Lucky or Blessed?

I saw this MSNBC piece on alien life back during fall term, but the series got fubared when I went back to it the next day; I don't read MSNBC much at home, but since the Sullivan U computers come with IE and generic pre-set bookmarks, MSN and MSNBC is the default news site if I don't want to call up my Firefox bookmarks from my flash drive.

I came back to it yesterday, and the series is back working again. SETI's Seth Shostak is the main speaker in the piece. Here's my money graph-

Shostak notes that there is no direct proof for any life beyond Earth, but the universe is home to a lot of stars. And as research over the past decade has shown, perhaps at least 50 percent of those stars harbor planets. Shostak estimates there are 1 trillion planets in the Milky Way alone. "Surely some of them have undergone what Earth has undergone and developed life, and eventually what we call sentient life," he says. The argument, he notes, is simply one of probability. "If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, or for that matter in the universe, then we are truly a miracle," he says.

You've got that right, Dr. Shostak. Yeah, but it's from that dreaded diploma mill called Cal Tech ;-). I think the guy knows his stuff.

However, we've got one data point for life in the universe, and it's here. Lots of possible candidates, but only one proven to this point.

Given the size of the universe, we can't be that lucky. Either life should be relatively bountiful or something other than random chemical processes got us here.

Something like an intelligent designer, maybe? A Guy who's in the miracle business.

That's not to say that there may not be life elsewhere. Most of the Peanut Gallery can recite Genesis 1:1 from memory-"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Even the non-church goers in the crowd would have that down, especially after we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 8 reading of Genesis from lunar orbit last week. Genesis goes into detail on what happened on the Earth, but nada about the heavens.

SETI scientists hope to find other life in the universe. Others of us are also interested in eternal life and some of those miracles, the biggest coming back in Bethlehem and Golgotha about 2000 years ago.