Azpod,
I think you misunderstood my post, slightly. I'm certain that the authors
of Rare Earth had the best of intentions and I agree with you that many
good questions about conditions necessary for the emergence of life were
raised in their book. But neither the article in SI, David Darling, nor I
were questioning the motives of the authors of the book Rare Earth.
The person's motives that are being questioned are those of Guillermo Gonzalez.
Whom the authors acknowledge in the books preface as having changed many
of our views about planets and habitable zones.
What bothers me is that Gonzalez has an Earth-is-unique religious agenda of which the authors of Rare Earth were unaware. Even Rare Earth author Peter
Ward expressed concerns about Gonzalez's theistic agenda and asked Gonzalez
for an explanation. Part of Gonzalez's reply is quoted in my original post.
Also in his reply to Ward, as quoted in the SI article, Gonzalez says that (he recently received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to study habitability from a design perspective.)
IMO any hypothesis put forward that is later found to have been significantly influenced by someone with a hidden agenda, an agenda that was unknown to the hypothesis author(s) should be looked at from a critical perspective.
That does not mean the original hypothesis is wrong only that it should be reexamined. And that is apparently what Darling does in his book, which I'm looking forward to reading.

One last thing, the field of astrobiology is all speculation at this point.
But hopefully in the next few decades we'll penetrate the surface of the ice moons of Jupiter and Saturn and perhaps find some exotic form of aquatic life. Or perhaps we'll find traces of industrial smog in the atmosphere of an earth type extrasolor planet. Better yet, how about a verifiable SETI signal. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: stargirl on 2001-12-01 22:45 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: stargirl on 2001-12-01 23:11 ]</font>