Earth-Like Planet Orbits Nearby Star

The recent discovery of an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri confirms the speculation, in my free online novel 2052 - The Hawking Plan, that the three-star Alpha Centauri system is a likely target for preserving human life and civilization in the event a natural or man-made disaster wipes out life on Earth.

From CNN (24 August 2016):

... researchers have confirmed the existence of a rocky planet named Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun, according to a new study. It is the closest exoplanet to us in the universe.

Given the fact that Proxima b is within the habitable zone of its star, meaning liquid water could exist on the surface, it may also be the closest possible home for life outside of our solar system, the researchers said.

Because of its location, the researchers hope it provides an opportunity for possible "robotic exploration in the coming centuries."

"The good news is that it is so close," study author Ansgar Reiners said. "It is not only nice for having it in our neighborhood, but it's a dream come true for astronomers if we think about follow-up observation.

My novel, 2052 - The Hawking Plan, as the title indicates, is set in the year 2052. I wrote it primarily as a vehicle to convey my predictions of "life, liberty, and technology in future decades." It was published in 2008. Here are the applicable excerpts:

“Stephen Hawking,” said Stephanie Goldenrod in a reverent tone, "The famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist who happens to be my great-grandfather, said, some fifty years ago, the human race will not survive on Earth for a thousand years. He wanted us to spread out, very fast, to Earth-like planets beyond our Solar System! He embraced human space travel!” As she said “Human space travel,” a video of Stephen Hawking floating in zero gravity appeared on the display wall.

She gazed at the video and smiled broadly. “Despite his physical limitations, my great-grandfather accepted an opportunity, in 2007, to fly in a special airplane that went to high altitudes and plunged to Earth to allow him to experience zero gravity in person! Unfortunately, by the time he passed away, human space travel had all but ceased, in favor of space probes ‘manned’ by intelligent robotic agents.

“He warned a natural disaster or human-made accident could wipe life out on a single planet."

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years.

Unless we spread into space.

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.

But I'm an optimist.

We will reach out to the stars.

[Stephen Hawking, Physicist and Cosmologist, 2001]

Animated charts appeared on the display wall behind her. “My Hawking Plan calls for nothing less than a massive effort to spread human civilization and genes far and wide throughout space. We’re talking about thousands of spaceships launched over a period of hundreds of years, starting by 2062, no more than ten to twenty years from today.”

As she spoke, a high-resolution satellite image of our TABB building in Orlando appeared on the display wall. Slowly the view zoomed out and all of the greater Orlando area filled the display screen. The view expanded to Florida and eastern North America, and then the entire Earth. A label appeared:

Mother Earth – Our Big Blue-Green Marble.

The image zoomed out further and faster to contain Venus and Mars, and then our Sun and Solar System. A label appeared:

Our Solar System – Our Planet Neighborhood.

The zoom-out ceased when our galaxy filled the screen. A label appeared: Our Galaxy – The Milky Way. The view shifted a few degrees and slowly started to zoom in on what, at first, seemed to be a single star. A label appeared:

Alpha Centauri – Our Nearest Neighbor Solar System. (Only Four and a Third Light Years Away).

As it zoomed in further Alpha Centauri morphed into two stars, one quite bright and the other a duller, reddish neighbor. Further zooming split the bright star in two, one whitish-yellow, and the other yellowish orange. Those two large stars, together with the tiny reddish one, made for a dramatic triple star-system.

The zoom-in slowed a bit and more detailed labels appeared. According to the text, the largest star was:

Centauri A – A Bit Larger and Brighter than Earth’s Sun.

It was in a binary partnership with:

Centauri B – A Bit Smaller and Duller than Earth’s Sun.

The smallest star was:

Proxima Centauri – A Red Dwarf.

The view panned between the three stars and then slowly zoomed in on Centauri A, showing a number of planets.

The zoom descended towards the fourth planet out from Centauri A – a “big blue-brown marble.” A label proclaimed:

Planet Hawking – Fourth Planet Out from Centauri A. (First Target for Extra-Solar Colonization).

A peninsula, similar to Florida, jutted out into the ocean. The zooming concluded with a satellite-like view of an area near the coastline. Inland were the foothills and a chain of lakes. A river flowed from the largest lake towards the ocean. The land was bare – no grass or trees – mostly brown, with some large areas of gray and black. The view morphed into a “live” video image.

