Is there sufficient evidence to conclude that complex life evolved on its own? Is an alternative explanation offered by LDS belief reasonable?

[TheDude]

Is there sufficient evidence to believe complex life could have evolved on its own from non-life without some intelligent creative force?  Is is at all plausible that some intelligent being, perhaps from another universe, could have been the creator of the complex life on our planet (and any other planet in this universe that may have complex life) using evolution as a tool? 

 

I conclude that this possibility is far more likely than complex life arising as a result of random chance.  Random chance only allows for simple events, such as eventually witnessing a Royal Flush in a poker game.  But if you were at a poker game and someone got a Royal Flush each hand, you'd know something was amiss: either someone was cheating, or you weren't playing with a standard 52-set of playing cards.  In that same way, the likelihood that the universe could have produced complex sentient life, such as ourselves, from random chance is so infinitesimally small, that believing that it could have even occurred in that manner would amount to a religious choice.

 

For example, for complex life to exist as a result of random chance, proteins must first exist.  Proteins are produced in our cells according to the instructions within our DNA using the combination of 20 different amino acids.  For a protein to serve its function, its amino acids must be assembled in the correct order, else its structure will not have the necessary molecular bonding capabilities.

 

Alpha amylase, for example, is an enzyme that hydrolyses starch and glycogen.  Compared to muscular proteins like titins, which have over 27,000 amino acids, alpha amylase is a very simple protein with only 496 amino acids.  And yet the likelihood that even a simple protein such as amylase would arise from random chance is 1 in 20 to the 496th power.  The assembly of alpha amylase alone without a designer is so infinitesimally small that it could never happen as a result of random chance.  You'd have a better chance of winning the lottery every single year for decades than you would of alpha amylase being assembled though random chance.  Compound that with all the other proteins and nucleic acids necessary for a complex life form to exist, the the right conditions in which those molecules could have formed, the right assembly of chromosomal pairs necessary for a life form to come into being, the right living conditions to allow for complex life to be assembled before its progenitors were destroyed by terrestrial or astronomical events, and it's essentially impossible for complex life to exist.  And yet it does.

 

It therefore is more plausible to me that life exists because it was designed by an intelligent extraterrestrial creator of some kind.  In LDS doctrine, the universe was created under the direction of God, who himself was created by his own father in an endless cycle.  Expanding upon that, in my conception, God is from another universe and this universe was created by diverging from it in an endless cycle of creation.

[sdelsolray]

Your questions are worthy of discussion.  Your arguments, however, are weak and flawed.  I can't write a meaningful response until the weekend, and I will post one then.  In the meantime, I suggest your research the term accumulation, as that term is used in evolutionary biology, population genetics and related biochemistry.  Once you acknowledge that concept and apply it, your random chance and linear mathematical probability claims will evaporate.

[TheDude]

5 minutes ago, sdelsolray said:

Your questions are worthy of discussion.  Your arguments, however, are weak and flawed.  I can't write a meaningful response until the weekend, and I will post one then.  In the meantime, I suggest your research the term accumulation, as that term is used in evolutionary biology, population genetics and related biochemistry.  Once you acknowledge that concept and apply it, your random chance and linear mathematical probability claims will evaporate.

I've already independently considered the prospects of "accumulation", but given we've never observed anything close to the creation of even simple, single-celled organisms in a laboratory setting, much less in nature completely uninfluenced by artificial processes, it seems improbable that the wheel could have been put into motion to allow for "accumulation" without an intellect far beyond our own getting it started.

 

But yes, if you'd like to respond on the weekend, that's fine.  We all have things to do.

[WalterP]

2 hours ago, TheDude said:

 

 

Alpha amylase, for example, is an enzyme that hydrolyses starch and glycogen.  Compared to muscular proteins like titins, which have over 27,000 amino acids, alpha amylase is a very simple protein with only 496 amino acids.  And yet the likelihood that even a simple protein such as amylase would arise from random chance is 1 in 20 to the 496th power.  The assembly of alpha amylase alone without a designer is so infinitesimally small that it could never happen as a result of random chance.  You'd have a better chance of winning the lottery every single year for decades than you would of alpha amylase being assembled though random chance.  Compound that with all the other proteins and nucleic acids necessary for a complex life form to exist, the the right conditions in which those molecules could have formed, the right assembly of chromosomal pairs necessary for a life form to come into being, the right living conditions to allow for complex life to be assembled before its progenitors were destroyed by terrestrial or astronomical events, and it's essentially impossible for complex life to exist.  And yet it does.

