From a speech on global warming:

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof.

As mentioned, Crichton moves on to argue that this acceptance of SETI-religion paved the way for a far less amusing "popular religion among urban atheists" -- global warming. By accepting (I would say) what Richard Feynman would have termed "cargo cult science" regarding alien life — look there are equations, and serious-looking "scientists" are telling us they have reached a consensus! — we were softened up to accept quite another.

I will miss Michael Crichton. Not for his writing or movies — his novels were mostly fun adventure fluff, with a bit of exaggerated science (he was always honest on this point) — but rather because he was one of small number of atheists who could spot a religion when he saw one — much to the consternation of the secular "fundamentalists" he sometimes skewered.

And I have no problem, as both my remaining regular readers know, with people believing unprovable things. Everyone does, including (or perhaps even especially) atheists. But one should know one is doing so, and be honest about that. My own articles of faith concern the afterlife. You may disagree, but I'm not going to kill someone for them. Global Warmingists, on the other hand, are quite ready to expend human blood for their faith.

God bless you, Michael Crichton. You were one of my favorite atheists.

And, if you aren't familiar with that particular essay, you might want to read it. It is, in my opinion, far more significant than Jurassic Park.