As it panned towards the ground, a large hangar-like structure came into view. It was parked on a promontory between the river bank and the ocean beach. The hangar was surrounded by a park-like area of grass, bushes, and trees. Further zoom-in revealed the words:

TABB, Hawking 0001 (First Extra Solar System Human Colony, circa 2100).

The Hawking Plan logo, a stylized DNA molecule, was visible on the side of the hangar. Behind it could be seen a bright-yellow Sun, labeled: Centauri A. In the distance, lower in the sky and to the left, a second and duller-yellow-orange Sun, quite a bit smaller, was labeled: Centauri B. Far to the right and low in the sky a sharp-eyed observer could see a dull red Sun labeled: Proxima Centauri.

“The first step,” Stephanie continued, “Will be to use our authorized funding for internal studies augmented by ongoing TABB-funded university research. We need to define the parameters of human travel over awesome distances and extended times to reach well outside our Solar System. We must use our imaginations to their utmost limits to figure the best alternatives for spreading human genetics and civilization. Do we send living people, perhaps in suspended animation? Or, will it be frozen embryos to be thawed, gestated in artificial wombs, and raised and properly socialized by robot nannies? What about plants and animals? Not since Noah’s Ark has there been a task as far-reaching as our Hawking Plan.”

The novel outlines and considers three general concepts for exporting human life and civilization to an Earth-like planet. They are:

Noah’s Ark – live humans and a selection of other animals and plants in suspended animation.

Embryonic – frozen human embryos and a selection of other animals and plants. The embryos to be thawed and brought to term in artificial wombs and socialized by “nanny robots”.

Panspermia* – frozen or salted prokaryotic (bacteria) and eukaryotic (plants, animals) cells to be thawed and evolved to advanced complexity over several thousand years in robot run genetic engineering laboratories, using modern plant, animal, and human genome data as a starting point.

In the novel, the first two options are discarded due to ethical overtones of sending humans on one-way journeys to space knowing that many would likely perish.

The third, Panspermia (or, more properly, Directed Panspermia**), has no such ethical overtones. In addition, the target planet, while "Earth-like", would most likely be somewhat different from Earth. If it was larger or smaller than Earth, the attraction of gravity would be greater or lesser. The solar radiation spectrum at the surface of the planet would vary, depending upon the size and age of their Sun and other factors. There could be more ultraviolet, or less, and more infrared, or less. The atmosphere would likely differ somewhat in percentages of nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases, etc. Thus, the "Panspermia" plan starts with basic cells and intends to tailor the plant, animal, and human genomes during a 6,000 to 10,000 year period of "rapid assisted evolution", to better match actual conditions.

On the other hand, in the novel, some fiscally conservative opponents of the Hawking Plan note that the idea of planting bacteria, plant, and animal cells and using rapid assisted evolution to adapt them to a new home planet, contains echoes of the supposedly discredited theory of "Intelligent Design" to account for the origin of  life on Earth. Uh oh! Read all about it here: 2052 - The Hawking Plan

Ira Glickstein

[From Wikipedia]

*Panspermia (from Greek πᾶν (pan), meaning "all", and σπέρμα (sperma), meaning "seed") is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, comets,^[1] planetoids,^[2] and, also, by spacecraft in the form of unintended contamination by microorganisms.^[3][4]

Panspermia is a hypothesis proposing that microscopic life forms that can survive the effects of space, such as extremophiles, become trapped in debris that is ejected into space after collisions between planets and small Solar System bodies that harbor life. Some organisms may travel dormant for an extended amount of time before colliding randomly with other planets or intermingling with protoplanetary disks. If met with ideal conditions on a new planet's surfaces, the organisms become active and the process of evolution begins. Panspermia is not meant to address how life began, just the method that may cause its distribution in the Universe.^[5][6][7]

The first known mention of the term was in the writings of the 5th century BC Greek philosopher Anaxagoras.^[12] Panspermia began to assume a more scientific form through the proposals of Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1834),^[13] Hermann E. Richter (1865),^[14] Kelvin (1871),^[15] Hermann von Helmholtz (1879)^[16][17] and finally reaching the level of a detailed hypothesis through the efforts of the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (1903).^[18]

