What Happens When You Go to a Planet Which Is Not Undergone?

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One of the arguments i like for encountering extra terrestrial intelligences is there likely to be far ahead of us. And maybe they know the answers to some of these questions. Like, oh, consciousness, we figured that out ten thousand years ago. Or, or, you know, hat dark energy. Oh, dark energy, ye, we figured it out, and we use one firstare spaceships or something? Is, yes. So so much of this is driven by the unknown, just as with non non star trak stuff. I make a passing reference to that again in in the book. You know, a few hints on black matter, black inn dark matter, would be terribly

If extraterrestrial intelligences exist, will look anything like us? Are we alone in the cosmos? If we reran the tape of life, would humans appear again? Is there purpose in the cosmos?

Shermer speaks with Cambridge evolutionary palaeobiologist Simon Conway Morris whose latest book challenges six assumptions that too often pass as unquestioned truths amongst the evolutionary orthodox. These include the idea that evolution is boundless in the kinds of biological systems it can produce. Not true, he says. The process is highly circumscribed and delimited. Nor is it random. This popular notion holds that evolution proceeds blindly, with no endgame. But Conway Morris suggests otherwise, pointing to evidence that the processes of evolution are “seeded with inevitabilities.”

Shermer and Morris also discuss: convergent evolution and directionality in evolution; chance, contingency, and law in evolution; theistic evolution and teleology in nature; why Morris is a Christian but rejects Intelligent Design creationism; free will and determinism; and whether there good arguments for God’s existence.