DAVID DARLING'S NEWSLETTER

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Issue #38
May 16, 2006

e-mail: daviddarling@daviddarling.info

website: http://www.daviddarling.info

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Is SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - a religion?
This is one of the topics that Jill Tarter, Director of the SETI
Institute, and I will be talking about on "Are We Alone?", the SETI
Institute's weekly radio program to be broadcast on Wednesday May 17
at 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. EST with a repeat airing on Sunday at 11 p.m.
The show goes out on Discovery Channel radio Sirius 119 or you can
listen to a podcast. All the details are available here:

http://www.seti.org/site/pp.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=178892

The discussion by Jill and I is really in response to a claim made
by George Basalla (professor emeritus of history at the University
of Delaware) in his book Civilized Life in the Universe (Oxford
University Press: 2006) that SETI is more of a faith-based
enterprise than a genuine science. He points to SETI's failure to
make "contact" after more than forty years of trying and its
continuing efforts in the absense of any positive evidence as a sign
that it relies more on a kind of religious zeal than anything else.
(Incidentally, Basalla was invited to appear on the show but
declined.)

Needless to say, Jill Tarter is less than impressed by this
argument, as indeed am I. Firstly we know that there's intelligence
in the universe. As I point out on the show there are dolphins and
great apes. And you might even throw Homo sapiens into that mix on
the rare occasions when we live up to our self-proclaimed species
name. It isn't an unreasonable hypothesis that if intelligence has
come about on one planet that it may also have arisen elsewhere,
especially given the vast number of stars in this and other
galaxies. SETI serves as a test of that hypothesis. But beyond that
it's one of our noblest and most exciting scientific quests: to
discover if we are alone and represent the highwater mark of
intelligence and technology in the cosmos or, alternatively, if
we're simply one member of a community of minded races, many of them
perhaps vastly more ancient and advanced than ourselves.

Religions are characterized by two factors: worship - in other
words, some system of devotion directed toward one or more
omniscient and supranatural beings - and faith in the absence of
material evidence. SETI qualifies as a religion on neither of these
counts. Unless I'm very much mistaken no SETI researcher offers
prayers to the subject of his or her quest (although it would be
fascinating to know what spiritual traditions might have grown up
among the civilizations of other stars). And any faith that's
involved in SETI is only the kind of non-religious "faith" that any
scientist adheres to - faith in the scientific method, the equipment
she uses, the all-important peer review process, and so on. As I've
mentioned, we already have material evidence for intelligence in the
universe: it consists of the brains you're using right now to
assimilate these thoughts. Unlike a religion which relies on pure
faith that a god exists, we don't need faith that intelligence and
technology exist.

To address Basalla's argument, that it's time for SETI advocates to
lower their expectations and even admit they may be on a wild goose
chase, I'd like to point to a parallel with the search for
extrasolar planets - worlds that are in orbit around other stars.
Until quite recently we had no evidence for planets beyond our own
solar system; it was simply a hypothesis, like the hypothesis that
there may be ETI. The practical search for extrasolar worlds kicked
off back in the 1930s with the pioneering work of the Dutch-American
astronomer Peter Van der Kamp (see
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/vanderKamp.html).
Although he collected data that seemed to suggest there were worlds
in orbit around Barnard's Star and a few other nearby stars, this
evidence proved to be unfounded (some of it due to tiny systematic
wobbles in the telescope he was using). Only in the 1990s, sixty
years after Van der Kamp began his investigations, did scientists
find conclusive proof that there are other planets out there. Over
the past decade or so, more than 180 extrasolar planets have been
found.

If we were to follow Basalla's line of reasoning, the search for
extrasolar planets also qualifies as a kind of religion. Shouldn't
we simply have given up after four decades of looking? Surely that's
enough time to have found something if it really existed? Isn't to
continue to beyond that a sign of to mis-placed faith and over-
optimism? Fortunately the quest did go on and we're now reaping the
rewards - new planets by the bucketload.

Historically, the question of whether extrasolar planets existed
and, if they did, how common they were and what they might be like,
finds an interesting parallel with the central issues in SETI. There
used to be two big theories about the origin of the planets in the
solar system. One of these was called the catastrophic hypothesis
(see http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/catashypoth.html).
It suggested that the planets had formed in the aftermath of a near
collision between the Sun and another star from a swathe of gas
ripped out of the Sun by the stellar intruder. If this were the case
then planetary systems could be expected to be very rare because
such close encounters between stars almost never happen. The rival
theory of planet formation was the nebular hypothesis which arged
that the planets of the solar system coalesced from a cloud of gas
and dust left over from when the Sun was formed. The nebular
hypothesis suggested that the birth of planets might be a routine
business throughout the universe. Of course, this is the theory, in
updated form, that astronomers believe in today and the discovery of
numerous other planets is good confirmation of it.

The parallel debate going on in SETI and astrobiology concerns how
often primitive life, such as bacteria, serves as the precursor of
complex, multicellular life, and, ultimately, advanced intelligence.
Supporters of the "Rare Earth" hypothesis think that it happens only
very, very rarely. Others, including myself, think that intelligence
offers a big survival advantage and that it will come about whenever
it's given a reasonable chance. SETI is a first step towards
resolving this issue. But it still has a very long way to go.
Forecasting how intelligence will evolve is a hazardous business. We
don't have much to go on. What we do know is that as soon as high
technology takes hold, evolution is fantastically rapid and
virtually unpredictable. Does anyone have a clue how the Internet or
genetic engineering are going to develop over the next 10, 20, or 50
years? How about the next million years?

SETI researchers know their limitations. They're restricted at
present to searching for radio and optical signals - our own best,
fastest means of getting messages across interstellar distance. Who
knows what our galactic elders, if they exist, may be using to
communicate with? We have no idea what is out there or what forms
alien intelligence may take. We are, as Seth Shostak pointed out
during the radio interview, like Columbus sailing into uncharted
waters. We don't know what we'll find. But the quest is
extraordinary, exciting, abundantly worthwhile, and true to the
methodology and spirit of science.

Best wishes,

David Darling

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