They Concluded (Very "Scientifically") That the Sky Was Full of Gods

When it started out, Darwinism was something pretty simple: it was basically an analgesic.  Various people (mainly those with atheistic tendencies) were very irritated by the idea that the biological world seemed to be filled with objects resembling the product of design rather than chance.  Darwinism was like an aspirin that soothed such irritation, by assuring such people that all in biology was merely the result of chance.  There were some very questionable ingredients in that analgesic, such as a not-actually-truthful slogan of "natural selection" which involved a survival-of-the-fittest effect that did involve any real choice or selection, and an excess of far-fetched speculation, unrealistic generalization, and tall-tale talk. But when someone has irritation that needs to be soothed, he often doesn't care too much about what is in the pain reliever he is taking. 

As it slowly took root in the conformist social structure of the universities,  Darwinism started to grow into something much more than just an analgesic.  Within academia Darwinism started to grow into a kind of religion-in-all-but-name, something offering a new creation myth.  

Universities are the perfect soil for the growth of stealth religions.  Universities have impressive old stone buildings just like the impressive old stone buildings of the Catholic Church. And the hierarchical authority structure of universities resembles the hierarchical authority structure of the Catholic Church, with assistant professors and adjunct professors acting like nuns and deacons, full professors being like priests, assistant deans being like bishops and deans being like cardinals.  Best of all, each university has its own flock of docile listeners (its student body) that resembles the attending members of a church. And while churches ususally don't command their membership to attend church every week, universities do actually command their students to spend a certain number of hours per month listening to the lessons of professors. Darwinism did qualify as a religion under the definition of religion given by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who defined a religion as "a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." Darwinism lacked any deity, but some other religions such as Daoism, Confucianism, the original form of Buddhism and Scientology also had no deity. 

By about 1930 Darwinism had become an impressive stealth religion that had infiltrated academia, but it was not a very exciting creed.  Its gospel was basically this: "Mankind and all are other species are just accidents of blind natural forces, and let us note how wonderfully clever scientists were to have figured this out."  There was nothing very exciting about such a message. Darwinism in universities was very closely entangled for decades with an interesting program of eugenics that claimed to offer a "how to make the world better" agenda. However, such an agenda became rather radioactive once it was discovered how horribly the Nazis had used similar ideas. 

But things started to get more interesting when people started to ramp Darwinian ideas up to a galactic level.  The basic idea was: let's imagine blind Darwinian evolution occurring not just on Earth, but on planets all over the galaxy.  The real leader in such a leap of imagination was Hollywood.  There were three great leaps propelling us into a world of fantasy. 

• First there was the seminal 1956 movie Forbidden Planet. It told a fascinating story of interstellar astronauts in the 23rd century who used a faster-than-light starship to reach the distant planet Altair IV, a life-bearing revolving around another star.  The story involved a scientist (Dr. Mobius) who was studying a race that used to inhabit Altair IV, and reached god-like powers before mysteriously becoming extinct.  
• Then there was the 1965-1968 TV series Star Trek, which involved space travelers such as Kirk, McCoy and Spock very conveniently traveling around the galaxy in a starship that could travel at "warp speeds" much faster than the speed of light.  The galaxy depicted was incredibly convenient, for it seemed that almost always when visting a new planet,  Kirk, McCoy and Spock found the planet well-inhabited by life, with conditions so hospitable that these astronauts almost never even needed to wear a spacesuit or even put on a light jacket.  The Star Trek series spawned innumerable movie and TV spin-offs in the decades that followed. Another TV series running in the 1960's  (Lost in Space) depicted astronauts shuttling around from inhabited planet to inhabited planet with similar convenience. 
• Then there was the wildly popular 1977 movie Star Wars, the first in an almost endless series of sequels and prequels. Although set in another galaxy, the movie carried the "convenient interstellar travel" theme to a rather ridiculous extreme, by imagining instantaneous interstellar travel by means of wormhole travel involving "jumping through hyperspace." 

There was thus planted in the public mind an exciting vision rooted much more in fantasy than in fact: a vision of a galaxy conveniently filled with planets inhabited by intelligent beings,  with the laws of nature conveniently favoring very rapid travel between such planets, by means of "space warps" or "space-time wormholes." Very much of this vision was contrary to what scientists had actually learned. 

