Richard Dawkins himself made this interesting observation in a private communication after viewing it:
I would agree with [Shermer] in betting against aliens being bipedal primates, and I think the point is worth making, but I think he greatly overestimates the odds against. [University of Cambridge paleontologist] Simon Conway Morris, whose authority is not to be dismissed, thinks it positively likely that aliens would be, in effect, bipedal primates. [Harvard University biologist] Ed Wilson gave at least some time to the speculation that, if it had not been for the end-Cretaceous catastrophe, dinosaurs might have produced something like the attached [referring to paleontologist Dale A. Russell’s illustrated evolutionary projection of how a bipedal dinosaur might have evolved into a reptilian humanoid].
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Why do I care what a Richard Dawkins stooge thinks aliens will look like?
If Richard Dawkins thinks this guy knows what he’s talking about chances are good that he’s an idiot.
Kronos on November 5, 2009 at 7:00 PM
Uh-oh…
That clinches it.
I mean, I’m one of those Creationists who believes in evolution…and the real possibility of intelligent life elsewhere,, but no dino, or ape, ever “became” a bipedal human. Just sayin’.
JetBoy on November 5, 2009 at 7:01 PM
This is so stupid. I don’t buy in to evolution, but I mocked some “big” guest on Coast to Coast AM a few years ago, when I called in to talk about this. How the hell, if you accept evolution, would you ever expect aliens to be so humanoid-ish? Virtually all “abduction” stories, movie adaptations create this image… and that included this guest who claimed to have personal experience with them at AREA 51 or something (I can’t remember).
He really had no answer and just basically said “well, we’re all made from the same thing, so it’s inevitable that we’d look similar” Really? Do you look like a platypus? You could tell this moron had never even thought about the question:
Not that evolution true, but if it were, what are the odds that “BILLIONS OF YEARS” of evolution would produce a being that resembled us so much, and that of all the other billions of supposed evolved/evolving aliens all over the universe, we just happened to encounter humanoid types first?
RightWinged on November 5, 2009 at 7:02 PM
If he is ’skinny and has big ears’ he will look like us.
L
letget on November 5, 2009 at 7:02 PM
As long as the woman are green and ready for some hot human lovin’, who cares.
lorien1973 on November 5, 2009 at 7:04 PM
But what if they’re like black widow spiders and eat their mate after copulation?
JetBoy on November 5, 2009 at 7:07 PM
[Fry, Bender, Zapp, and Kif have been captured by Amazons]
Fem-puter: After lengthy femputations, I, Femputer, have decided the fate of the men. Femputer sentences them to death…
[everyone gasps]
Fem-puter: By snu-snu!
Fry, Captain Zapp Brannigan, Bender: Yeah! Woo-hoo!
[Kif starts sobbing]
Captain Zapp Brannigan: [to Kif] What are you? Gay?
lorien1973 on November 5, 2009 at 7:09 PM
Well on Star Trek, Kirk and Spock could go to the farthest corners of the galaxy and the aliens they encountered were always humans who spoke English.
radjah shelduck on November 5, 2009 at 7:12 PM
Sounds like Swift’s Laputa to me.
John the Libertarian on November 5, 2009 at 7:12 PM
Ickes was right! LOL
lorien1973 on November 5, 2009 at 7:12 PM
But we know what ET looks like. ET
And ET promised universal healthcare, too!
Strick on November 5, 2009 at 7:27 PM
He isn’t saying they did
JetBoy on November 5, 2009 at 7:01 PM
It’s sort of an alternative history kind of thingy.
That’s because that was cheaper.;)
Bobbertsan on November 5, 2009 at 7:31 PM
I`d sell out this whole planet for her.
ThePrez on November 5, 2009 at 7:34 PM
lol good episode!
JetBoy on November 5, 2009 at 7:38 PM
Good Lord, we are all going to look like James Carville…the horror…the horror!
trs on November 5, 2009 at 7:41 PM
THis is where Dawkins, and all those who think like him, go wrong. There are 0 known planets capable of supporting life that we are aware of. One can say that there should be many others, but scientifically, logically, one can not say there are, as Dawkins says in this quote. There is no evidence that such planets exist. Nor is there any evidence for a law that would dictate their existence, outside of the law of large numbers.
But the law of large numbers is moot on this point. There is no cosmological constant by which earth-like planets are forced into existence. He makes the mistake that Sagan made in the ’70s with his now infamous equation that because you start off with such a huge number of stars, you end up with a huge number of planets with intelligent life. One does not lead to the other except by wishingful thinking.
It’s like saying that a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters for a thousand years, should by rights, produce War & Peace. I think not. What you would get after a thousand years of monkey typing, is lots and lots of wasted paper on which gibberish was typed because scaling up gibberish doesn’t produce coherence. Scale it up as big as you wish, the product is still gibberish. So the law of large numbers, the scaling up of this idea, can not be argued as a system which inevitably produces a novel.
