Cosmic Archaeology: Taking the Sting Out of the Drake Equation

Here's a clever way of taking the sting out the Drake equation. Frank Drake's work has previously been a stumbling block for materialist understandings of the cosmos. As Tom Bethell has explained ("The Anxious Search for Extraterrestrials"):

Frank Drake, a Cornell astronomer, took it upon himself to demonstrate that life arising by chance was highly probable. By 1959, scientists could listen for signals from aliens using radio telescopes and a listening post was set up in West Virginia. Drak...