 

 

 

Hello Dude.

 

Could you please cite where you are getting this information on Alpha amylase from?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

[WalterP]

14 hours ago, TheDude said:

 

 

It therefore is more plausible to me that life exists because it was designed by an intelligent extraterrestrial creator of some kind.  In LDS doctrine, the universe was created under the direction of God, who himself was created by his own father in an endless cycle.  Expanding upon that, in my conception, God is from another universe and this universe was created by diverging from it in an endless cycle of creation.

 

Dude,

 

I'd just like to call some of our previous dialogue to you attention, in respect of what you've written above.

 

When I wrote this...

 

Dude,

Thank you for your replies.

I agree that I have to decide for myself what I think is right.

For me, what is right needs to be more than one of many equally implausible and highly subjective interpretations of an ancient book.

It needs to be firmly rooted in what we can objectively test, measure and observe.

Thank you.

Walter.  

 

...you responded by writing this...

 

Your thought process is perfectly reasonable to me.  I'd like to continue this particular conversation in another thread since going into an in depth explanation using science about why I believe there is some kind of higher power (or powers) seems really off topic for this one.  It's getting late, but another day this week I might log in and make a new thread specifically to talk about that subject.

 

You seem to agree that the standard of what we can objectively test, measure and observe is perfectly reasonable to you.  That being so, I'm afraid that there are two things from your lead quote that fall outside of this standard.

 

1.  Since we can only test and measure what comes within the observable portion of our universe the endless cycle of creation is unobservable by us.

 

2. The other universe that your god originates from is also unobservable by us and therefore falls outside of our agreed standard.

 

By definition we can only proceed using what is testable, measurable and observable to us.  Which means that our debate should confine itself to evidence from within that portion of our universe that is observable to us.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter

 

 

 

[midniterider]

11 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

 

I am pretty sure Ganesha created all life and the universe. It makes more sense than lifeless proteins magically assembling themselves into life. And Ganesha is also mentioned in Hindu literature. 

[florduh]

1 hour ago, midniterider said:

I am pretty sure Ganesha created all life and the universe.

I went to high school with Ganesha.

 

[TheDude]

15 hours ago, WalterP said:

 

Hello Dude.

 

Could you please cite where you are getting this information on Alpha amylase from?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

The structure of human pancreatic α‐amylase at 1.8 Å resolution and comparisons with related enzymes (page 1730):

Quote

α-Amylases  catalyze  the hydrolysis of  a-1,4  glucan  linkages in starch  and  are widely distributed in nature, being found in  bacteria,  plants  and  animals.  In  humans,  α-amylase  is composed of 496 amino acids  in a single polypeptide  chain,  which  is encoded on chromosome 1 as part of  a  multigene family (Gumucio et al., 1988).

 

A guide to the twenty common amino acids:

Quote

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins in living organisms. There are over 500 amino acids found in nature - however, the human genetic code only directly encodes 20.

 

Therefore, if there are 496 amino acids that compose alpha amylase and there are 20 amino acids that the body will use to encode it, the likelihood that it could arise from random chance is 1 in 20^496.

[TheDude]

1 hour ago, midniterider said:

 

I am pretty sure Ganesha created all life and the universe. It makes more sense than lifeless proteins magically assembling themselves into life. And Ganesha is also mentioned in Hindu literature. 

Ha!  Clearly you're just having fun, but if you're whimsically picking Hindu deities, why wouldn't you have chosen Brahma, "the Creator"?

[florduh]

Is an alternative explanation offered by LDS belief reasonable?

 

Not if the explanation is "Magic!"

 

This is nothing more than a god of the gaps argument. If you don't understand how something happened, how the moon suddenly turned dark, how the mountain suddenly started spewing molten rock, how the crops failed one year, how complex life came to be... people have always chalked it up to some sort of intervention from the "gods."