Artist's depiction of a space-time wormhole

For one thing, scientists had made no discoveries justifying any optimism that life would tend to naturally arise on other planets, and had made no discoveries justifying any optimism that intelligent life would tend to naturally arise on other planets. To the contrary, no experiments realistically simulating early earth conditions had produced life, and no such experiments had produced any of the building blocks of life (functional proteins).  In fact, no  experiments realistically simulating early earth conditions had produced any of the building blocks of the building blocks of life (amino acids, nucleotides and ribose sugars).  Also, nothing had been discovered that would justify optimism that microscopic life would naturally make some leap to become multicellular life, or that multicellular life would become intelligent life. 

As for interstellar travel, the facts told a story totally different from what was depicted in the movies.  Physicists had discovered in the first half of the twentieth century that the speed of light is an absolute speed limit. Since stars are separated by distances such as five light years, this means it should be physically impossible for anyone to ever travel from one solar system to another solar system in less than about five years. 

During the 1960's and 1970's Darwinist scientists offered a rather different version of galactic Darwinism.  This far-less cinematic-friendly version was often realistic about the apparent impossibility of rapid interstellar travel. But it had the same ideas of a galaxy packed with intelligent life. Yes, such scientists told us, the extraterrestrials are out there, in droves, but practically the one way to communicate with them is not by sending spaceships but by using big radio telescope dishes to communicate by radio messages. 

One of the principal spokesmen for this less cinematic-friendly version of galactic Darwinism was the astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan preached that the galaxy was full of extraterrestrial civilizations. He would confidently cite estimates of the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy that varied between 1 million and 100 million, assuring us that that such numbers were the "best estimates" of experts such as himself.  The idea that such numbers were based on anything other than wild guesses all over the place was pure fiction, and throughout Sagan's career there was always the strongest scientific basis for suspecting that the number of other civilizations in the galaxy was zero, particularly if only natural factors were at play on other planets.  

Sagan assured us that the galaxy was teeming with super-advanced civilizations, all of which were far more advanced than humans. At about the 1:09 minute mark in the interview here,  Sagan claimed to understand the nature of humanity's status in the galaxy. He stated, “If you look at time scales, you realize that our civilization is the most backward civilization in the galaxy that can communicate.” Sagan's rationale for such a claim was that since some extraterrestrial civilization could have arisen at any time in the past billion years, it would almost certainly have arisen millions of years ago rather than just thousands of years ago.  So, he thought, the extraterrestrials must be far, far more advanced than us.  

Of course, any civilization millions of years more advanced than ours would presumably have technological powers that would make them god-like. So this notion of a galaxy filled with god-like races was an enthralling one. A believer in such a notion could look up at the night sky and say to himself, "The sky is full of gods."

Such an ideology was articulated by Stanley Kubrick, the director of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (about god-like extraterrestrials interacting mysteriously with humans). In a 1968 interview Kubrick said this: 

"When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made in a few millennia—less than a microsecond in the chronology of the universe—can you imagine the evolutionary development that much older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal machine entities—and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence ungraspable by humans....these beings would be gods to the billions of less advanced races in the universe, just as man would appear a god to an ant that somehow comprehended man’s existence. They would possess the twin attributes of all deities—omniscience and omnipotence. These entities might be in telepathic communication throughout the cosmos and thus be aware of everything that occurs, tapping every intelligent mind as effortlessly as we switch on the radio; they might not be limited by the speed of light and their presence could penetrate to the farthest corners of the universe; they might possess complete mastery over matter and energy; and in their final evolutionary stage, they might develop into an integrated collective immortal consciousness. They would be incomprehensible to us except as gods; and if the tendrils of their consciousness ever brushed men’s minds, it is only the hand of God we could grasp as an explanation."

With the addition of such grandiose ideas, it became ever-more-apparent that Darwinism had evolved into a kind of stealth religion. Now this religion had its own powerful gods (the imagined super-advanced extraterrestrials), and various tales could be told of how the world might be transformed when humans interact with such super-powerful beings, tales rather like ancient tales of the Last Days or the millennium or the apocalypse. Also, tales could be told of how humans had interacted with such god-like beings in ancient times, a branch of storytelling that became the specialty of people like Erich von Daniken and the Ancient Aliens TV show. The latter type of tales often resembled the stories of ancient miracles told in churches. 

