truth, no one side is probably in possession of all the facts yet and there may be elements of truth in both theories, but we owe it to ourselves to piece together the evidence we do have and build a more solid understanding of what makes us tick; this in itself is a vital aspect of our own evolutionary process but might be particularly if our origins are basically extraterrestrial. There is nothing to suggest that this ‘intelligent designer’ is in any way supernatural, in fact if you look at history, there’s more to suggest that our creator may be extraterrestrial rather than Divine in origin, which begins to explain reports of UFO’s that have appeared throughout history.

Religious texts such as the Old Testament have always been the primary sources for the intelligent creation paradigm but it may well be that the idea of mankind being created by God (or ‘Gods’ from the sky) has not only survived, but actually developed over thousands of years. When we look at the creation story of Genesis in the bible – a story that can be demonstrated to have its roots in the earlier creation myths of the Ancient Egyptian Zep Tepi, we have to question how and why these stories originated and if they might have changed through time, possibly to accommodate our ability to comprehend at least some of our true history.

There is a rather strange and neglected aspect of Egyptian science that is interesting to contemplate at this point; researcher Judy Kay King has demonstrated quite conclusively that the Egyptian hieroglyphs were far more than just a language. Simply put, encoded within the mythology that each Hieroglyph represented, was evidence that the Egyptians possessed a complex understanding of microbiology. This demonstrates that many of the key hieroglyphs represent a symbolic bridge between the mythology and microbiology and as her book ‘The Isis Thesis’ explains, quantum physics. This advanced knowledge of microbiology had to originate from an external source, one which may well have been extraterrestrial in nature, but over successive millennia, the origin of the knowledge may have become lost or distorted to the extent that even the Egyptians themselves lost the knowledge.

The Science of Intelligent Design

Michael Behe, an Associate Professor of Biochemistry, took the world of science by storm in 1996 when his book ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ was published, questioning how natural processes could have assembled the natural processes present within living cells.

Instead he presented his theory that the ‘biochemical machines’ that have been demonstrated to exist at molecular level in all life, offer validation of intelligent design. These systems are to all intents and purposes, mechanical in nature, containing circuits and assembly instructions that form microscopic machines. Every aspect of life requires a myriad of microscopic machines, such as the flagellum (left) to perform different tasks; there are machines to transport energy around the cells, machines to absorb sunlight, to taste, feel …. every natural function we can possibly imagine is governed by a microscopic machine.

The crux of Behe’s argument in favour of intelligent design is that these biological systems are what he terms ‘irreducibly complex’ at the molecular level. Each cell contains what are in essence multiple machines each of which is comprised of numerous component parts; all of which must work for the machine to function. If just one part doesn’t work then the whole machine won’t work and thus the cell is unable to function. According to Behe:

"An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition non-functional."

Natural selection works on the principal of small mutations developing in just one component at a time in each of these microscopic machines, but the technicalities of these systems means that would be impossible for them to evolve gradually in this way.

Behe’s work has significant support from scientists such as Dean H. Kenyon who is Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University, but understandably his research and conclusions are not without critics

Darwinism and the Origin of Man in the dock

One proponent of Darwinism, H.Allen Orr, is a vocal opponent of Behe and his supporters, asserting that:

‘An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become - because of later changes - essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required.’

Allen seems to have failed to provide a great deal of evidence to support his rebuttal and given that evolution is supposed to be an ongoing process, evidence to validate his claim should be plentiful. In almost every living creature, we should be able to see evidence of these changing systems because evolution is supposed to be a gradual but ongoing process.

Many people forget that Darwin’s theory remains only a theory; it has never been proved to be fact in the same way that intelligent design hasn’t. It is quite possible that there are elements of truth in both theories but Darwinism seems increasingly unable to support all the questions raised concerning the origin of life on our planet. When we look at ourselves in terms of Darwinism for example, there is very little by way of evidence to support the idea of mankind’s gradual evolution from primates; there seems to be a massive missing link. 

We know that throughout history there have been many humanoid species present on Earth, ranging from the tiny Flores people whose height averaged just one meter, to far more robust species such as Neanderthal man, who have inexplicably died out. The bones of the first Neanderthal were about 50% thicker than those of the average modern human, and clearly belonged to an extraordinarily athletic and muscular individual. Many anthropologists find the extinction of these other races, particularly the Neanderthal, as being highly irregular. If any species were born to survive it was the Neanderthal, yet they inexplicably died out. How could this be and why has the Homo sapien alone survived?

One theory is that there was deliberate intervention to select and breed Homo sapiens either in the same way that we select and breed our cattle today or by deliberate manipulation of DNA, implying that any alien intervention may have been an on going process, rather than being limited to the point of creation. If radical changes did suddenly occur in our DNA then this of course points to deliberate and powerful intervention which can only be explained as being of a probably extraterrestrial nature. We know from the genetic research conducted by author and researcher Brian Sykes that Homo sapiens seem to have evolved from an incredibly, unfeasibly small gene pool with no provable link to more primitive species. This lends itself to the idea of intervention in the gene pool rather than natural selection.

Full circle

Creationism of old is on the verge of being replaced by a new form of intelligent design. The supernatural understanding of old, promoted for thousands of years by mainstream religion, is quickly being replaced by a more sophisticated philosophy that encompasses aspects of both evolution and intelligent design, perhaps the most controversial path will lead us to the truth; that our world is simply an alien construct that has been seeded and nurtured for millions of years. Discovering and validating our own origins is perhaps the most important step that mankind still has to take.

But do we limit our own understanding of creation by refusing to step outside of accepted realms of thought? While the tug of war debate persists between creationists and evolutionists, we bring ourselves to an enforced standstill, taking one step forward and two steps back. Perhaps it’s time to look at the evidence as a whole, to look at the location of the Earth, the known lunar anomalies, our history, mythology, anthropology and the findings of both Darwin and Behe; to see the bigger picture we first need to look at the bigger picture.

Artificial intelligence takes on a whole new meaning when we consider the possibility that humanity might be nothing more than an extraterrestrial experiment in artificial intelligence. But it is a possibility; it is a theory worth considering as it encompasses elements of Darwinism, creationism and goes some way to explain mythology and religions’ preoccupation with Gods and divine beings that come from the stars and are able to affect our fate. Perhaps that’s why some people naturally gravitate towards artificial intelligence as the science of the future while other people are deeply suspicious of its implications. Perhaps we need to question if we are unwittingly getting closer to our own origins when we pursue artificial intelligence as a technology. Intelligent design might be a multi faceted reality and artificial intelligence and mankind itself might be a living example of its potential. 

http://www.thothweb.com/article4644.html

[William]

Great post Richard.  :)

[Richard]

It sounds like more and more people are waking up to the fact the evolution doesn’t explain everything and intelligent design makes more sense. :)