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) and Chandra Wickramasinghe (born 1939) were influential proponents of panspermia.^[19][20] In 1974 they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic (containing carbon), which Wickramasinghe later proved to be correct.^[21][22][23] Hoyle and Wickramasinghe further contended that life forms continue to enter the Earth's atmosphere, and may be responsible for epidemic outbreaks, new diseases, and the genetic novelty necessary for macroevolution.^[24]

In an Origins Symposium presentation on April 7, 2009, physicist Stephen Hawking stated his opinion about what humans may find when venturing into space, such as the possibility of alien life through the theory of panspermia: "Life could spread from planet to planet or from stellar system to stellar system, carried on meteors."^[25]

** Directed panspermia concerns the deliberate transport of microorganisms in space to be used as introduced species on lifeless planets. Directed panspermia may have been sent to Earth to start life here, or may be sent from Earth to seed exoplanets with life.
Historically, Shklovskii and Sagan (1966) and Crick and Orgel (1973) hypothesized that life on Earth may have been seeded deliberately by other civilizations. Conversely, Mautner and Matloff (1979) and Mautner (1995, 1997) proposed that we ourselves should seed new planetary systems, protoplanetary discs or star-forming clouds with microorganisms, to secure and expand our organic gene/protein life-form. To avoid interference with local life, the targets may be young planetary systems where local life is unlikely. Directed panspermia can be motivated by biotic ethics that value the basic patterns of organic gene/protein life with its unique complexity and unity, and its drive for self-propagation.
Belonging to life then implies panbiotic ethics with a purpose to propagate and expand life in space. Directed panspermia for this purpose is becoming possible due to developments in solar sails, precise astrometry, the discovery of extrasolar planets, extremophiles and microbial genetic engineering. Cosmological projections suggests that life in space can then have an immense future.^[1][2]

THE GOD DELUSION

Unlike Christopher Hitchens's "god is not Great", written from an historical/literary point of view "THE GOD DELUSION", by a respected biologist, contains actual science-based arguments.

Evolution of Memes

Richard Dawkins previously wrote "The Selfish Gene" (1976) where he introduced the word "meme" (from "mimeme" derived from the Greek "mimeisthai" which means "to imitate"). The word "mneme" was used by others in a similar way as early as 1927 (from the Greek mimneskesthai" which means "to remember").

A meme is the cultural equivalent of a gene. Dawkins wrote: "DNA is a self-replicating piece of hardware. Each piece has a particular structure, which is different from rival pieces of DNA. If memes in brains are analogous to genes they must be self-replicating brain structures, actual patterns of neuronal wiring-up that reconstitute themselves in one brain after another."

The etymology of the word "meme" itself is an excellent example of the evolution of the cultural equivalent of genes. “Meme” is one letter shorter than “mneme” and far easier to pronounce. A challenge arose in 1980 when E.O. Wilson introduced a new word, "culturgen" for the same concept. That word has all but died out as “meme” survived and replicated in the natural human selection process. Clearly, the word “meme” is the “fittest” (best fits into the human cultural environment and brain structure).

A Personal God IS a Delusion – But is it a Useful Myth?

Although I agree with Dawkins that the concept of a personal God, external to the Universe, is, strictly speaking, a delusion, I am surprised at the vehemence with which he attacks it. He minimizes the significance of the fact that the various religions which survived and reproduced over millennia and encompassing the belief systems of billions of people are the “fittest” beliefs (best fits into the human cultural environment and brain structure, regardless of whether or not they are literally true). As such, they must have provided some real benefit to believers and the societies that promoted and still cling to religious beliefs.

About half-way through the book, he finally acknowledges, however grudgingly, the facts. He writes [pg 163 …166]:

[W]e should ask what pressure or pressures exerted by natural selection originally favoured the impulse toward religion. … Religion is so wasteful, so extravagant; and Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste. …no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth-consuming,hostility provoking rituals, the anti-factual, counter-productive fantasies of religion.

David Wilson and Group Selection

Dawkins searches, in vain, for rational explanations for the survival of the God delusion. He mentions David Wilson [pg 170] a colleague of Howard’s and one of my favorite professors at Binghamton University who Dawkins rightly calls “the American group-selection apostle”.

Group selection makes the claim that groups, including religious associations, which promote cooperative, altruistic behaviors, survive at the expense of less religious groups. While I accept multi-level selection (gene level and meme level), I am not sure that true, pure altruism exists and have gone round and round discussing this with Wilson.

