As regards SCM Steve called him on the antenna but not enough I think.
The antenna is proposing something else apart from our brains, does he have evidence? I'm sure Steve has plenty of professional evidence of consciousness being altered by alteration to the brain. Sure it may be like a radio, but if you can't show me radio waves, or a transmitter, I get the feeling I'm being bullshitted.
He also seemed to chuck in argument from design at the end, Hume would turn in his grave, let alone Darwin. Okay he says he isn't a philosopher, but this is basic stuff. Skepdic article on design is excellent. Following Darrow we should consign argument from design to the "fallacies" list, or file under begging the question, unless there is something novel to the argument. In analogy to the antenna above, without evidence of a designer, or a of a design to show me I get the feeling I'm being bullshitted. Beyond the pantheistic wow isn't it wonderful to be alive (some of the time), aren't the stars pretty, there doesn't seem to be much substance.
http://www.skepdic.com/design.htmlI think sociable insects are worth bearing in mind on the discussion of convergent evolution. How similar are you as a primate to a colony of ants? Sure there are convergent aspects, Ant fight wars (competition for resource). We share some basic anatomy with individual ants, but it is hard to separate that from common descent (i.e. they have the same genes controlling their body form as we do). Ants build accommodation. But in some big biological ways they are already so very divergent, some species are blind, some have two sorts of eyes, they have exoskeletons, six legs, antenna (not the mystical consciousness kind), as with many social insects fertility is not universal across individuals. They live in great colonies which we've come to mimic only by using technological aids. Remember ants and us share a relatively close common ancestor, and they have lived in exactly the same conditions as us. So we share a great deal of genetic material. Whilst I agree there are general forces for convergence, and there are solutions that evolution will hit on (optimality isn't necessary, if there is an evolutionary path from small beneficial adaption, to larger beneficial adaption evolution will fall down the easy path, even if the resulting solution is far from optimal - ask anyone creating genetic algorithms. So we might even meet aliens with eyes that are as lousy as the arrangement of our own eyes, or worse (perhaps it was a foggy/dark planet and better eyes weren't worth the investment).
These general forces have produced animals as similar as homosapiens and ants that farm fungus, and I'm not going out to the further reaches of animal evolution here, just one of the other big success stories by body weight. If we are just comparing life forms rather than animals, compare yourself to a slime mould. So whilst alien life could have striking similarities, I think also it could be strikingly more different from us than we are from slime moulds. Life we are likely to want to hold a conversation with on the other hand might much more similar to us, but so far we've spectacularly failed to have interesting conversations with most of the other intelligent species on earth, and it strikes me as highly likely, depending who finds who, that one species or the other may be much more intelligent than the other or have other reasons not to engage in a productive conversation.
I agree with the assessment that SCM is simply trying to make room for his religion.