 

And though random variations occur, "random" isn't part of the evolutionary process.

 

 

 

[TheDude]

2 hours ago, midniterider said:

It makes more sense than lifeless proteins magically assembling themselves into life.

 

Now, I'd like to point out that the rise of life from random chance is more complex than what either of us have described.  Leaving out the innumerable conditions necessary for life to arise without being destroyed before complex life could evolve, and solely assessing the event itself where a single useful protein arises, first you'd need nucleic acids to code for proteins.  A single strand of DNA in even the simplest human chromosome is made of 50 million nucleotide pairs.  The possibility by random chance that a DNA strand could have come into being in order to code for an RNA strand in order to code for a simple protein from amino acids is infinitesimally small.

You'd have to factor for the likelihood of assembling the DNA strand that could build the RNA strand (let's say that chance is D) and then the likelihood of assembling the correct protein (which we'll say is alpha amylase and assign A as its likelihood).  So we'd have a chance of D^A that the event could occur.  Keep in mind that D dwarfs A by massive orders of magnitude and A already is 20^496 (which is an event so rare that there's no chance it could ever occur naturally), think of just how unlikely D^A would be, which only represents the creation of a single protein from RNA.  Then think about how the human body contains millions of different proteins.  The likelihood that a just pool containing these nucleic acids and all of these proteins could come into being by random chance is so infinitesimally small that the universe would probably cease to exist before it could happen.

[TheDude]

12 minutes ago, florduh said:

Not if the explanation is "Magic!"

The explanation is not magic.  The explanation is that existing life was designed by another life form of superior intelligence in an endless cycle.

 

14 minutes ago, florduh said:

And though random variations occur, "random" isn't part of the evolutionary process.

I disagree on two fronts.

First, I am assuming you're including the idea of "abiogenesis" as part of the evolutionary process.  Life coming from non-life without the intervention of life absolutely would require random chance that is so small that it couldn't happen.

Now, further up the evolutionary chain, it makes sense that the bodies of a species could specialize due to variation in their genes.  As an example, a species that relies on hunting for survival might, over time, get larger due to the survival of those animals that are larger in size, displacing the genes of the smaller varieties of the same species.  That's not random chance, that's survival of pre-existing genes that are more advantageous.  But for a new gene to develop in a population that allows for better survival, random chance certainly is involved.  That random chance is far more likely to happen than life coming from non-life, but it's there nonetheless.

[florduh]

12 minutes ago, TheDude said:

...the rise of life from random chance...

Stop using that phrase. It is misleading and completely inaccurate.

[florduh]

2 minutes ago, TheDude said:

First, I am assuming you're including the idea of "abiogenesis" as part of the evolutionary process.

Stop it. Those are two completely different subjects.

[TheDude]

2 minutes ago, florduh said:

Stop using that phrase. It is misleading and completely inaccurate.

Can you explain how it's inaccurate?

 

1 minute ago, florduh said:

Stop it. Those are two completely different subjects.

The subjects that are related to each other.  For life to evolve from basic to complex life, first it has to arise.  If you believe that life came from non-life without the intervention of a life form, if not random chance, to what do you attribute it?

[midniterider]

 

33 minutes ago, TheDude said:

 

Now, I'd like to point out that the rise of life from random chance is more complex than what either of us have described.  Leaving out the innumerable conditions necessary for life to arise without being destroyed before complex life could evolve, and solely assessing the event itself where a single useful protein arises, first you'd need nucleic acids to code for proteins.  A single strand of DNA in even the simplest human chromosome is made of 50 million nucleotide pairs.  The possibility by random chance that a DNA strand could have come into being in order to code for an RNA strand in order to code for a simple protein from amino acids is infinitesimally small.