David Wilson has an annual “Darwin’s birthday” event at his home that my wife and I have attended. He gave me a plastic knock-off that is like a “Jesus fish” but this one has feet and the word “Darwin” on it. He also gave me a copy of his excellent book, Unto Others .

I agree with Dawkins that what appears to be altruism is actually kin selection (favoring those with common genes) or reciprocal altruism (helping others of the same or different species in return for a benefit). In complex human society it is often difficult to know who is kin or who may provide a reciprocal benefit, so we generalize the concept and indoctrinate our children to help all older people, cooperate with all neighbors, and so on. That is an “accidental” side-effect of kin- and reciprocal altruism, but it never-the-less benefits those societies who imprint generalized cooperative behaviors, so long as altruism is not taken too far.

Dawkins ultimately rejects group selection and is left with the only remaining alternative, that religion is an unintended byproduct of something else. What is this “something else”? Well, he concludes [pg 174-176] it is “obey the tribal elders … For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival, child brains need to trust parents, and elders whom parents tell them to trust.”

Religion as a “Mind Virus”

Religion, Dawkins asserts, is a mind virus that feeds on the need for a child to obey elders without question, just as computer viruses are based on the need for a computer to follow instructions. The implication is that all societies of the past have had the mentality of children. With the advent of the age of reason we have the opportunity to grow up and reject religion once and for all. I find that “logic” kind of haughty and simple-minded.

Perhaps, with the rise of science and modern technology and so on, literal belief in a personal God is no longer as adaptive as it was in the past. In coming centuries, we humans may modify our beliefs to something like what Dawkins calls the “Einsteinian religion”, or the “Gaia” of Lovelace, or some other science-based concept of that unifying thing we all feel that is larger than all of us.

Scientists who Invoke "God" - Is such Belief Genuine Religious Feeling?
Dawkins knocks Stephen Hawking [pg 13] for ending his A Brief History of Time with a reference to God. Hawking wrote:

However, if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God.” [Emphasis added]

Dawkins, quoting only the phrase I have highlighted, criticizes Hawking for being "dramatic (or was it mischievous?)".

Dawkins includes Einstein’s famous references to religion and God [pg 15]:

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists ….

God is subtle, but not malicious … God does not play dice …
Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

What I see in Nature [notice uppercase “N”] is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

Is Scientific Pantheism “Intellectual High Treason”?
Dawkins, in a statement worthy of Anne Coulter, dismisses [pg 19] the metaphorical use of the word “God” by scientists as “intellectual high treason” because it deliberately confuses the distinction between the personal God of “supernatural religion” with the Pantheistic God of “Einsteinian religion”.

It is amazing to me that the originator of the idea that memes evolve in a way similar to genes can be so blind to what is happening! Memes evolve by building upon previous memes. The pagan “rebirth of the Sun” winter solstice meme evolved into Christmas when early Christian authorities co-opted that time period for the birth of Jesus, and, later, when Jewish authorities glommed onto that same time period and elevated Chanukah to a higher significance than it originally claimed. Similarly, IMHO, the traditional supernatural God meme is evolving into a more naturalistic Pantheistic meme. Perhaps the Gaia idea that the Earth biosphere has developed some sort of Global Consciousness will ease the transition. Perhaps it is even true!

Dawkins Quotes Carl Sagan:

A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe [note upper case “U”] as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Perhaps, when Sagan talks of a new religion, he is describing the naturalistic yet genuine religious beliefs of Hawking and Einstein and Spinoza. It seems to me it is better to believe in something than in nothing. Sagan also wrote:

In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decided this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed. [Emphasis added]

Scientists are in the same boat with religious believers when they conclude the Universe (like the God of literal believers) always existed! Where did all that energy and matter come from? Where did all the wonderful Laws of Nature that scientists struggle to discover come from? Like the religious believers who say that God always existed, and He created the Universe, scientific believers, in Sagan’s words, “save a step” and assume the Universe always existed! The origin of the Universe is, like the origin of God, an unanswerable question.

Bashing the God of the Old Testament

According to Dawkins [pg 31], the OT God is “… jealous and proud of it; a petty , unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Mischaracterizing Intelligent Design

Dawkins mentions intelligent design (which he calls “creationism in a cheap tuxedo”) on nine pages of this book, but he does not appear to understand it. Intelligent design proponents claim the origin of life on Earth by purely random processes is highly improbable and therefore conclude the initial biological cells were planted here on Earth by some extraterrestrial designer. After that, some of them accept the scientific explanation that something like evolution and natural selection took over and resulted in the wide variety of species on Earth. That theory, per se, is certainly possible. Life on Earth may have been planted by some visiting alien life form. Of course, this raises the question of the origin of the alien life forms.