It's not much fun being lowly inferior Earthlings when the sky is all filled with god-like extraterrestrials, but astronomers such as Carl Sagan tried to make people think that we might soon be able to climb our way up to our own godhood.  He kept suggesting that extraterrestrial civilizations may have prepared what he called an "Encyclopedia Galactica" containing all of their knowledge, and they might send us this treasure trove of knowledge by radio transmission.  It was a new version of "pie in the sky." Many of his readers must have thought that mankind would soon climb its way up to godhood, once our radio transmitters picked up a copy of this "Encyclopedia Galactica."

Very strangely, Sagan mocked observations of UFOs, and did everything he could to discourage claims that Earth is being visited from other planets. This made no sense given his other claims. If it were true that the galaxy is filled with a million or more super-advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, then we should see signs of such civilizations all over the place, including periodic visits from spaceships to Earth.  A single extraterrestrial civilization would need no more than 10 million years to spread itself throughout the galaxy (which has a diameter of only about 100,000 light-years), particularly since colonized planets would eventually be able to  colonize other planets revolving around other stars, and given a million years we would expect colonies of colonies of colonies of colonies. 

So if there were really a million extraterrestrial civilizations that were typically many millions of years old,  by now the galaxy should be teeming with signs of their activity; and their spaceships should be all over the place. It made no sense to maintain the existence of a vast horde of very old extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, and also to mock the idea that spaceships from such civilizations have recently visited Earth.  Doing such a thing was as silly as maintaining that there will be a thousand nuclear bomb explosions in the cities of the United States, but mocking the idea that anyone will be hurt from such explosions. The same inconsistency was repeated by countless other astrobiologists between 1950 and 2020, who most inconsistently claimed that the galaxy was packed with very old civilizations but that none of them had visited Earth.  

How to explain such an inconsistency, which no independent reasoner ever be expected to reach? We can only explain it by remembering that today's professors are herd-following conformist creatures who are men of a hundred taboos.  An astrobiologist will senselessly believe that organisms more organized than anything humans have ever made can arise by blind accidental processes, because this silly belief has become a required dogma for today's scientists, an obligatory doctrine of faith that each professor must kneel to or risk condemnation for heresy.  But the same astrobiologist will assure us vigorously that he does not at all believe that any of the vast number of very old extraterrestrial civilizations he believes in is visiting our planet, because a belief in UFOs is one of the very many senseless belief taboos in academia, many of which are taboos against believing in the existence of things that have been very well-observed for centuries (such as clairvoyance and apparitions).  

The grandiose ideas of galactic Darwinism described above were never well-supported by observations, and were in very important ways incompatible with observations. The table below summarizes the differences between reality and the fanciful notions of galactic Darwinism.

