(Archived): http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/science/Life%20on%20Mars/
So now, I suppose the implicit argument from NASA goes,”Let’s spend next to a trillion $’s of tax-payer money that we don’t have (maybe more) trying to find out if there MIGHT be any alien microbes on the red planet.”
Sounds reasonable. I mean after all, the only evidence they have of this is the gaseous by-product (something they have known was already there for quite some time now) of a supposed alien microbe, not any actual solid proof of its existence.
NASA has to try and keep us all intrigued somehow; so why not through marketing propaganda of a supposed alien microbe find? Then we can keep funding their multi-billion dollar adventures so we can get higher quality HD pictures back of red dust and rock. Hmmm, fascinating. Maybe next time the pictures will be in HHD and we’ll have a live streaming webcam showing us the latest rock movements on the ole’ Red Planet 🙂 I’m all for some great science and pushing into new frontiers of knowledge, but spending that much money on a little kids Star Trek dream, especially during this economy, does not seem very reasonable, or wise for that matter … that is if that’s what they are trying to implicitly say of course.
Rory Baker
Good point, I think this has “please don’t cut our budget” written all over it.
Then again, the government will print up and distribute as much fiat currency as it likes. Since that is the case, (the case being that our income is taxed and then re-stolen through inflation), I would much rather see it go towards putting someone on the moon or making “Silent but Deadly: How Alien Gases May Have Caused a Martian Holocaust” [coming soon on Blu-Ray!] than:
– Blowing up brown people in the Middle East
– Funding the Israelis zealous desire to do the same, or really funding any other nation at all
– TSA checkpoints at every airport (to “protect” us from the dignity of wearing shoes or drinking water)
– Government-approved warrantless wiretapping of American citizens
– “Redistributing” the wealth to banks and investment firms…
– …to the people that own the banks…
– …or so Big Banks can buy Little Banks…
– …or to prop up the Alt-A and Option ARM mortgage markets that nobody wants to admit will crash a little bit worse than the subprime market.
– Yearly pay raises for congressmen who represent lobbyists with money and not what “The People” need
I guess I could list some more, but that’s what just comes to mind recently.
I’m mad about all that, but it’s not a consuming anger like I would expect. I’m comforted by the knowledge that God knows what’s going on (and actually ordained it all to happen) and that by allowing these evils (yes, I am outright accusing the current administration, and particularly the Federal Reserve, of being worthy of moral condemnation) he will be glorified. I do not expect or desire for the United States to continue as we know it for much longer, and word of economic collapse is no longer reserved for the tinfoil-hat wearing crowd. I only hope that from the ashes, whatever nation I find myself in, is a nation that loves liberty and will not interfere with the spread of the Gospel.
David
“I only hope that from the ashes, whatever nation I find myself in, is a nation that loves liberty and will not interfere with the spread of the Gospel.”
Ditto to that.
David
And even then, if the Gospel is interfered with, God will still build His church. He works through and against the means of Satan even. Praise Him for that …
Robin Westerfield
NASA has two main agendas in pushing for a search for water – and now microbes? Based on a naturally occurring gas? The first is the obvious you stated, and that is continued funding to justify keeping multi-billion dollar programs that are continuing to prove there is no life on Mars. The sad thing is that no matter how much dry dust and rocks they turn up on that dead planet, they never admit that the probability is ever increasing there is nothing there worth pursuing.
The second agenda is finding life that ‘evolved’ separately from Earth. This would justify the atheistic assumption that somehow, against completely impossible odds, complex (non-replicating) proteins and incomplete strings of partial DNA ‘assembled’ themselves to the point where they became self-replicating. There aren’t any odds to that because it is an absurd impossibility to begin with. But excluding God, which they must do or else raise many uncomfortable questions like what does He have to do with us, is required in their thinking and is of course a religious belief. They won’t admit that either. Through the ages, unproven ‘scientific’ ideas such as all things revolve around the earth have been held by science as fact until conclusively shown to be untrue. Isn’t this the polar opposite of the scientific method, which says a postulate is held as such until repeated testing proves it to be true? Atheistic science does the very thing they accuse believers of doing: that is to but forth their ‘best guess’ idea as true until proven otherwise. Of course many things can’t be shown to be untrue scientifically, such as life existing on some of the billions of planets in the cosmos, so the ‘truth’ that ‘Life in Out There’ stands.
The fundamental gaping hole in their reasoning is that there cannot be a scientific explanation for the fact that the universe exists at all, but especially in all its infinite complexitiy up to and including mankind. The intricate balance of scientific laws under which the universe operates, and that allow life to exist on earth, is completely ignored since there can be no possible explanation for it other than the obvious.
So the much more likely existence of a personal God (since personality exists) as the most reasonable ‘postulate’ to put forth is ignored, not because it is so improbable (it is not), but because it introduces Someone to whom we just might be personally accountable. That makes us sinful humans very uncomfortable.
David
Yeah, the second agenda for NASA, as you stated, is based on a theoretical presupposition, a faulty one, that is completely incoherent. It takes more faith to believe in evolution and atheism than it does to believe in an infinite, eternal, transcendent God from whom and through whom and to whom are all things.
“So the much more likely existence of a personal God (since personality exists) as the most reasonable ‘postulate’ to put forth is ignored, not because it is so improbable (it is not), but because it introduces Someone to whom we just might be personally accountable. That makes us sinful humans very uncomfortable.”
Good call.