In reviewing Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, I’ve offered my take on the implications of the hypothetical existence of alien life — which, apart from the movie, has been a major topic in the news lately. I listed four main reasons why alien life, if it were shown to exist, would challenge Darwinism and bolster the case for intelligent design and belief in God. Again, I’m agnostic on the existence of physical extraterrestrial (ET) life. And I’m skeptical that what the government, in its own “disclosure,” has released demonstrates that ETs flying in UFOs are real. But there are additional arguments to mention here.
I’ll leave aside the obvious question of whether aliens from a distant planet, light years away, could get here on a reasonable timetable. But let’s assume for the sake of the argument that somehow they figured out how to solve the problem. What would this say about their origins?
We’re told that the cosmos is blind, purposeless, and operates on materialistic principles alone. Just how easy would it be for such a universe to yield a scenario where intelligent life — whether human, alien, or otherwise — can build technology to fly through space? The most powerful case for the need for intelligent design in that regard comes from our biologist friend Michael Denton in his 2022 book The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence, published by Discovery Institute Press.
We often take for granted that humans have all these tools and resources at our disposal to produce technology. But in that book, Denton lists multiple impressive parameters that must be present and fine-tuned for an intelligent species to be able to create and use technology. Below I highlight and review of some the key arguments in his book. And note that all of this assumes that somehow you can end up with a highly intelligent species in the first place.
Ability to Use Fire
Fire is a central part of human existence, and it’s a necessary requirement for building technology, whether primitive or complex. It has been a crucial part of the human story from the very beginning. In fact, just recently there was a news release titled “Ancient fire record rewritten: Researchers push earliest evidence of human fire use back to over a million years,” which says:
A new study has uncovered evidence that early human ancestors were using fire in South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave between 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago, extending the chronology of one of the earliest known records of fire use associated with hominins. By applying a new method that detects traces of burning in fossil bones, researchers found signs of repeated fire use deep inside the cave, far beyond the reach of natural wildfires.
According to the technical paper in PLOS One, they believe that this use of controlled fire was probably by Homo erectus:
Our findings push definitively back the appearance of fire associated with hominins to an age between 1.07–1.79 Ma and confirm evidence of burnt microfauna … The repetition of this thermal signature across space and time, combined with the broader archaeological context, offers compelling support for intentional fire introduction and use by early Acheulean hominins, most likely Homo erectus, on more than one occasion.
Not only is this more evidence that Homo erectus was highly intelligent and using fire over a million years ago (perhaps as far back as nearly 1.8 million years ago), but it reminds us how important fire is to human survival. Yet fire is crucial not just for survival but producing any form of metal-based technology. Without fire we could never heat, melt, and manipulate metal that is needed for many forms of human technology. Let’s consider just how many parameters have to be properly in place for us to be able to use fire.
Requirements for Using Fire
Fire can’t happen underwater. So the first requirement is so obvious we probably don’t even think about it: Combustion can only occur on dry land. Using fire requires a highly intelligent organism that lives on land and not under water.
But that’s not enough. You also need the right composition of the atmosphere. Oxygen levels must be sufficiently high to support both respiration and combustion, but not too high or the entire atmosphere could combust upon the first spark, or at least yield massive out-of-control wildfires that would make the controlled use of fire impossible. Our O2 level of 21 percent is right in that goldilocks zone to allow fire, but not too much as to be overly dangerous.
And what about the other 78 percent of the atmosphere? We might think it’s not very important, but in fact nitrogen acts as an ideal fire retardant, slowing the spread of fire and making its use controllable and safe.
But fire needs more than just oxygen — it also needs fuel. That’s where plants come in. Using a highly complex biomolecular pathway called photosynthesis, plants use sunlight to power reactions that convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars and carbon-based plant matter that is the ideal fuel for fire. All this requires a host star like our sun that is emitting the right kind of light for photosynthesis and an atmosphere that is transparent to that exact form of radiation. More specifically, the wood produced by trees provides is an ideal sustainable fuel in the form of charcoal.
And then don’t forget water: We might think water is bad for fire, but water is necessary for producing the fuel fire uses — i.e., plant matter! And water requires a hydrological cycle, which is enabled by the special properties of water that allow it to take on solid, liquid, and gaseous states. Water could not take on these various states if Earth didn’t have exactly the right temperature and climate. If Earth wasn’t in the circumstellar habitable zone, liquid water could not be prevalent.
The requirements for many of these parameters go much deeper, but it’s all necessary just so we can use fire. Somehow, Earth checks every box.
Human Biology
But there’s always more. Denton argues that our physical size and anatomy are optimal for producing technology. If we were as small as ants or as big as giants, we could not generate the kinds of forces needed to mine ore, chop wood, or manipulate metals. This is all aided by our highly mobile opposable thumbs — a feature that provides a degree of dexterity not found in any ape species. Have you ever seen an ape twirl a stick to start a fire?
Bipedalism is also crucial, because it frees up our arms and hands so we can manipulate tools, and gives us a forward-facing gaze to easily see what we’re doing. The smartest knuckle-walking ape wouldn’t be able to use tools or fire like we do.
Metallurgy
Then, there’s the obvious thing that we haven’t even mentioned: Without the right metal elements present in the Earth’s crust, you’d have no raw materials or ore needed to produce technology. That requires a small rocky planet like ours but also plate tectonics, erosion, and other geological processes that can expose and deliver metals like copper, zinc, and iron to locations where you can access these metals.
And that’s just for primitive technology. For more advanced tech, you need rare earth elements which allow us to produce semiconductors, computer chips, magnets, lasers, and pretty much anything that goes into your cell phone — or a spacecraft.
Prior Environmental Fitness
All of the above is just a summary of some of Denton’s arguments regarding the requirements for humans to be able to use technology. The bottom line is that human technology is not an accident of humans simply adapting to our environment. Rather, purpose and design were required to produce a universe, star system, and planet amenable to the production of technology. We can only produce technology because of what Denton calls the “prior environmental fitness” or “primal blueprint” we find in nature’s laws, atoms, water, atmosphere, and planetary conditions, which existed long before humans walked the Earth. Here’s how Denton puts it:
Humans are clearly no contingent cosmic afterthought. The exquisitely fine-tuned ensembles of environmental fitness described here, each enabling a vital aspect of our physiological design, amount to nothing less than a primal blueprint for our being written into the fabric of reality since the moment of creation, providing compelling evidence that we do indeed, after all, occupy a central place in the great cosmic drama of being.
The Miracle of Man, p. 209
But why does nature exhibit this fine-tuning that allows us to use technology? It all points to purpose and intelligent design in our universe.
Implications for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
So how does this relate to supposed ETs flying around in UFOs? The point is this: If there really are aliens building UFOs using some kind of metals, exotic or otherwise, this represents a form of technology that also requires, at least, the same kind of prior environmental fitness, primal blueprint, and fine-tuning that we very happily find on Earth. Denton goes so far as to argue that any technological aliens would resemble us and would live on a planet like ours. If ETs flying UFOs are real — and as I’ve said in other writing on the subject, that is still a very big “if”! — then their ability to do so reflects great purpose built into nature. It requires intelligent design.