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Study: Martian Soil Has Signs of Life
geoffrobinson writes "Reuters is reporting that a scientist from Germany believes Viking probe data shows signs of life. From the article: "Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin.""
Our friend Joop has also published a lot of work on ESP and paranormal activity: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Joop+Houtkoope r&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search.
I call BS.
I agree which you. In fact what you talk about is also true of the deistic "Dharma" philosophy.
Dharma, is the diestic philosophy, of the thestic "religions" of Bhuddism, Jainism, Siehkism, and vedism (aka Hinduism).
Dharma describes everything (of which the universe is a part of) as a single entity, that morphs and forms. This "entity" does not have a "known" personality nor anything that can be attributed to human factors, and nuances, and we are all part of it. The universe forms, disforms, destroys and rebuilds. its just a huge never ending cycle. Life cannot truely be defined, as we only can define life as what we "know".
To take your "men in black principle", there is a more readily available description of describing it. Our bodies are made of millions of individual cells. Each of them have life on their own, as well as a purpose. Some die after 2 weeks and are replaced, some live much longer, and are not replaced when they die (eg brain cells). Each individual cell may not be "aware" of the implications on each other. However, formed together, they make us. Our lives, our emotions, our being, as a singular compounded organism. With this in mind, there is nothing to say that we are not part of a bigger so called organism, its just that we don't understand it if it does exist, and maybe its not even REQUIRED to understand it.
I agree with your views of deism can itself support science. Dhramic philosophy has never discouraged the pursuit of science, unlike it appears of Abrahamic religions (such as Chistiantiy, Islam). Indeed, thousands of years ago Dharmic "scientists" (of all the main dharmic religions) worked out things such as the fact that Earth revolved around the sun, that there are other planets, and indeed other stars, and galaxys, etc, even as others still viewed the earth as flat, surrounded by a "dome". One particular assertion by Dharmism is that energy and matter are the same thing, in that energy "clumps" together to form matter. Recent works on quantum physics, have agreed somewhat to that idea, including a recent experiment at CERN, where "energy" were accelerated and then "smashed" together, and for a split second formed "matter".
Frankly i find all this rather interesting, and somewhat overwhelming. What we have is such a large concept, that is difficult to sometimes comprehend with our limited minds, and consciences. However, i woudl rather not go back to the "safe cocoon" of thestic views.
Have a nice day!