[MD] Dawkins quotes RMP on religion.

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ian]
people are thinking very very hard to "conceive" of any conceivable 
thing we might call life existing.

[Arlo]
yes, many have suggested that the evidence of extraterrestial life is 
there, we just don't see it as such because we have a narrow 
preconceived notion of what it should look like. to paraphrase 
pirsig, "e.t. comes knocking on the door and you say 'go away, i'm 
looking for e.t.', and so e.t. goes away. puzzling." one sci-fi book 
i read once (forget the title at the moment) had the earth "buffered" 
by extraterrestials to prevent the earth from contacting/finding 
other life forms until it matured enough to make such contact 
beneficial. sort of like the prime directive of star trek combined 
with a dampening field to prevent the interception of extraterrestial 
transmissions. so maybe our "aloneness" is because we are bugs in a 
jar. god knows, look around, do YOU think humanity is ready for 
contact with another world?

so my jury is (as always) out on the final verdict as well.

[Ian]
That's not what I'm saying - some 
anthropically-convenient-creationists are maybe. It's not about me, 
my ancestors or even humans .... that is just "happenstance" .... its
about an existing living thing of any kind

[Arlo]
And, as I've said, the only evidence we have of life existing outside 
Earth is contested evidence of microbes on asteroids. Until we find 
some evidence, ANY evidence, it is unavoidably presumptuous to claim 
that the cosmos "is perfectly balanced to support life". What we have 
by evidence is a vast cosmos entirely devoid of life except for on 
one small planet in one small arm of an otherwise unremarkable 
galaxy. And that to me suggests just the opposite, that the cosmos is 
NOT balanced to support life, but that in very, very rare occurrences 
it may happen despite the otherwise indifference of the greater cosmos.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the next big "Copernican 
revolution" will involve the discovery that we are not alone in the 
universe. And maybe this will be something like E.T or maybe 
something like ID4. Maybe we will find out we share consciousness 
with other evolved beings, or maybe we will find out that to these 
other beings we are no better than ants are to us. Either way, next 
big revolution.