The "Drake Equation" about alien life and .....our wars today

Our Blue Marble

I was watching a science documentary today about the "Drake Equation" which is a scientific equation developed in 1961, about the probability of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy.

The Drake equation takes all sorts of data into consideration including the average rate of star formation in our galaxy, the fraction of those stars that have planets, the average number of stars that can support life, the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point, the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space, the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space, the length of time these civilizations exist, etc.

The result of this equation is that there are between 10 to 20 advanced civilizations in our galaxy. Given the fact that our galaxy is 100,000 light years wide, don't expect visits from aliens anytime soon.  


However....Ronald Regan, as President of the U.S.A. in 1988, made his famous "alien speech" at the United Nations.   The speech has become known as his Disarmament Speech and in part reads as follows:

An alien city in another world?

"Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?"

My question is this.... If we ever attacked by an outside alien force, would we all unite and scrap the nonsense about land ownership, oil, nationality, religion and ethnicity? Would we unite as humans?  I sort of doubt it. I have faith in God but not in Man.  Aliens could be ready to wipe us out and take over our resources and our planet and we would all still be arguing about who was in control of our planet, and we would still be "at war", as the aliens were throwing us into the stew-pot and chewing on our bones. 

God help us and save us from warring and disruptive governments and religions. God save us from others.  Let us pray that our planet remains viable and that it is saved for our great grandchildren.