The existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life is a subject that varies much between religious groups but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the world population believes there is intelligent extraterrestrial life out there – how it began and evolved seems to be the issue where there are disagreements.
You can believe that life on earth is a purely Divine creation or that life on earth began organically when some sort of amino acid hooked-up with another and a single cell organism was created that started a natural evolution process through cellular mitosis. There are also many that believe extraterrestrials had a hand in human evolution as well.
This is discussed in my book: Extraterrestrial Communication Code described on the Home page of this blog. The bottom line is that people are going to believe what they are going to believe about the origins of life on earth. Perhaps the only way the people of earth will come to a common consensus will be when extraterrestrial communication is established, and we can compare notes with them.
For decades, some of the top PhD level astrophysics and scientific minds in the world have been full-time focused on establishing contact and communication with intelligent alien life beyond earth. This represents hundreds of thousands of PhD person-hours and billions of dollars in sophisticated search equipment and satellites etc. So far as we know – communication has not been established but they can’t all be wrong about the prospect of it one day inevitably happening.
There are many unanswered questions, but the question of the day is not if intelligent extraterrestrial life is out there; it is what intelligent extraterrestrial life might look like and what might be their demeanor and intentions? Is it possible to at least make an intelligent educated guess as to what an alien might look like and how they will interact with us? As I thought about this question and tried to do some research on it; I quickly found the term “Convergent Evolution”. The concept has been around for a very long time, but I have never heard of it before. Engineers and evolutionists or paleontologists don’t usually hang out in the same bars I suppose. Convergent evolution is however, a very interesting and real concept.
Convergent evolution is the process where plants and animals that are not related evolve similar features independently. This includes things like body parts, wings, internal organs, and colors etc. The concept is not new and is said to be first developed by a British biologist named Richard Owen (1804-1892) in the mid 1800’s. (picture below).
He was somewhat of a critic of the natural selection evolution concept presented by Charles Darwin.
One example that is commonly used to describe the concept of convergent evolution is the comparison between sharks and dolphins. Sharks and dolphins have evolved specific traits that are the same. They have streamlined bodies, dorsal fins, pectoral fins, and flippers.
They use these features to achieve the same goal, which is to swim quickly and catch food or escape danger. They live in the same environment but are unrelated animals biologically. One is a fish and the other is a mammal and yet they developed similar features to thrive in that environment. Goal achievement is pretty much the driving force behind the concept of convergent evolution. There are hundreds of examples and the concept is well documented.
Maybe convergent evolution is the approach that we need to lean on when we consider what extraterrestrials might look like and more importantly, how they might interact with us. At least the extraterrestrials that come from planets that are similar to earth. It does make some sense – whatever your beliefs are about the creation of life in the universe.
University of Cambridge professor, Simon Conway Morris has taken Owen’s work a step further with the subject of what extraterrestrials might look like and convergent evolution. He published a book about it in 2015 called The Runes of Evolution.
It is Morris’s belief, and I agree, that if extraterrestrials have been living and evolving over millions of years on an earth-like planet, we would be evolving along a similar track. Morris further believes that all plant and all animal life from other earth-like planets will also follow similar evolutionary tracks as the creatures of earth.
Of course, there are a whole lot of people that believe convergent evolution is not reliable if not completely invalid. Professor Tristan Slaton of Bucknell University’s Department of Biology in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania wrote a very good article on this subject entitled: “What does convergent evolution mean? The interpretation of convergence and its implications in the search for limits to evolution.” The last paragraph of the article’s conclusion is as follows:
Such quantification and significance testing need not be exclusively destructive of researchers’ intuitions regarding the ‘astounding’ nature of some convergent events—it may be that such instances of convergence are even more surprising than our intuition implies! In any case, a more rigorous approach would not only help to provide support for currently subjective assessments of convergence, but it would allow researchers to determine just how unlikely certain instances of convergence are. Only then can convergent evolution provide strong substantial evidence concerning the nature, if any, of limits to evolution.
At the end of the day, it always seems to come back to be the same sort of creation versus evolution debate. The middle ground is the “theistic evolution” concept. Theistic evolution generally blends evolutionary theories with belief in God and creation. It is all about the idea that religious teachings about God and creation and scientific theories of evolution do not necessarily need to contradict each other. It is not all one or all the other. The theistic view claims that creation and evolution concepts can and do coexist, depending on one’s point of view of course.
Personally, and as a faithful Christian, I believe there is truth in both arguments. I think there must be truth in both views. The whole point is that it seems to be very reasonable to make some assumptions about what extraterrestrials might look like and act like be they humanoid, plants, fish or birds all created by God and then evolving, under Gods design, through convergent evolution for millions of years on an earth-like planet. I published a blog on this exact topic on November 7, 2020 (see archives).
I also think this is true with respect to how intelligent extraterrestrials and humans act, think and live. It is more than just bones, biology, and physical features. It is also about beliefs, faith, and common instincts. This concept is also discussed in my book.
Whether the truth is a purely Divine creation or purely some form of evolution or buried in the middle ground of the theistic concept is a matter of a person’s faith and conscience until science can prove otherwise. We can (and probably will) re-write the history and science books and we can modify our physics equations and we can modify our interpretation of ancient religious texts if necessary, as new truths are discovered (if any).
What matters right now – is what are we going to do when extraterrestrials come out from behind the “dark side of the moon” and engage in meaningful communication with us. We need to be prepared for that very real possibility. Preparation for extraterrestrial communication and visitation begins with doing the best we can to plan for what these extraterrestrial beings might be all about physically, intellectually, instinctively, and spiritually. Establishing contact with extraterrestrials that may have been in existence for hundreds or even thousands of years longer than humans may very well be a look into a fair approximation of our future.
I look forward to any comments and opinions you might like to share with us here at the Extraterrestrial Communication Group. Thanks for dropping by.
Stephen Silva