The curious thing about the SETI arguement is that he makest the point that the sign of intelligence is its artificiality. Artificiality being defined as a 1.)relatively simple, and 2.)out of context -- signal.
This pretty much describes the Garden of Eden.
The question from a decade or two ago went like this. "What evidence do we have of God in the Garden of Eden."
The answer is: The Garden.
The Garden of Eden is a relatively simple & out of context-- that is, artificial place.
Now of course the SETI people, the materialists and the atheists will say that the Garden of Eden is evidence for man--just as a simple -- out of context ie artificial signal from space might be.
Similiarly, ID people will say that that proposition ie that the Garden is Evidence for man -- is what the snake said. (And that's what got everyone into trouble.)
The old joke on skitzophrenia went like this: what do you think of skitzophrenia: Answer: I'm of two minds about it.
But its better to be single minded.
So maybe the SETI people are looking for snakes in space.
That still begs the question of origins. Because even if you have a complex organism ie a snake in space creating simple out of context signals in space--just like humans here on earth...you still have the question of where did the complexity of the space snake come from--just as the question here on earth remains--where did the immense complexity of the human organism --not to mention all the other critters here on earth--come from.
At this point we're talking about everything outside of the garden of eden that is the wilderness or in modern terms -- the space through which the space snake's artificial signal contends--- as also being evidence for God. Not to mention the biological complexity of the dna of man and woman. And then of course there's that snake.
On the matter of origins science has given us two breaks in the history of the cosmos which map over very well onto the book of genesis--and require leaps of faith. The first is the creation of the elements in the big bang. The second is the creation of complex organisms out of simple elements.
ug...this is too much for me before my morning coffee.
I just noticed your post before my bed time, so I better not have any coffee if I want to sleep. :)
Since I'm getting sleepy, here's just a quick post - an excerpt that I thought was interesting:
"The biggest problem with the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe is philosophical--perhaps even theological--what was there before the bang? This problem alone was sufficient to give a great initial impetus to the Steady State theory; but with that theory now sadly in conflict with the observations, the best way round this initial difficulty is provided by a model in which the universe expands from a singularity, collapses back again, and repeats the cycle indefinitely" John Gribbin, "Oscillating Universe Bounces Back," Nature, Vol. 259, 1976: 15.
“In spite of other successes of the general theory of relativity, the Big Bang, and in particular the idea that the universe had a beginning, was fought bitterly every step of the way.” Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology, 1992, Cambridge University Press.
The reluctance to consider a beginning to the universe adversely affected scientific research in this area for several decades. Though the Big Bang Theory has philosophical and religious implications, it does not have any religious or philosophical premises, just as is the case for ID. Yet, the Big Bang is taught and discussed in science classes. Furthermore, the Anthropic Principle, states that the universe appears to be designed for life based on the fine tuning discovered in the physical laws and constants that govern the universe. Clearly, this could be viewed as a design argument for the cosmos, and valuable research regarding this design is routinely discussed in scientific peer reviewed articles for several decades now. Recent research by ID proponents Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez and Dr. Jay Richards related to this field has provided great insight into the curious correlation between habitability and measurability. In other words, not only is the Earth a great place to live, it also is a wonderful place to make scientific discoveries about the cosmos; to use some of their words, it is as if “our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery.” (This is discussed thoroughly in the recent book, The Privileged Planet – see http://www.privilegedplanet.com/ for further information.)
I find it rather curious that while many neo-Darwinists wish to reduce things down to brute physical and chemical laws, with no intelligent design involved, many physicists already agree that the physical laws and constants are themselves evidence of design.
excerpt http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1386