Conard is a junior international relations major and business minor and can be contacted at sean.conard@drake.edu.
Ah yes, aliens. The eternal question: Are humans the only life in the universe? Absolutely. Have you seen any other forms of life in the universe? Didn’t think so.
Throughout millennia of humanity looking at the stars, not a single scientist (amateur or professional) has confirmed the existence of life on any other planet but our own.
Sure, the occasional dingbat has claimed to be probed after being abducted by a UFO; or your second cousin that no one talks to thinks the government is using its massive resources to cover up Area 51 and Roswell is more than a crappy old Warner Brothers show. But nothing has been proven. And what is science all about? Proof. I’d end it here, but I haven’t reached my word limit yet.
We’ve gone to the moon and back. No aliens. The Voyager satellites have been traveling for over 30 years to the outer edge of our solar system. No aliens. Carl Sagan wrote about aliens, but that doesn’t count because it was fiction. Albert Einstein lived without a single alien observance. That alone is enough for me to disregard the idea of aliens in this universe.
Life on Earth itself seems to have been serendipitous enough. For all we know, a lightning bolt may have just struck the primordial element soup at just the right time and spontaneously created a single bacterium. What if the mix of ancient chemicals was different? What if the lightning struck at a different moment — one not ripe for life? Then you and I would not even be here right now. Lady Luck played the leading role in our existence, and probably life all over the universe.
Have you ever seen that show “Ancient Aliens”? If you haven’t, crackpots try to connect aliens to historical events. Some of the crap the narrator and the “experts” (jobless academics) spew make me doubt the existence of God, much less aliens. Anyone who tries to connect the Mayans, the American West and Nazis with aliens and any channel that gives this person a platform for their crazy bile makes me weep for the future of mankind.
I promise you, I am open to the thought of aliens and extraterrestrial life. I love “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” and “K-PAX.” I would love to see that reality someday ended — our galactic isolation finally over and we can begin a new era of human society in which we exchange ideas with our interstellar brethren. But until that day comes, I refuse to believe in anything I can’t see with my own eyes.
