Aliens of the Deep Preaches Astrobiology and Chemical Evolution
Titanic director James Cameron has released a large-format, 3D film of undersea life around hydrothermal vents, entitled Aliens of the Deep and released by Walt Disney pictures. National Geographic News interviewed Cameron. When asked why he speculated in the movie that life could have originated around deep-sea vents, he said:
Presumably the hydrothermal activity was there from the beginning of the oceans themselves. You’ve got basically a stable environment, you’ve got chemical energy available, and you’ve got all the building blocks necessary. So it seems inconceivable to me that it would not have been a viable place for life to emerge. But [the origin of life] is a great mystery. It’s the greatest detective story out there. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
His search for “extremophiles” (organisms adapted to living in extreme environments) is used in the movie as a pretext for suggesting life could exist on other planets, no matter how hot, cold, or different:
Just because we’ve never seen cryogenic [very cold temperature] life on this planet doesn’t mean it can’t exist. Look for life on Titan. Look for life in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, in the upper atmosphere of Venus. We shouldn’t rule out any environment.
If life is as tenacious and adaptable as it seems to be here on Earth, there’s no reason why it couldn’t exist in some of these other places.
Thus he blurs the line between origin and adaptation. Despite science having no explanation for the origin of life on earth (see 02/06/2005 entry), Cameron portrays those who doubt chemical evolution as unscientific reactionaries: “Generally our society is turning its back on science and going to a more dogmatic view of the world, because people feel that science has not answered their fundamental questions,” he said.
But can science answer fundamental questions, and is science any less dogmatic when dealing with questions of origins? The failure of naturalistic science to explain the origin of life is causing a decline in atheism worldwide, writes Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI religious affairs editor, in the Washington Times. “Two developments are plaguing atheism these days,” he says. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.”
Translation of Cameron’s sermon: if you love science but doubt chemical evolution, you are a dunderhead. What is his definition of science? Chemical evolution, astrobiology, environmentalism, global warming and stem cell research. With clever association, he claims “science” gave us semiconductors and astrobiology, so we should embrace both. Sorry, we’ll have ours a la carte.
Chemical evolution is a reactionary science in more ways than one. That is what is going backward (see 01/28/2005 entry). Those who love science should toss astrobiology overboard and see if it can survive in the extreme environment of scientific scrutiny. Just show us some amazing marine organisms, Jimmy, with all their designed complexity that defies evolution.