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About the time that Francis Crick began to speculate about an extraterrestrial source of life on Earth, the very same idea became popularized by Erich von Daniken in his book, Chariots of the Gods. As evidence for this theory, von Daniken—and more recently Zecharia Sitchin—recounted a number of myths which speak of the ancient visitations of beings from the heavens who came to Earth and interacted with, even interbred with, mankind. In addition, because ancient man worshiped these extraterrestrials as gods, von Daniken and others believe that these ancient astronauts were the very creators of life on Earth. While many believe that von Daniken and Sitchin have introduced a viable theory into the question of life's origin, in reality it does not come close to solving the problem of life's origin. It only pushes the question back one more planet: If ETs made us, then who made them? The deficiency of the ancient astronaut theory for the origin of life on Earth was also noted in 1996 by Michael Behe: "... The interesting part of Crick's idea is the role of the aliens, whom he has speculated sent space bacteria to Earth. . . . This scenario still leaves open the question of who designed the designer [the aliens]}—how did life originally originate?’ This point is well taken. While the notion that life arose on Earth by "intelligent seeding" does provide a tentative answer for the origin of life on Earth, it does not answer the ultimate question: How did life /zrs¢ arise within the dimensions of our space-time domain? If the chemical conditions and the laws of nature are insufficient to explain the origin of life on the early Earth, then what options remain? If we believe that life was delivered here from ancient astronauts, then how did they arise? If we assume that they arose by Darwin-like spontaneous generation on another planet somewhere in the cosmos, then we must assume that the laws of chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, and mathematical probability are different elsewhere. The assertion that somewhere else in the universe the laws of physics and chemistry are more favorable for the origin of life is not supported by a shred of scientific evidence. To invoke such an explanation is an appeal to something outside the bounds of natural laws—i.e., a metaphysical, supernatural cause. Except under the very exotic boundary conditions of a black hole, the laws of chemistry and physics appear uniform throughout the cosmos. If we are to assume that the laws of physics and chemistry are essentially uniform throughout the physical universe, and that those laws alone are insufficient to explain life on Earth, then we must conclude that life could not have arisen by chance anywhere in the universe. Since this is true, then the only other option is that the source of life in the universe must be an extradimensional one—in effect, an extradimensional Creator, independent of our space-time An. domain. Even if the laws of physics were found to be more favorable in a distant corner of the universe, and those laws could explain the origin of the incredibly complex biomolecules found in living systems, there would still be no natural explanation for the coded information (which does not arise by chance) that is carried by the DNA molecule. This is a point which is often ignored by origins researchers. The DNA molecule "carries" billions of bits of digital information which, when retrieved, calls for the production of trillions of cellular components, each of which is an "exquisitely designed piece of intricate molecular machinery."!* In the real world of engineering, biotechnology, and information science, the amount of information needed to create a machine (which living cells certainly are by any definition of the 79 CHARIOTS OF THE GODS?