Implications of Martian life...

[Corvus]

As you may have heard, some scientists believe water once flowed on Mars, strengthening the case that life may have once existed there. Personally, if it really is proven, rather than relying on rather weak evidence, I don't expect to find any fossils of Martian animals. But microbes seems possible.

What exactly would the implication be to creation theory if life was found on the red planet?

[Emerson]

I don't think finding water on another planet would do any damage to Creationism. I think finding life elsewhere could do a bit, but it wouldn't change my faith.

Personally I don't think there are any aliens or UFOs. I think anything we see is either a natural occurance, weather baloon, or secret military planes(mostly these I think).

[anchorman]

I think the biggest blow to creationism isn't if we find life on another planet but if life on another planet finds us. Us finding life on another planet could support creationism expecially if the life we find is identical or extremely similar to that on earth. It could show a common creator.

However if A higher intelligence finds us, creationism could suffer in many ways.

[Emerson]

Touché. Good point.

[otseng]

Touché. Good point.

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[nikolayevich]

It's been pointed out before that the interesting thing about the search for extra terrestrial intelligence is quite telling in that groups like SETI are seeking to discover non-random radio signals from outer space.

Why is this interesting? Perhaps because the generally accepted notion is that non-randomness would indicate intelligence. Order and complexity is something that is unavoidably connected to intelligence, even for these scientists.

SETI is not doing this purely from the perspective that they would like to find other life forms and befriend them. Their stated aim:
"The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe."

I'm continually fascinated by how many scientists are focusing more and more on "origins" and how their field contributes to the knowledge of where we came from. It's certainly confirmation that whatever people believe, there is a need deep within to know where we came from.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is now a benefactor to SETI. The billionaire also funded "Evolution", the PBS series which was the largest funded documentary on evolutionism ever.

This is one of the more amusing SETI quotes:
"Any signal less than about 300 Hz wide must be, as far as we know, artificially produced. Such narrow-band signals are what all SETI experiments look for. Other tell-tale characteristics include a signal that is completely polarized or the existence of coded information on the signal." [Emphasis mine.]

It's interesting that coded information betrays intelligence when broadcast across the galaxy, but doesn't when encapsulated in strands of DNA. Does anyone else see the arbitrariness here?

[ST88]

It's been pointed out before that the interesting thing about the search for extra terrestrial intelligence is quite telling in that groups like SETI are seeking to discover non-random radio signals from outer space.

Why is this interesting? Perhaps because the generally accepted notion is that non-randomness would indicate intelligence. Order and complexity is something that is unavoidably connected to intelligence, even for these scientists...

This is one of the more amusing SETI quotes:
"Any signal less than about 300 Hz wide must be, as far as we know, artificially produced. Such narrow-band signals are what all SETI experiments look for. Other tell-tale characteristics include a signal that is completely polarized or the existence of coded information on the signal." [Emphasis mine.]

It's interesting that coded information betrays intelligence when broadcast across the galaxy, but doesn't when encapsulated in strands of DNA. Does anyone else see the arbitrariness here?

Not at all. There are explanations for each, and they don't have to do with each other. DNA is a molecular structure, and complex molecules are found throughout the universe. They can spontaneously occur, so it would follow that structures based on this model could, themselves, spontaneously occur given the right conditions.

By contrast, we know of no natural event that will produce the phenomenae specified by SETI. So it follows that finding them would imply intelligence.

SCIENCE is not the monolith you make it out to be. Scientists are different people with different motivations. Some believe in God, others do not. The different branches of science all have their own theories, laws, and assumptions about how things work. We would not assume, for example, that a moth orbiting a light bulb does so because of gravity, nor would we assume Mars is red because it is covered with the vestiges of an algal bloom (without proof).

Similarly, we would not assume that because patterned radio waves imply an intelligence, patterned molecules would imply the same thing. So far, the life we see on Earth is the only life we know of, and so our search for life outside of Earth would be based on our own understanding of how, for example, radio waves become manipulated. By the hand of Man. This is the other part of the argument. Why should we expect that the pattern we see from possible radio-wave-manipulating civilizations such as our own is displaying the same kind of "intelligence" that produced DNA? Regardless of your views on abiogenesis, you would have to agree that the signals we might find from distant civilizations would not imply the same type of creative hand as that of DNA.

ed: spelling