So a friend wrote to register a certain bewilderment at the way people can turn a cut-and-dry question like whether there's life on other planets into a sort of moral judgment, the defendant in the dock being God. The way people get to that bizarre place goes, my friend said, something like this: "inevitably an objection is raised that life has to exist somewhere; we can't be all there is; it makes no sense that God would create a limitless universe with earth being the only place with life. I find it interesting that such 'protests' imply that one planet with life is not justifiable. More life is needed in order to approve God's work. Does that make sense?"
The short answer is, of course, no. It makes no sense at all. There isn't an ounce of logical coherence in it.
But here's what I wrote back, at slightly greater length. It led me into other things, perhaps you will not be surprised to hear....
(Additional thoughts that I'm inserting now will be in brackets. A line or two will be rearranged to make for more logical flow.)
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"No, of course not. In fact, categorical assertion on things we categorically don't know are pretty unintelligent, to put it mildly.
We don't know whether there's life out there, so assertions that there must be, or can't be, are perfectly hollow and meaningless [let alone advancing specious moral verdicts on the matter!]. There might be [and there might not be.... So?].
I always bring up this question in my hermeneutics class when I discuss argumentation and emotional reactions.
Get a couple of guys in a bar, especially if they've had a few, and one says, 'There's gotta be life on other planets.' And the other says,'What are you talking about? You ever seen life on other planets? They ever contacted us? No. Means they're not there.' The first guy says, 'You calling me a liar?' The second snorts, 'You calling ME a liar?' And next thing they're at each other's throats.
And all because each one is ready to fight to the death in defence of his ignorance.
['Ignorance'...] Because neither one knows.
But both their egos are 100% invested in their opinions being unassailable.
Because it's not about whether there's life out there.
It's about their inner sense of place and correspondence to the real order of things, the actual configuration of reality.
'Cause if my opinion about life on other planets is wrong, then...waitaminnit, what else am I wrong about?
Maybe I'm...ALL wrong, about everything!
Which is why people irrationally get aggressive about the most inane things they don't objectively have either the least stake in or the least claim to authority on.
I compare it to a puzzle in our brains. Our internal schematic of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
The moment any piece of that puzzle is called into question, we go into self-defense mode.
'Cause the whole structure could fall apart.
That human dynamic is exacerbated exponentially by our opinion-drunk popular culture.
The unwritten law in America's marketplace of "ideas" (aka noise) goes 'Everybody has a right to an opinion...therefore you MUST have an opinion, and when you're asked about it you MUST tell it.'
'I don't know' is tantamount to heresy.
[As for me, I don't care,] I am a profound believer in and advocate for 'I don't know.'
I remember when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke out.
There were opinion polls [!!!] on whether Bill and Monica did or didn't in the Oval Office.
Utterly moronic.
As if the opinion polls would decide it.
But that actually is virtually what the Commercial News Media have reduced the American mentality to: if the opinion polls say it happened, it happened.
But [in point of fact] if Bill and Monica didn't, and the opinion polls say they did, the opinion polls are simply wrong.
And if they did, and the opinion polls say they didn't, they're wrong again.
[So they are vapid and meaningless at best; while at worst they spawn the illusion of Reality Created Ex Nihilo by the omnipotent Opinion Poll, and a more pernicious force in human society I can hardly conceive of.]
I'd love to get one of those pollsters calling me with such an idiotic question.
I'd say, 'I don't know, so why on earth would I say I do, one way or another?'
'Yes sir, but what do you THINK?'
'I think...I don't know. No, I KNOW that I don't know. [So WHY do you want me to say I know something I DON'T know?]'
'Yes sir, but you MUST have an opinion on the matter!'
'My opinion, with all due respect, Mr. Pollster, is that you're something between an idiot and a manipulative worm. Will that fit anywhere in your data?'
And, of course, investing the question of life on other planets with moral dimensions only compounds the idiocy.
'It would be just WRONG for us to be the only planet with life on it!'
Well, golly gee, I guess we'll have to commit planetary suicide to right the wrong, then, once we've verified the absence of life in the rest of the universe.
It's all useless blather, none of which is about the ostensible question.
People who talk that way are really consumed with something else.
They are conceptually trying to set themselves up as judge and jury over the order of Reality that offends them by having dared to exist without consulting them on the blueprints first.
'Wrong'...compared with WHAT? With the moral rectitude of a COMPLETELY lifeless universe?
['Wrong'...on whose part? 'Wrong' compared with what? With what you would have done? With what you would have done compared to...what? To the order of the universe you and I are almost entirely ignorant about anyway? So what on earth, really, are you TALKING about? It CAN'T really be the moral rectitude of a lifeless-except-Earth-universe; that is unfathomably beyond your capacity either to posit or morally weigh. So whatever's eating at you is...something else and much closer to home.]
Sometimes we talk about "toothless" laws, laws that can never be enforced so are meaningless in any real-world sense and should never therefore have been passed to begin with.
They don't 'go anywhere.'
So much human arguing and quibbling and contending and protesting is 'toothless' in exactly that way.
I find 'I don't know' to be a magnificent antidote to that.
It's a delightful conversation-killer.
For those moments when a conversation is eminently deserving of the death penalty."
[And I'll add this: I noticed a recent headline where pollster Frank Lutz prognosticated that a Trump victory in 2020 will signal the death of the opinion poll industry, as it will conclusively unmask the industry as an incompetent fraud. Truly I say, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. Industries come and go, as the icebox and corset makers know too well. The demise of the opinion poll's cultural dictatorship would signal a long overdue advance toward...maturity.
And one more little thing, an anecdote I simply must share. Back when I was in college, I remember one day a young lady crowing almost defiantly (why, I hadn't the least idea) in my direction, "I believe in opinions! Everybody should have their own opinions! Without an opinion, you're nothing!"
To which I replied, "Okay, great. My 'opinion' is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Who died a redeeming death on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day."
She did a moment's double-take, then (you couldn't make this up!) snipped dismissively, "Well, you're just opinionated."'
Hmm, apparently some opinions are more equal than others!
As comically un-self-aware as that young lady was, her retort, if you stop to take it apart, encapsulates both the insidious Cult of Opinion and its ominous pretensions to totalitarianism, pretensions coming all too clearly to the fore in today's Cancel Culture.]