What’s worse, is that instead of monkey’s typing, it really is the equivalent of cats typing, or fish typing. So it does not matter how many trillions of typing fish you may have, you are not guaranteed even a single New York Times Best seller.
The reason why they embrace this illogical argument – the citing of the law of large numbers to conclude the existence, not only of hospital planets, but of intelligent life? Because the notion that other sentient life forms exist, outside of the earth, and therefore, outside the Biblical narrative, they believe, would thereby neuter Abrahamic religious belief, a belief system which they view as being harmful to mankind’s progress – witness the title of such books as The God Delusion, and How Religion Poisons Everything. There is the bias. There is palpable ideological hostility toward western religion specifically. This way, by falsely applying the law of large numbers they think that the cosmos can serve a very important role of subjugating religious influence, especially western religious influence.
Guys like Dawkins may not even believe in the existence of alien life forms, personally. It matters not to them and shouldn’t matter to us, either. But the argument that such life forms exist outside the earth, for them, is a tool to advance the progressive narrative.
keep the change on November 5, 2009 at 7:45 PM
Fascinating how atheists like Dawkins believe, without a shred of evidence, in E.T., but trash people of faith.
corona on November 5, 2009 at 7:47 PM
Hear, hear! Very nicely put.
As an actual experiment (or publicity stunt), someone once tried putting a typewriter in a monkey cage just to see what would happen. At the end of a month, no word longer than one letter (a, I) had been typed. And the typewriter was liberally covered in monkey feces.
sauropod on November 5, 2009 at 8:09 PM
I think that they’ll all look like us. According to the Bible we were made in the image of God. Why would it be any different anywhere else?
If you don’t believe in God, then it doesn’t really matter if there are any aliens or not. What difference does it make? In the end we all die and there’s nothing left. In that case, human intelligence is an evolutionary dead end without meaning, so who cares?
flataffect on November 5, 2009 at 8:19 PM
I think that ETs are more likely to look like Mexicans and speak Spanish. That way, they’re blend in very well.
BottomLine5 on November 5, 2009 at 8:41 PM
I always took that to mean in the spiritual image of God. I don’t think God actually looks like us because I don’t think he has actual form in any sense we can conceive. So they could be in God’s image and looks utterly, radically different than us.
Also the existence of Aliens would have nothing to do with the Bible. The intended audience of the Bible was us and would therefore be written within our frame of reference. Plus it was written to aid our spiritual development and how would mentioning aliens work toward that goal?
Kronos on November 5, 2009 at 8:43 PM
Have they figured out who or what caused the big bang…that theory they present as fact about the creation of the universe? And why?
StevefromMKE on November 5, 2009 at 9:46 PM
I love the idea of allegedly rational and well educated men arguing over what aliens are most likely to look like.
abobo on November 5, 2009 at 10:22 PM
Dawkins getting caught up with “V” now?
- The Cat
MirCat on November 5, 2009 at 10:55 PM
I love coloring books.
apacalyps on November 5, 2009 at 11:39 PM
Are you kidding me! There isn’t much intelligent life here on this planet.
apacalyps on November 5, 2009 at 11:45 PM
Yes they are exactly like us. In fact they have the same origin as we do… Although there are some pretty crazy new species in Revelations… so every species in the universe certainly doesn’t live on the earth… so they probably have racial characteristics that would differ from earth’s races… but I’m sure they too are made in the image of God their Eternal Father, as are we.
petunia on November 6, 2009 at 12:37 AM
You can chose to believe the early Roman Fathers when the remade God into something different than the Scriptures claim or you can read the words and understand them as they were meant. We are the children of God as he clearly states over and over again.
petunia on November 6, 2009 at 12:39 AM
ROTFL
beachgirlusa on November 6, 2009 at 1:38 AM
This article is just a V (ABC, Tuesdays this fall) promo.
.
I have never, that I remember, ever read any scientific analysis of time as a determinant of alien life forms. How old is our known universe? 13 billion years? How long has man existed on our planet, including developmental evolutionary forms, 4 million years?
.
Age of known universe : 13 billion years
Age of our earth : 4 billion years
Period of human development : 4 million years
Age of earth as % of age of known universe : 30.77%
Time of human development as % of age of earth : 0.1%
Human development extrapolated to age of known universe : 13 million years
.
If the outer edges of the known universe are three times as old as the current age of earth, why have no intelligent life forms looked back at the “center” and “found” us, so far as we know?
Statistically, isn’t it probable that intelligence would have developed somewhere else in the known universe and made an effort to seek out alien life to itself, explore its domain to find the range of existence in “the neighborhood?”
.
Question: are we uniquely naturally selected to be explorers and wanderers as humans while aliens just don’t care about what else might exist beyond their awareness?
ExpressoBold on November 6, 2009 at 10:04 AM