You'd have to factor for the likelihood of assembling the DNA strand that could build the RNA strand (let's say that chance is D) and then the likelihood of assembling the correct protein (which we'll say is alpha amylase and assign A as its likelihood).  So we'd have a chance of D^A that the event could occur.  Keep in mind that D dwarfs A by massive orders of magnitude and A already is 20^496 (which is an event so rare that there's no chance it could ever occur naturally), think of just how unlikely D^A would be, which only represents the creation of a single protein from RNA.  Then think about how the human body contains millions of different proteins.  The likelihood that a just pool containing these nucleic acids and all of these proteins could come into being by random chance is so infinitesimally small that the universe would probably cease to exist before it could happen.

 

Which is why I feel Ganesha created all things. The orthodox Hindus may believe it was Brahma, but I have another testament of Hinduism.

[TheDude]

Just now, midniterider said:

 

 

Which is why I feel Ganesha created all things. The orthodox Hindus may believe it was Brahma, but I have another testament of Hinduism.

You certainly know how to keep a discussion entertaining.  

[Joshpantera]

21 hours ago, TheDude said:

Is there sufficient evidence to believe complex life could have evolved on its own from non-life without some intelligent creative force?  Is is at all plausible that some intelligent being, perhaps from another universe, could have been the creator of the complex life on our planet (and any other planet in this universe that may have complex life) using evolution as a tool? 

 

It's possible. But only leads to the next question. What intelligent creative force was "necessary" to create it, in order for it to create us???

 

21 hours ago, TheDude said:

I conclude that this possibility is far more likely than complex life arising as a result of random chance. 

 

And what went into the intelligent creative force that created us??? Chance or something else brought it into existence???

 

21 hours ago, TheDude said:

It therefore is more plausible to me that life exists because it was designed by an intelligent extraterrestrial creator of some kind.  In LDS doctrine, the universe was created under the direction of God, who himself was created by his own father in an endless cycle.  Expanding upon that, in my conception, God is from another universe and this universe was created by diverging from it in an endless cycle of creation.

 

Again, if life and complex life can not exist 'without an extraterrestrial creator,' and the extraterrestrial creator is alive, who far down do these "turtles" go????

 

Universes all the way down???

 

Creators all the way down???

 

Where do you think that it ends, or can it not possibly end???

 

Are there endless extraterrestrial creators responsible for each case of life and complex life into infinite regression???

[Joshpantera]

We are going to have to walk this down to Genesis by way of whatever interpretation you DO prefer. Literalistic, symbolic, or otherwise. You have to use it to then get to the claim that the biblical "gods" are the one's responsible for complex life on this planet. 

 

Why are the biblical gods the correct answer through the interpretations of the LDS church???

 

We have a mystery and it's complex life. 

 

You have to show how the LDS church is more logical or has more merit than secular scientific theories. 

[TheDude]

1 hour ago, Joshpantera said:

It's possible. But only leads to the next question. What intelligent creative force was "necessary" to create it, in order for it to create us??? [...] And what went into the intelligent creative force that created us??? Chance or something else brought it into existence???

I'd say it would be an endless cycle of universe creation after a child grows to be like his father and becomes the creator of his own distinct universe after billions of years.

1 hour ago, Joshpantera said:

Again, if life and complex life can not exist 'without an extraterrestrial creator,' and the extraterrestrial creator is alive, who far down do these "turtles" go????

 

Universes all the way down???

 

Creators all the way down???

 

Where do you think that it ends, or can it not possibly end???

 

Are there endless extraterrestrial creators responsible for each case of life and complex life into infinite regression???

 

Yes.  If many scientists believe that the universe expands forever and has no spatial beginning or end, how it it unreasonable to think that the creation of universes has no temporal beginning or end?

 

 

1 hour ago, Joshpantera said:

We are going to have to walk this down to Genesis by way of whatever interpretation you DO prefer. Literalistic, symbolic, or otherwise. You have to use it to then get to the claim that the biblical "gods" are the one's responsible for complex life on this planet. 

 

Why are the biblical gods the correct answer through the interpretations of the LDS church???

 

We have a mystery and it's complex life.

 

You have to show how the LDS church is more logical or has more merit than secular scientific theories.

 

Regardless of whether you accept scripture as having any authority whatsoever, I believe my explanation of the universe's formation by an intelligent creator of sufficient scientific, technological, and moral advancement answers questions that atheism does not.

