Life on Mars (General)

by dhw, Sunday, August 03, 2008, 14:29 (5955 days ago)

Carl asks: "How would the discovery of fossils of primitive life on Mars affect this discussion?" - I'd really like to know your own views, but here for what they're worth are mine. Firstly, as I see it, this discussion centres on two questions which I don't want to separate: 1) Are we the product of accident or design? 2) If it's design, what is the nature of the designer? - If fossils were discovered on Mars, pro-designers can argue that there is no reason why the designer should have confined its attention to one planet. Alternatively, as David says, once the designer had set up the mechanism, it could work independently anywhere, given the right conditions. Atheists will continue to argue that given the right conditions, non-living matter will spontaneously assemble itself into living organisms, so you don't need a designer in the first place. Verdict: no change. - But for me, the argument in favour of design becomes of almost secondary importance in relation to the nature of the designer (which of course doesn't apply if one believes that life is the product of chance). To put it baldly, if the designer isn't interested in me, why should I bother about the designer? If there was once life on Mars, it raises precisely the same issue you raised in relation to the dinosaurs: humans are just one of many projects. It suggests that like other forms of life, we'll be around for a while, and then we'll become extinct. - I find this perfectly conceivable, even on a personal level. Why should I survive my physical body? If I really am to survive (see later), so too should dinosaurs, my neighbours' dead dog, the mosquito I just killed in my bedroom. The spark of life is in all creatures, and animals other than ourselves (we tend to forget that we're animals) have characters just as individual as ours. Religion is based on anthropocentrism, and for me, the discovery of fossils on Mars would be another blow to that concept or, as David puts it, "the religious conceit that God made the Earth only for his human subjects". If we're just part of a gigantic game, and each of us leaves the field for ever at the final whistle, it simply makes no difference to me whether we were designed or not. - But...there's always a but...David in his response to George under Sermon Part 2, on Friday 01 August at 19.45 has once again drawn our attention to Near Death and Out of Body experiences, to the work of Pim van Lommel in this field, and to his own book Science versus Religion, which comprehensively covers both the scientific and non-scientific evidence for design, and which I personally found immensely instructive even if I can't go along with all the religious implications. Unlike George, I can't dismiss the evidence for these experiences, any more than I can dismiss every single account of other psychic phenomena, not to mention the vast range of emotional and aesthetic experiences that seem to transcend our physical context. Even if fossils of primitive life were indeed found on Mars, there would still be that powerful niggle of doubt: maybe humans are unique; maybe the designer just kept on fiddling around, here there and everywhere, until it managed to come up with us ... the closest it could get to itself. And so maybe we do command its special interest. - To sum up my response to your question, Carl: if fossils were discovered on Mars, I don't think it would change anything at all in the fixed beliefs of theists or atheists, and I would continue to vacillate in my agnosticism. How about you?