Sunday, May 30, 2021

On The UFO Sightings

I think they're pretty cool. It would be wild if it was really aliens from Zorgon-9.

Listening to some podcasts, I've heard takes from all sides. It's a hoax! It's aliens! These things are only being seen in restricted airspace so it's really some DARPA experiment!

The objections that didn't make a lot of sense to me were based on probabilities. Those posit that the process to create life from non-life is so hopelessly complicated and insanely improbable that there's almost no chance any planet within travel distance would have life, much less a civilization capable of interstellar travel. 

Why accept that?

As far as I'm concerned, life was created by God. He made a universe that could sustain it, but not one that could create it from random chance, so, ZORP!*, He made it. Why couldn't He do it any number of times on any number of planets?

After all, the Big Guy loves adventure stories and what makes for a better adventure story than inscrutable aliens doing wheelies in front of the US Navy?

"I see you've met My aliens. Excellent! Have you found out about the iguanas yet?
Ooh, you haven't?
I probably shouldn't have said anything. Forget I brought it up at all."

* - This is a matter of considerable, theological debate. Protestants believe it was more of a KA-THWANG! Hindus describe it as a BLOORSH! Muslims believe it was a big BOING!

1 comment:

tim eisele said...

I've seen a few good UFOs myself, they're good fun. Of course, most of them ultimately ended up being "IFOs" once I realized what they were: a number of satellites; a really excellent weather balloon being backlit by the setting sun; a flock of white seagulls with the sun reflecting off of their wings; and most recently a set of five odd-looking military jets buzzing our house that, while they aren't completely unidentified, I can't figure out what kind they were based on their silhouettes.

And even if they are really, really unidentified, aliens isn't the only possibility. They could be time travelers, or popping in from a parallel universe, or even flying out of Pellucidar through the holes at the poles. Or it could be pranksters with fancy drones. One just never knows.

And you are right that the probability argument is a load of hooey, because we don't have any data to use for calculating probabilities. We have a sample of one planet with liquid water that we can see well enough to be sure whether it has life on it, and what do you know, it has life on it! That's 100%. So any number between 100% and infinitesmally close to 0% is about equally probable.