 

My first point of business is trying to identify whether or not the existence of a being sufficiently advanced to be considered a god exists.  Beyond the near certainty I have that life (let alone complex life) could not arise from nonlife because of biological improbabilities, I think there are astrophysical reasons as well.  At some point, I'd like to get into those, but until the biological improbabilities are addressed, I think I will focus on trying to determine the identity of who this intelligent creator is.

[TheDude]

Now let's start an analysis of Genesis (or rather, game of speculation) since I know you want to go there.

 

 

Quote

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that through the Spirit of God, Moses had a vision where he saw the life of the Earth from its early stages.  It seems to me that if he were given a daylong vision of the primordial Earth before the planet Theia collided with it, he would probably see:

1. A "formless" Earth without major landmasses covered in a largely molten surface, including water.
2. A thick atmosphere caused by volcanic outgassing and thick water vapor due to hotter conditions.  This, coupled with the Sun's substantially lower intensity could have limited its visibility while some level of light from it was making it through the atmosphere, allowing day and night cycles to be perceivable.
3. No moon because it wasn't yet formed by the collision of Theia.

 

Quote

6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

The word "raqia", translated "expanse" in the ESV, may have meant something like "solid canopy", but we don't know that.  Continuing with the theory that Moses is seeing a vision, and this time skipped forward into another daylong period, it may be describing the formation of atmosphere thin enough that stars now could have been visible, though Moses would not have understood the physics of what he was seeing.  If Moses were indeed using the word "raqia" to mean "solid canopy", I think this can be forgiven due to his lack of scientific understanding.  Well-educated people refer to "sunrise" and "sunset" despite the fact that the Sun doesn't in fact rise or set in the sky, but rather, it appears to do so from our vantage point due to the Earth's rotation around it.

 

Quote

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

 

11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

I don't think these verses require much commentary.  If Moses' vision were moved forward in time for another daylong period,  he may have observed land masses on the surface of the planet and along with plants.

 

Quote

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

It seems to me that verses 14-19 must be out of the natural sequence of what Moses may have been viewing, because it is not logical that plant life could have arisen on the surface of the Earth before the appearance of the Sun and Moon.  Perhaps Moses didn't remember the sequence correctly?  Perhaps God showed it to him out of sequence because Moses asked a question about when plants came into being?  When children watch movies, sometimes they don't watch them in linear order.

 

I am going to stop my speculative game for now because it's getting very late.

[WalterP]

8 hours ago, TheDude said:

 

The structure of human pancreatic α‐amylase at 1.8 Å resolution and comparisons with related enzymes (page 1730):

 

A guide to the twenty common amino acids:

 

Therefore, if there are 496 amino acids that compose alpha amylase and there are 20 amino acids that the body will use to encode it, the likelihood that it could arise from random chance is 1 in 20^496.

 

Thank you Dude.

 

I see that you reply breaks down into two parts.

 

The science in the linked articles and your personal speculations based upon the science.

 

Please remember that the standard of what we can test, measure and observe was perfectly agreeable to you.

 

Your personal speculations fall outside of that standard.

 

Therefore, I do not find your argument persuasive.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

[WalterP]

8 hours ago, TheDude said:

 

Now, I'd like to point out that the rise of life from random chance is more complex than what either of us have described.  Leaving out the innumerable conditions necessary for life to arise without being destroyed before complex life could evolve, and solely assessing the event itself where a single useful protein arises, first you'd need nucleic acids to code for proteins.  A single strand of DNA in even the simplest human chromosome is made of 50 million nucleotide pairs.  The possibility by random chance that a DNA strand could have come into being in order to code for an RNA strand in order to code for a simple protein from amino acids is infinitesimally small.

You'd have to factor for the likelihood of assembling the DNA strand that could build the RNA strand (let's say that chance is D) and then the likelihood of assembling the correct protein (which we'll say is alpha amylase and assign A as its likelihood).  So we'd have a chance of D^A that the event could occur.  Keep in mind that D dwarfs A by massive orders of magnitude and A already is 20^496 (which is an event so rare that there's no chance it could ever occur naturally), think of just how unlikely D^A would be, which only represents the creation of a single protein from RNA.  Then think about how the human body contains millions of different proteins.  The likelihood that a just pool containing these nucleic acids and all of these proteins could come into being by random chance is so infinitesimally small that the universe would probably cease to exist before it could happen.

