Discovering Life Beyond Earth Would Demonstrate the Truth of Human Exceptionalism

Science writer Matt Ridley has always had a reductionist view of the moral importance of human beings. He’s at it again in a piece about the likelihood that scientists will eventually find proof of life beyond this world.

Ridley thinks that chances of such a momentous discovery are good. No argument there. The universe is so vast and inhabitable (as we understand the term) planets so numerous, it would be truly remarkable if life only existed here.

But Ridley thinks that finding proof of such life would dent human exceptionalism:

It will be a fifth ‘Copernican moment’ when extra-terrestrial life is finally discovered: scientists putting yet another dent in human self-importance. They showed that the earth orbits the sun, not vice versa (Nikolaus Copernicus, 1543); that we are just another species of animal (Charles Darwin, 1859); that we use the very same genetic code as a cabbage (Francis Crick, 1953); that far from being sophisticated creatures, we have the same number of genes, indeed mostly the very same genes, as a mouse (the Human Genome Project, 2003).

Why in the world does Ridley think any of those events “dent” our importance? The discovery of astronomical facts have nothing to do with the nature of our beings. Indeed, the discovery that earth orbits the sun demonstrated that human beings are not static creatures. We have both tremendous and flexible intellectual capacities. Copernicus’s discovery was a triumph of human exceptionalism.

Darwin’s deducing the mechanisms of natural selection also did not undercut our moral importance regardless of ubiquitous attempts by materialists to so insist. Whether or not one believes we are uniquely created in the likeness and image of God or that our distinctive moral characteristics flow from the processes of blind evolution, intelligent design, or some other mechanism, the unique importance of being human can be robustly supported by a rational examination of the differences between humans and all other known life forms.

What other species has attained the wondrous capacities of human beings? What other species has transcended the tooth-and-claw world of naked natural selection to the point that, at least to some degree, we now control nature instead of being controlled by it? What other species builds civilizations, records history, creates art, makes music, thinks abstractly, communicates in language, envisions and fabricates machinery, improves life through science and engineering, or explores the deeper truths found in philosophy and religion? We have free will. We demonstrate mercy. We experience profound emotions. We are moral agents. We create. We have epiphanies. We sense the transcendent, or at least, we think we do. What other species has true freedom? Not a one. In other words, no: We are not “just another species of animal.”

And does Ridley really think that mice are as sophisticated as humans because of the number of our respective genes? How does that matter? We are all carbon-based too, does that make us equivalent to carrots? Good grief.

I hope we do find life elsewhere. It would be another step in our advancement as a species. Consider what that would mean: that our minds created the sophisticated instruments that allowed us to project our understanding light years away, deploying the awesome power of the scientific method that we created.

No. Finding life elsewhere would not denigrate our exceptionalism. It would demonstrate it.