> Hang on a sec... Just because everything we see and have ever seen in
> ourselves, nature and the cosmos tells us that it is a dog eat dog
universe,
> we should not expect that new encounters with people / things outside our
> current stomping grounds will be out to harvest us for dinner?

Harvest us for dinner - fairly inconceivable.
Destroy us - more likely.

General consensus is that any race able to develop intergalactic or even
intra galactic travel technology would not sensibly have war and destruction
and domination as any part of their viewpoint. Anyone who holds such views
seriously has probably not spent any significant amount of value time with
their local Klingons :-)

Seriously, I don't think we can establish anything with certainty about the
thinking of non-human intelligent races, should such exist (or even if they
don't :-) *** ). If a race had an ultra-ultra long term view and a them or
us mentality then self perpetuating exterminators and spreaders of one's own
type would seem sensible enough.

Francis Crick of Crick & Watson fame was the proposer of the concept of
"directed panspermia" - purposeful seeding of life as we know it by aliens
long ago - as a significant possible source of life on earth. ("Life
itself",  Simon & Schuster 1981). I'm just starting to read the book in my
"spare" time. I find it fascinating that one of the four* "discoverers" of
the so far understood role of DNA in life**, should be so certain of the
utter improbability that life developed from non-life on earth that he would
risk his very-considerable reputation by writing a book that argues the case
for our fore-fore-fore-bears being placed here purposefully by aliens. Gives
one a very comforting glow when you listen to the likes of (bounders like
****) the 'can't for the life of me see why so much esteemed Richard
Dawkins.



        RM

* 4 - read the history

** DNA's role as the sole arbiter of genetic inheritance is looking shakier
by the month.

***    Some argue that the known existence of aliens would be a death blow
to Christianity or/and various other religions. I can't see why, unless such
religions claim the non-existence of such as a fundamental tenet. Nothing I
know of God indicates to me with certainty that life does or doesn't exist
elsewhere in the universe. However, despite the almost overwhelming demands
of humanist logic that life MUST exist elsewhere, my gut feeling is that we
are alone. I would be pleased enough if it were found to be otherwise.

**** Tried to think of a word for Dawkins that was fair to use. Rejected
idiot and liar. Bounder is a good stop gap. Dawkins avoids & obscures
reality and twists truth to make his points. He leads uninformed people
helpless to his conclusions while papering over the trivialities or untruths
that he has used to support his case. He snipes and disparages, makes you
think he will in due course come to fair battle and then at the end slides
yellowly from the field to return another day with yet another populist book
based on smoke and mirrors.

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