I, like Dawkins, believe life originated on Earth through un-directed mixing of atoms and molecules. Though highly improbable from a statistical point of view, it seems clear to me that life originated by random chance either here on Earth (or on some other planet in the Universe and was later seeded here).

Dawkins Agrees “Chance is not a solution”

On the positive side, Dawkins [pg 119] realizes that, given those first primitive biological cells, subsequent evolution was anything but a random process.

... the greater the statistical improbability, the less plausible is chance as a solution: that is what improbable means. But the candidate solutions to the riddle of improbability are not, as is falsely implied, design and chance. They are design and natural selection. Chance is not a solution, given the high levels of improbability we see in living organisms, and no sane biologist ever suggested that it was.” [Emphasis added]

Dawkins Belief there is “A generalized process for optimizing”

He goes on his apparently subconscious defense of pantheism [pg 139]:

It is clear that here on Earth we are dealing with a generalized process for optimizing biological species, a process that works all over the planet, on all continents and islands, and at all times. … if we wait another ten million years, a whole new set of species will be as well adapted to their ways of life as today’s species are to theirs. This is a recurrent, predictable, multiple phenomenon, not a piece of statistical luck recognized with hindsight. [Emphasis added

Dawkin’s “generalized process for optimizing” is Omnipresent (“all continents and islands … all times”), Omnipotent (“whole new set of species”) and Omniscient (“as well adapted to their ways of life as today’s species”). Change it to “Generalized Optimizing Device” and we have our familiar Pantheistic “GOD”. QED :^)

Opposition to Homosexuality by the “American Taliban”

In another passage worthy of Ann Coulter, Dawkins [pg 289] notes the Afghan Taliban punishment for homosexuality was execution by being buried alive and compares that to a statement by what he calls the “American Taliban” Rev. Jerry Falwell who said “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” One does not have to agree with Falwell to recognize Dawkins’s analogy as an awful exaggeration.

Ira Glickstein

Teaching Intelligent Design

What is the basis of "Scientific Intelligent Design"?



Intelligent Design (ID) is a teleological (purpose-driven) explanation of the origin and development of biological life on Earth. In its more recent "scientific" form, ID makes use of science-based arguments, mainly "irreducible complexity", to argue that some designer must have created the first biological cells because they could not have originated on their own.

Some ID proponents are prepared to believe that, after the origin of those first cells, something like neo-Darwinian evolution and natural selection took over and resulted in the wide diversity of life forms on Earth. However, they believe the evolutionary process is not without purpose. The intelligent designer had some purpose in mind when the initial biological cells were designed. Even if the various species were not designed per se, the designer of the original biological cells knew the laws of nature and how those cells would inevitably evolve into current-day species. Mainstream science is critiqued for believing advanced life forms evolved by undirected, blind chance and for no purpose at all. If there is no purpose what is the reason for life, for ethics? Why should we continue to live? See:http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/NCBQ3_3HarrisCalvert.pdf and http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/

What is the basis of Darwinian Evolution?



The basis of Darwinian evolution is that more complex life forms originate when a random mutation or crossover of genes occurs and the resultant life form happens to be both more complex and have a higher survival/reproduction rate than the less complex form. Darwinian evolution and natural selection are central to mainstream science and all standard science courses

What is the basis of "Irreducible Complexity"?



"Irreducible complexity" argues there is no viable life form below that of the most basic biological cell. Therefore, there is no way that that first biological cell could have evolved from something simpler. Thus, there must be some "intelligent cause" rather than the "undirected process" of evolution, at least for the origin of the most basic biological cells. ID proponents demand scientific study of what they call "origins science". The want ID to be included in science classes.

Why not teach both Darwinian and ID explanations in science classes?



ID rejects any purposeless explanation, at least for the initial origin of the most basic biological cells. ID concludes there must have been some "intelligent designer" and the clear implication is an intelligent supernatural being (e.g., "God"). Mainstream scientists reject ID as a religious belief that has no place in a science class.

I accept mainstream science ...

