Except in films. They follow the same natural laws but conditions differ on each planet:
“Combined, the staggering planetary diversity and the historic contingencies for life’s evolution have an amazing consequence: there cannot be two planets with identical life forms. Furthermore, the more complex the life form, the lower the odds it will be replicated — even approximately — in another world.
It follows that we are the only humans in the Universe. Yes, there could (at least in principle) be other biped intelligent species with left-right symmetry out there, but they will not be like us. – MARCELO GLEISER, “WHAT IS LIFE LIKE ELSEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE?” AT BIG THINK (DECEMBER 22, 2021)”
Star Trek featured many extraterrestrial beings who are really just dress-up humans — and was all the better a series for that. If the extraterrestrials were completely different from humans, mentally and emotionally, because of different planetary developments, the story might fall apart. In science fiction, we need the extraterrestrials to be enough like us that the interactions make sense. That’s just good storytelling:
News, “Physicist: Why extraterrestrials couldn’t look much like us” at Mind Matters News
Takehome: Marcelo Gleiser explains, there is a “staggering diversity of worlds” out there and that diversity would shape life forms in many different ways.
Gleiser is being unfair to sci-fi authors. Good sci-fi has always tried to imagine extremely different aliens, from octopuses to blobs to distributed ‘virtual’ beings.
Mr Spock was not good sci-fi.
Star Trek had an explanation for the similarities of some of the alien races (klingons, humans, …): They were designed by ancient aliens in their image.
As to: “Combined, the staggering planetary diversity and the historic contingencies for life’s evolution have an amazing consequence: there cannot be two planets with identical life forms.”
Actually, although Darwinists have already excluded ‘biological form’ from the modern synthesis as ‘irrelevant’,
, and although Darwinists have no empirical evidence that biological form is explainable by reference to mutations to DNA, (as is envisioned by Darwinists in the modern synthesis),
,, although Darwinists are already at an impasse to explain biological form, in physics there is an even more fundamental reason for why the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution cannot explain biological form, (nor explain any other ‘form’ in, or for, the universe for that matter).
Namely, Godel’s incompleteness theorem has now been extended into quantum physics to show that “even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour”.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings “challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
Moreover, the fact that the reductive materialistic explanations of atheists cannot explain ‘biological form’, (nor any other ‘form’ in, or for, the universe for that matter), is also demonstrated by the failure of the atheistic materialist’s ‘eternal chaotic inflation’ model to explain the “flatness” of space and the near perfect uniformity of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).
In other words, the reductive materialistic explanations of atheists are at an impasse to explain such ‘geometrically simple’ features of a ‘line’ and a ‘circle’ for the universe.
As the following article states, “Two improbable criteria have to be satisfied for inflation to start. First, shortly after the big bang, there has to be a patch of space where the quantum fluctuations of spacetime have died down and the space is well described by Einstein’s classical equations of general relativity; second, the patch of space must be flat enough and have a smooth enough distribution of energy that the inflation energy can grow to dominate all other forms of energy. Several theoretical estimates of the probability of finding a patch with these characteristics just after the big bang suggest that it is more difficult than finding a snowy mountain equipped with a ski lift and well-maintained ski slopes in the middle of a desert.”
“More important, if it were easy to find a patch emerging from the big bang that is flat and smooth enough to start inflation, then inflation would not be needed in the first place. Recall that the entire motivation for introducing it was to explain how the visible universe came to have these properties; if starting inflation requires those same properties, with the only difference being that a smaller patch of space is needed, that is hardly progress.”
As the old joke about atheistic explanations goes, “give me just one miracle and I will explain the rest!” 🙂
Thus, in what should be needless to say, since the reductive materialistic explanations of atheists can’t even coherently explain the ‘geometrically simple’ features of a ‘line’ and a ‘circle’ for the universe, then all hope is lost for reductive materialists ever coherently explaining why any creature in the universe may have its particular biological form. (biological forms which are, obviously, far more ‘geometrically complex’ than a simple line and a circle are)
Moreover, although atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain the ‘geometrically simple’ features of a ‘line’ and a ‘circle’ for the universe, the Bible, on the other hand, is on record as to ‘predicting the universe to be exceptionally flat and round, (thousands of years before those ‘geometrically simple’ features were discovered by modern science for the universe).
Of supplemental note, (from George Ellis no less), as to the (inadequate) ‘bottom up’ explanations of materialists vs. the ‘top down’ explanations of theists.
Again, to repeat and emphasize Ellis’s words, “The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities.”
Thus in conclusion, the reductive materialist who hopes to explain why the universe has the form that it has, or why any creature in the universe may have the particular ‘biological form’ it has, is simply starting from the completely wrong ‘bottom up’ theoretical perspective in the first place in order to ever be able to do so.. As the old joke goes, “You can’t get there from here.”
Verses and video
Even popularized sci-fi for kids was imaginative. In 1959 I had a toy called “Cosmo the Martian”. It was an octopus-like head containing a wheel with 8 suction cups. You pulled a string, winding up the wheel against a spring. Then you put Cosmo on a smooth surface like a refrigerator, and it walked up the wall.
I couldn’t find the toy on Ebay, which told me I must be remembering it wrong. After more thinking, it was called Orby, not Cosmo. And sure enough, Orby is on Ebay.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1960-vintage-tigrett-little-orby-wall-1723740915
Ebay is an infallible memory checker.