I wonder how you can tell if an alien is “intelligent life.” Is there a test that fits all situations? For example, suppose we found a blob on Mars that moved under its own power and wasn’t a carbon-based life form. How could we tell if it was intelligent?
One way we could tell is if it did something that you associate with intelligent creatures. If it started a conversation with you (and passed the Turing test), that would seem intelligent. But there’s no reason to think that all intelligent beings use language. You’d need more tests of intelligence than just the ability to hold a conversation with a human.
Suppose the blob on Mars beat you at chess. That would tell you that the blob can “compute,” but it wouldn’t tell you if the blob was intelligent “life.” A computer can beat you at chess if it’s so programmed, and no one thinks your computer is intelligent life.
What if the blob authored a book?
Don’t answer too quickly because it’s a trick question. Remember, a trillion monkeys with typewriters can write a book if you wait long enough. So let’s up the ante and say that the blob on Mars writes lots of different books. And let’s say it composes some music, designs some evening gowns, and paints some lovely pictures too. Now do you conclude that the blob is intelligent?
It’s a trick question because atheists believe that the Big Bang did all of those things and more. The Big Bang caused the sequence of events that culminated in the Bible, the Koran, and most important – Dilbert comics. If the blob on Mars created literature, we would surely consider it intelligent.
I suppose some of you will argue that the Big Bang started a natural series of events that led to a chance development of intelligent life. And then the life did all of the intelligent stuff. But what is the logic behind arbitrarily picking a tiny slice of time and acting as if it’s the only important part of a process that requires many steps?
Consider the simple act of picking up a pencil. It requires your brain and your muscles, but it also requires you to exist in the first place. And that means that your mother and father are part of the process, as well as their parents, etc. Once you existed, and within your body, there was a vast sequence of cause and effect between your brain and your muscles to make it all happen. You might say that “you” picked up the pencil, but I look at the big picture and say the Big Bang picked up that pencil – with or without the existence of free will – because without the Big Bang, none of it would happen.
If you reject the Big Bang as being intelligent – after acknowledging that it created so many books and other works of art, it leaves you with no test for intelligence.
I take the practical approach – that something is intelligent if it unambiguously performs tasks that require intelligence. Writing Moby Dick required intelligence. The Big Bang wrote Moby Dick. Therefore, the Big Bang is intelligent, and you and I are created by that same intelligence. Therefore, we are created by an intelligent entity.
I don’t see how an atheist can think otherwise.