trodding on erich von daniken’s territory

There’s a very popular expression in Russia about trying to present well known and thoroughly explored ideas as some groundbreaking novelty that will usher in a new are of understanding between two opposing groups with very different theories about the world. It’s called “discovering America,” and considering that today is the Fourth of July, it seems appropriate to include this expression in today’s post, especially since we’re going to talk about a science writer who decided to fit this expression to a tee in the depths of that collection of feel- good, New Age pseudoscience and quasi-philosophical navel-gazing known as the Huffington Post with his very heartfelt attempt to play into the creationist canard of God creating evolution to accomplish his goals. As one of Jerry Coyne’s readers pointed out, the deity in Clay Farris Naff’s column seems a lot like this one…

But it’s not just in quoting much parodied, satirized and debunked creationist notions where Naff tries to make a discovery. While penning a little purple prose intended to compel creationists and scientists to get along by only slightly overlapping their magesteria, he smacks right dab into an idea which should be very, very familiar to most readers of this blog since it’s one of my absolute favorite speculative topics for posts.

If the Creator wanted to bring about a result like us — life capable of contemplating, appreciating, and sustaining life — he, she, or they surely might have done worse than to create a Universe with just enough scope and variation to let evolution do all the labor of design. And what sort of Creator might do that? One in our own image, of course: An intelligent life seeking to pass the torch of life across the cosmos to a new generation. There is more to ponder, here, of course, and I’m the first to admit that there is no evidence to tip the balance. But let me stake my claim here: the just-good-enough Universe we inhabit is more consistent with my view than any other rationally acceptable explanation proffered so far. If I’m right, we are the children of loving cosmic parents, and we are charged with becoming what they once were. How cool is that?

Now why does that sound so hauntingly familiar? Oh right, because Naff just re-invented the famous ancient astronaut theory which inspired Erich von Daniken and his disciples to create a new quasi-religion around a belief that sometime in the distant past, aliens interfered in human life on Earth, or, for some fans, modified living things as we know them today by manipulating their genomes, or controlling their evolution. And just like Neff’s claim, these proposals require substantial evidence to be taken seriously, evidence outlined once upon a time in a post trying to explore the requirements for a traveling alien designer. So far, neither the ancient astronaut theorists, or ID proponents have been able to come up with even one of the items on the list, so it’s rather hard to imagine Naff’s claim being taken any more seriously than as just another example of the poorly thought out opinion columns that seem to make up the vast majority of HuffPo’s attempts at science.