 

I must agree with Florduh, Dude.

 

You are not confining yourself to the standard you agreed with - that of what is testable, measurable and observable.

 

You are invoking magic and engaging in unwarranted personal speculation.

 

Please conform to your agreed standard.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

[Joshpantera]

6 hours ago, TheDude said:

I'd say it would be an endless cycle of universe creation after a child grows to be like his father and becomes the creator of his own distinct universe after billions of years.

 

Yes.  If many scientists believe that the universe expands forever and has no spatial beginning or end, how it it unreasonable to think that the creation of universes has no temporal beginning or end?

 

 

 

Regardless of whether you accept scripture as having any authority whatsoever, I believe my explanation of the universe's formation by an intelligent creator of sufficient scientific, technological, and moral advancement answers questions that atheism does not.

 

My first point of business is trying to identify whether or not the existence of a being sufficiently advanced to be considered a god exists.  Beyond the near certainty I have that life (let alone complex life) could not arise from nonlife because of biological improbabilities, I think there are astrophysical reasons as well.  At some point, I'd like to get into those, but until the biological improbabilities are addressed, I think I will focus on trying to determine the identity of who this intelligent creator is.

 

I'm with you on the issue of something = something. We can't step it back philosophically and have something arising from true nothing at any point. But this points us back to existence itself as eternal. It's more akin to Brahman and less akin to YHWH in the philosophical sense. And not literally either, to be frank. The reason I saw more akin to Brahman is because the idea is that existence itself is an immanent and transcendent energy consciousness out of which all things arise. Energy and consciousness forming 'itself' into the universe and world that we too are an aspect thereof. 

 

The scenario is one where everything is interconnected and whole. It deals with consciousness in ways that run far deeper than you're touching on by looking to the LDS church. When you delve into these philosophical levels there is always an issue of the containment versus the contained. And that amounts in a religious to the god versus the god above the god. Brahman is something like a god above a lessor god. The containment itself is always greater than that which is contained 'within.' If YHWH is viewed as a extraterrestrial being, corporeal, and essentially something which is NOT existence itself but rather something that exists within existence, then there is always something greater yet to be contemplated. The pantheism is always there. It's always a consideration. Especially where the questions of absolute and ultimate's is concerned. 

 

And life and complex life is always going to wrapped up into the framework of this greater contemplation. The pantheistic framework contemplation. What I've alleged over the years in mystical, philosophical terms, is that the pantheistic oriented framework will always consume anything lesser - monotheistic, polytheistic, or whatever. And this applies to the LDS church and it's elaborate imaginations. It could be true that extraterrestrials have always been around. Sure, why not? Maybe even interfering with, manipulating, or creating life in places suited for it. 

 

But none of this touches on the questions of absolute or ultimate. The only connection between us, extraterrestrials, and absolute reality is going to have to go in pantheistic direction that explains the existence of the both us and the extraterrestrials. Or any "corporeal beings," against the larger context and framework of what any corporeal beings exists within the scheme thereof. The vedic tradition provides a sense of self identification and self awareness with the whole - viewed by them as Brahman. People are derived from Brahman. So are the pantheon of gods in Hinduism. They are going into reaches deeper than where the LDS, via Joseph Smith, a character not unlike Zachariah Stichin, has taken it the ancient aliens theories. But even then, we have to acknowledge that the ancient aliens were not YHWH and yeshua, but the Anunaki and such. Again, none of which even begin to tough on the questions of absolute or ultimate. 

 

So what's the god part about it? Just because an intelligent being can go around creating things that makes it god? That seems to be the real problem you're facing here. It's only a lesser god by default against the larger framework of an ultimate reality scenario. And the more you look at it, the less of a god issue it becomes. If we advance, travel through space, and start planting life in suitable regions, does that really make us gods? Or just aspects of a much greater ultimate reality which always overshadows our own individual or "corporeal" existences?