Claims of galactic Darwinists	Reality
“The stuff of life is all over the place in outer space. The galaxy is teeming with the building blocks of life.”	The building blocks of macroscopic life are cells, and the building blocks of microscopic life are functional proteins. Neither cells nor functional proteins have ever been detected in space.  The building blocks of the building blocks of life are the 20 amino acids used by living things, and the four nucleotides used by living things. None of those 24 things has  ever been found in outer space, with the exception of one or two of them (glycine and alanine), which have merely been detected in no more than the tiniest microscopic trace amounts.
“Experiments show that the building blocks of life would naturally arise.”	No experiment realistically simulating the early Earth has ever produced either the building blocks of microscopic life (protein molecules) nor any of the building blocks of the building blocks of life (amino acids or nucleotides). The Miller-Urey experiment failed in multiple ways to realistically simulate early Earth conditions.
“The galaxy is filled with planets.”	Correct, and the number of planets may be a few times greater than the number of stars in the galaxy (about 200 billion).
“Scientists have already discovered Earth-like planets revolving around other stars.”	No claim should ever be made that scientists have discovered an Earth-like planet until life has been found on another planet, which has not occurred.
“Many of the planets already discovered could support life as well as Earth does.”	In a recent news article we read, “None of the potentially habitable Earth-like exoplanets known to astronomers today have the right conditions to sustain life as we know it on Earth, with a rich biosphere of plants, microbes and animals, a new study has found.”
“Life will arise whenever conditions are right on a planet.”	To the contrary, everything we have learned about the very great organization and complexity of even the simplest living things suggests that the natural origin of life should be impossible, and should be as unlikely as a thrown deck of cards accidentally forming into a house of cards consisting of 52 cards. The concept of abiogenesis (that life can naturally arise from non-life) is a concept with zero observational and experimental support.
“Once life gets started, it will evolve into large complex organisms such as mammals.”	There is no credible theory explaining how microscopic life could evolve into incredibly organized large organisms such as mammals. Darwinism fails to explain a jump from prokaryotic cells to vastly more organized eukaryotic cells. Darwinism fails to credibly explain the origin of the many millions of types of protein molecules in the animal kingdom (each its own very complex invention too unlikely to appear by any natural process), and also fails to credibly explain the origin of anatomical innovations (which cannot be explained by changes in DNA, since DNA does not specify anatomy).
“We should expect that on a large fraction of the planets with life, intelligent life has arisen."	Humans are completely lacking in any credible natural explanation for the arising of intelligence on our planet. Claims that the appearance of intelligent conscious beings can be explained by an increase in brain size are untenable.  None of the main characteristics of human minds can be credibly explained as being caused by brain activity.  Scientists have no understanding of how neurons could produce thought, understanding, consciousness or self-hood. Scientists have no credible explanation for such basic human mental phenomena as the instant formation of memories, the 50-year preservation of memories, and the instant recall of rarely remembered things learned long ago.  The low-level facts scientists have learned about the brain and synapses reveal them as things with very high instability, very rapid molecular turnover, very high levels of noise, very high signal slowing factors and signal transmission unreliability, factors which make the brain untenable as a source of human mentality.  Therefore we lack any sound basis for predicting how often intelligent life would appear on some planet on which life existed.
“Astrobiologists agree that the galaxy is filled with intelligent beings.”	Appeals to a majority of opinion in some small group of specialists are unpersuasive, because such groups are very prone to groupthink, and some unwarranted belief dogma may become an expected norm in some research community, an orthodoxy which it is heresy to defy.  If 100% of astrobiologists believed that life in the galaxy is common, this would no more prove such a thing than papal infallibility is proven by 100% of Catholic bishops believing in such a doctrine.  Moreover, the only way to reliably measure the opinions of some group is to do secret ballots, and people don't do secret ballots of scientists asking them about their beliefs on scientific topics.  So we don't actually know whether most astrobiologists believe extraterrestrial life is common.
“Humans must be one of the most primitive of the intelligent species in the galaxy. Extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy are mostly vastly older than mankind.”	Civilizations vastly older than humanity would presumably have god-like technological powers. But we see no sign of such god-like powers at work in our galaxy. The galaxy looks as it would look if Earth was the only planet with a civilization. The predicted Dyson Spheres have not been found.
“It is the height of arrogance for us to believe that we are the the most advanced race in the galaxy when there are so many other planets.”	Many chances does not mean many successes, and if something is sufficiently improbable, it won't happen even if there are trillions or quadrillions of chances for it to happen. If the chance of intelligent life naturally arising on a planet is much less than 1 in a trillion (and there are many reasons for thinking that it is), then it is reasonable to conclude that there are probably no other intelligent races in our galaxy, unless some intelligent agency is acting to produce such races.  Such a conclusion is straightforward mathematical reasoning involving no arrogance at all.
“We will find proof of extraterrestrial civilizations once we start seriously looking for radio signals from them.”	Well-funded efforts to detect radio signals and optical signals from other planets have been going on for decades, and have not produced any evidence for extraterrestrials.
“Fast travel around the galaxy should be possible by craft using warp drives or space-time- wormholes.”	Warp drives and space-time wormholes are fantasy. It is a law of nature that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So traveling from one star to the nearest star should always take about five years or more, probably very much longer because of the difficulty of building any spaceship capable of reaching even half of the speed of light.
“We are the most primitive intelligent species in the galaxy.”	While it is possible that there are many other intelligent species in our galaxy (particularly if some intelligent causal agency is working to produce such species), as far as we know we are the only intelligent species in the galaxy.
“UFOs show that there are other extraterrestrials in our galaxy.”	We have no evidence that UFOs are from other planets in our galaxy, and there are various alternate possible explanations (some paranormal) for UFOs. If any UFO is from another planet, that does not prove that life can arise  on such a planet by Darwinian processes.