Hello, welcome to the forum.

I see nothing wrong with Dawkins's perspective in the video. He's not saying he believes aliens created the first living things on Earth, but merely acknowledging that it's a possibility. I think it's possible as well. However, ultimately, this doesn't solve the problem, as Dawkins already stated, this alien civilization would also need an origin. 

Also, Dawkins's statement that we don't yet know how the first organisms could appear in abiogenesis was probably an act of convenience as much as honesty. Even if he could memorize all the details necessary to explain the development of organic molecules into multicellular organisms, I doubt Ben Stein would understand it. Our knowledge of abiogenesis is still blurry, but scientists have made dramatically more progress than the average person suspects. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H0RXDrfyZc

http://www.rationalresponders.com/third_revolution

http://www.rationalresponders.com/chemical_evolution

This is legit. However, it lacks context.

Basically, this is in response to the whole ID assertion that intelligent design has nothing to do with god. One of their common statements is, "We're not saying it's god; it could've been aliens."

At the same time, they say that life is just too complex to spontaneously evolve.

Dawkins is merely pointing out the internal contradiction to both claims. One must be incorrect. Either intelligent design is about god, or life can spontaneously evolve. He's not saying this did happen. He's just agreeing that one of their two propositions is possible. And it ain't the god one.

[EDIT: homonym fail)

Sheesh.

I hope Professor Bill doesn't give you a good grade for this.  Seriously, is this the best question you can come up with for a bunch of heathens?

Absolutely.

I have only one hero: Jesus.

Jesus DeJesus. Back in basic training, he got in a fight with his best friend. His best friend (who was a complete prick) kicked DeJesus right square in the nuts. When he doubled over in pain, Wynn tried to kick him in the face; DeJesus grabbed his leg and toppled him over, and proceded to pound the living aura out of Wynn.

I have tried to emulate DeJesus from that day. Only without the square-in-the-nuts thing.

Well, he did state this situation was a possibility. So obviously he's inferring a belief (albeit tenous) in alien life and their creative abilities.

Hi butterbattle. Thanks for the reponse.

I appreciate your help but I have to say I have a major personal problem believing in an alien creation theory. To me there is little difference from believing that little green men, a benevolent god or the flying spagetti monster, created / seeded life. To me it's all the same sort of fanciful unfounded speculation?

Excellent, thank you. Do you have any recommended ready on abiogenesis?

True. Good point.

Hmm.. I guess maybe… about as ‘possible’ as a creator god. I see little difference. Both just defer rational explanation of existence to the incomprehensible infinite.

Logical? Isn’t the concept of Aliens born of religious myth too? Aztecs, Maya, NAI, etc
 

K, thanks.
 

"Aliens", as extra-terrestrial intelligent life, are not necessarily supernatural at all. The possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe is certainly possible, maybe even highly likely, in the light of recent discoveries which seem to indicate many stars have planets, and that the spontaneous formation of important life chemicals such as amino acids and simple RNA, is quite likely on planets in a roughly the 'right' range of conditions.

OTOH, the chance of any such intelligent life living on a planet close enough to Earth for them to actually visit us is probably very low, and actual reports of visitors from beyond our planet are almost certainly mythical, and or supernatural beliefs.

In principle, the idea of an alien race 'seeding' life on Earth is technically possible, just unlikely to be true. 

In any case, such an explanation for life on Earth does not qualify as an ultimate explanation for life itself, since at least one life-form would have to originated by other means.  

There is nothing intrinsically incomprehensible or infinite in the concept of such aliens, just that the cannot serve as an ultimate explanation for life.

Whereas a 'creator' God, which is just as logically impossible as a candidate to be the ultimate creator, since logically nothing can 'create itself', is also inherently incomprehensible, so it is 'infinitely' more unlikely than some form of alien civilization.

So Dawkins was quite reasonably acknowledging the possibility of alien life, even the hypothetical idea of one that seeded our planet. Nothing to that point implies anything supernatural.

Well, as Bob indicates, the whole concept seems pretty tenuous. However, if you look at the video, I think that it is pretty clear that Dawkins was not saying that this must have happened, only that such a thing could be contemplated. Further, he continues that even if we ever did find smoking gun type proof that such an event actually occurred, one would still have to say that the first intelligent like comes to be through a naturalistic process.

Perhaps it might be easier to understand what he is discussing if we look at the idea from a different perspective.

When we send our probes to various parts of the solar system, we are very careful to clean them thoroughly before launch to minimize the potential of contaminating a potential biosphere with the life that already exists on our planet.

Now, it seems to me that the motivation for that must be connected to our not wanting to do accidentally what Doctor Dawkins speculated as possibly having been done intentionally. If you remove the intentional aspect from his speculation, it seems that we are concerned that we may already have reached a point in our technical development where we could be the unwitting agent of the same basic process.

Really, the places that we have been in space thus far seem to be pretty unlikely to be kind to out forms of life, thus it is likely improbable that we are going to infect another world with our form of life. However, the matter is of sufficient concern to warrant some fairly expensive attention.

If you want to create an argument for intelligent life causing a biosphere, sending a rocket to some other planet with already evolved bacteria on it seems to be insignificantly different from the forced abiogenesis that Doctor Dawkins discussed.

Still, it's not a claim. Think of the reverse situation. If I were to ask you, "do you think it's possible that life from another planet started life on earth?" and you said, "I guess it's possible ..."

Do you think it would be fair for me to say, "Ha! Belief!"

No. That's a bit of a stretch.

Heck, the only book I read from Dawkins was the "The God Delusion," and I didn't think it was all that impressive. He's a good biologist, of course, but once his writing left his area of expertise, it lost clarity and depth, especially the chapter where he "refuted" arguments for the existence of God.

It's something to attack, I suppose (for whatever reason). But our greatest collaborative weakness, in that case (getting atheists together is like herding cats) is also our strength. As you say, why would I care if Dawkins was wrong? I mean, if he was absolutely wrong about something. Not just aliens, but something truly silly, like trying to say that the seat of human intelligence was cheese sandwiches.

Or let's say he decided to group all rationally thinking people into a group, and call them ... oh, I don't know ... let's say "brights", just to be outlandish. Wow, that would be ridiculous. What a stupid idea that would be.

But as silly as Dawkins gets, you'll notice that his ideas don't actually leave the natural. I mean, he doesn't invoke magic any time he considers ideas, does he? So maybe his thinking isn't as ridiculous as it could be.

Imagine if he was suggesting that all life was initiated by a super-creature that he couldn't define and had no actual knowledge about, but because no specific information about things that happened before the big bang was available, that it was the most probable because he thought of it.

Yeah, that would be really silly.