So, what would be the appropriate scientific approach to the study of events in the past? Are you arguing that the evolution (or not) of life is beyond investigation? How about geology? Ice Ages never happened because we cannot run the experiment of covering North America with a mile of ice?

Besides, Crichton is completely wrong about SETI. Drake's equation is speculative. The S in SETI means search. The search is real; the results are so far negative. That's how science goes sometimes.

Nobody has found gravitons yet either, but nobody thinks gravity is a religion.

Maybe the doc should stick to fiction. Facts seem to confuse him.

Touchy, touchy....I think Mayr's right--they don't need to be scientific, they're just his/stories we tell ourselves to make the world seem comprehensible.

The Ice Age left evidence or the marks of its life on the face of the planet. Gravity is a force whose effects can be observed and measured. The search for extraterrestial life and the theory of evolution are theoretical frameworks who owe their existense to the materialistic presupposition. In other words, the materialist knows that a "creator" cannot exist so earthly life cannot be unique and the origin of that life must have a purely materialistic cause, thus evolution in the darwinian sense in support those specific presuppositions.

Real science makes no assumptions other than what is factually known to be true. Whenever it strays from that path it becomes faith.

one nitpicky point -- Crighton's right that the equation is incredibly elastic, but he's wrong that it could result in a zero. We're sure that one planet qualifies.

It's odd that he talks about this in the last thirty years as if it's an abberation, then uses as an example later how the germ theory of disease was disregarded for 150 years because doctors regarded new disease models as a challenge to their authority.

Science has always had this problem, because it's always been conducted by people. It just becomes more acute when the science is driving policy decisions.

Actually, you'd be lucky to get to one. Look at the deflators, the last of which is the number of years, expressed as a fraction of the planet's age, during which a technological, communicative civilization exists. On Earth, that number is something on the order of five billionths.

'"Edward"' - You conflate the equation with reality. In reality there exists at least one planet with [intelegent] life, the equation itself is bogus.

A one in a billion chance means that somewhere in China, there is most likely one extremely luckly/unlucky person.

Don't make the mistake of confusing improbable with impossible. Just because a probablility approaches zero does not mean that it is zero. As long as none of the terms of the equation are zero, it will be greater than zero. So what it is saying, in the worst case, is that, yes, we are not just unique in the universe, but a fortuitous accident. As pointed out, this isn't the standard dogma when we are told about this equation.

One of the first lessons of high school physics was on precision, and how the precision of your result is only as good as the least precise value used to arrive at that result. What's always missing from the description of this equation, especially by those invested with it showing how un-unique we are, is that to be scientific, you have to include not just a value, but the "error bars." The real problem with this equation is that imprecision is so large so as to overwhelm the result, making the result meaningless. Which is why when people like Carl "BHA" Sagan used the equation in the way he did, he was engaged in scientific malpractice.

What Mr. Crichton was talking about was that the belief in Global Warming, or at least the human element of GW, is akin to religion; that it is faith that drives this belief, and that one can no more convince one of the theory's adherents of its fallacy by an argument based upon science than one can convince an evangelical Christian that Jesus never lived by arguing the archeological evidence. Faith, and Mr. Crichton believes that environmentalism is a Faith, can not be swayed by facts. One either believes, or one does not believe. The facts are immaterial. Anyone who has argued with GW believers knows the truth of Crichton's brief. Mention that we need more research before we institute policy changes, and they will almost jump at your throat. More or better information will never shake the faith of a true believer.

Well, he could have chosen some better comparisons then.

I'm a GW skeptic but there's some evidence for it. While there is no evidence for extraterrestrial life, there is good evidence that humans are searching for it.

The evidence for Darwinism is overwhelming unless, like certain Jesuit astronomers in 1610, you refuse to look at it.

Evidence for part of a theory does not make the entire theory correct. Evidence that temperatures are rising does not prove the cause of the rise, or how to alter its course. Evidence that species change over time are silent as to the cause of the change.

Evidence, many times, falls far short of proof, and different arguments can be made from the same evidence. Global Warming and Darwinism are actually two very good examples of that. Nothing Darwin wrote disproves the thesis that a God is in the background, ordering each tiny change in the DNA of species. All Darwin saw were the changes themselves. Causality is still unknown. We may or may not believe that God is causing the changes, but there are many other candidates beside random chance, as Darwin believed.

If there is, right now, a pile of presents in your living room, is that evidence that Santa Claus just left them there? Millions of people have that evidence in their homes, right now.

To those who believe that it WAS Santa, Merry Christmas.

"Nobody has found gravitons yet either, but nobody thinks gravity is a religion.

Maybe the doc should stick to fiction. Facts seem to confuse him."

Well, gee Harry, you seem somewhat confused about the difference between observational fact (gravity) and a hypothetical abstraction that at the moment is merely an article of faith (the graviton).

Michael:

That there is a Santa is undeniable, though the story we tell ourselves about him may not accurately reflect the reality--like Darwinism's take on Evolution. :)

Michael, you are right that nothing in Darwin excludes a deity.

However, we now know a lot of detail, and if you're going to lay it on God instead of random mutations culled by selection, you will have to drastically redefine the qualities that have hitherto been ascribed to God.

Darwinism cannot predict what will happen in detail (though it can make good predictions on a coarse scale), but to a considerable degree it can predict what will not happen.