I totally accept the mainstream scientific explantion of both the origin and evolution of life on Earth. Although no scientific experiment has completely duplicated the process of origin of life, I accept the current explation that traces origins from random mixing and chemical reactions in self-reproducing autocatylitic cycles that happened to be confined in porous rock or clay or lipid (fat) molecules. Autocatylitic cycles have been demonstrated in the laboratory.

As a result of the autocatylitic cycle process, some primitive type of self-reproducing RNA originated and that lead to the origin of RNA's first cousin, self-reproducing DNA. Given RNA and DNA, even in their primitive forms, it is possible for a life form that is not yet a biological cell to survive and reproduce in porous rock or clay or lipid molecules. RNA codes for the production of proteins and this must have lead to the first biological cells that produced their own membranes and were thus freed of dependence upon porous materials. At that point, standard Darwinian evolution and natural selection took over.

but ... I favor mention of ID in science classes

Although you might expect me to oppose teaching ID in science class, I think it deserves some mention. Why ???

1) According to Gallup polls, over 40% of our fellow Americans believe God created human beings pretty much in their current form as recently as 10,000 years ago. An additional nearly 40% believe God guided evolution over a longer period. That means four out of five Americans accept God as Creator, Designer, and/or Guider. Fewer than one in seven accept the mainstream scientific explantion that God had no part in the process. Hard as this is to believe, it is a fact to be contended with. "Head in the sand" won't work!

2) What better place than a science class to demonstrate use of the scientific method to evaluate ID vs Darwin? Give the best possible arguments for ID, using examples directly from their textbooks. Do the same for Darwin and then ask the hard questions. For example:

• If ID is true, the first biological cells on Earth were designed and brought here by alien space travelers or by God.

1. If the former, how did the alien space travelers originate? Perhaps they evolved through a Darwinian process on some other planet? If so, Darwin got the process right but the planet wrong! Perhaps meteors harboring live biological cells were flying through space and seeding life on various planets including Earth? How did life originate on the meteors? If not by some Darwinian process, life always existed on those meteors! Does that make any sense?


2. If the latter, how did God come into existence? Did God design and create Himself or was it a Super-God who created Him, and so on with Super-Duper-Gods all the way up? You say God always existed? Does that make any sense?

3) Even though flogiston was a discredited idea, I learned about it in science class! It was a great lesson in the scientific method! Early scientists weighed a piece of wood, burned it, and then weighed the ashes. Sure enough, the ashes weighed less than the original wood, which proved that the fire and heat was due to the flogiston leaving the wood. QED. Then, some smarter scientist repeated the experiment in a closed chamber. The results were just the opposite. Oxygen from the air combined with the carbon from the wood producing energy and carbon dioxide, which is why the ashes plus the smoke weighed more than the original wood.
4) Same story about the discredited idea the Sun and stars rotated about the Earth or that maggots were generated spontaneously on dead meat or that alchemists could change lead into gold and all those other early science myths. The best way to demonstrate the scientific method is to ... uh ... demonstrate the scientfic method!
5) Given the Gallup poll results, it is highly likely a student will be exposed to "scientific" ID by his or her family, friends, neighbors, religious leaders, and even some politicos running for president of the USA. Shouldn't they understand what is behind the ID concept and know the pros and cons? We push sex education in the schools to counteract information students are bound to pick up on the streets. Isn't understanding Darwinism as important?
6) Any responsible social sciences curriculum should include information about alternatives to democracy, including discredited forms of government such as monarchies, theocracies, fascism, communism, and so on. In each case, a fair presentation should be made of the arguments for that form of government, historical examples of widespread prevalence of that form, and examples of problems.
7) Darwinism has nothing to fear from ID! The arguments for a naturalistic chemical origin of life (autocatalytic cycles, RNA, DNA, ...) and neo-Darwinian evolution and natural selection are very strong. Scientists have been studying the laws of nature and properties of energy and matter for quite some time and are always discovering new things about them. We believe the laws of nature are Universal, the same in every corner of the Universe. We believe those laws and material properties guarantee that, over billions of years and with billions of stars and planets, life was bound to come into existence without any external intelligent designer. So, it is quite natural and totally expected that life came into existence, and here we are on Earth to prove it. Where did those complex laws of nature and matter/energy come from? How did they originate? Well, they always existed! (OOPS)

Ira Glickstein