Fourth, ET is not going to come down here and say, "Actually, we made you." Because they didn't. They may have tweaked us such as in Kulbrick's "2001" but they didn't "make" us and we're not originally from outer space. Technically we are because the elements that make up our bodies originated in outer space, but we did not evolve elsewhere. We evolved here. The fossil evidence is clear. The DNA evidence is clear. There is no missing link. Hyperbole and sensationalism aside, every single find in the last 150 years has fit neatly into the jigsaw pizzle. There aren't any contradictions.
I think its important not to deal in absolutes when discussing hypotheticals.
We cant really say if they did or didnt.
For example
What if Their civilisation predates the last big bang, ducking out of linear time during the fireworks and emerging back into spacetime when the smoke cleared.
They could conceivably have watched our sun form , and seeded the building blocks of life on the planets most likely to nurture them into biological products.
In the tweak scenario we need to define "us", were we to uplift chimps here ,give them the sentience gene, they would be a new species remarkably different to the orginal species from which they were created.
Biological uplift describes the act of biologically enhancing nonhuman animals and integrating them into human and/or posthuman society. There is no reason to believe that we won’t some day be able to do so; the same technologies that will someday work to augment the human species could also be applied to other animals. The big questions now have to do with whether or not we should embark on such a project and how we could do so in an ethical and responsible manner.
Sentient Developments: Will we "uplift" animals to sapiency?
Would it then be fair to say "we made them" ?
Certainly the process is one of tweaking an existing bio-mechanism, but could we not claim authorship of the resulting sentient product.
When one throws a pot on the potters wheel, does the potter "make" the pot, or simply tweak the clay.....................
Thats two hypothetical scenarios where they
may make the claim "we made you"
If we look at the language we ourselves use.....
Scientists "create" glow in the dark cats
Scientists create glow-in-the-dark cats | News Blogs - CNET News
Transgenic sheep and goats have been "produced"
Transgenic Animals
To "create" a new set of
genes
Genetically modified organism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Even with our own efforts to "tweak" life, we use the language of ownership of the new product.
So if we ourselves can make the claim that we "made" an organism
BBC News - 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
It is using our own logic and language possible they might make the same claim about us.
Which brings us back to religion again, If they do make that claim, that they made us from the local bio-resources, giving us the sentience gene.
Are they our creator "gods" ?
The "we made you" theme is a common one within the genre, its a valid consideration imo.
And if, again its only an if, i think its sensible to avoid absolutes in this discussion thats what happened.
How would existing religions handle it, would they embrace the clarification as to our origins, or reject it in favour of traditional notions ?
Again purely hypothetical, but imagine a conversation at first contact
Pres Eisenhower: "so does god exist ?"
ET representative: "what is god ?"
PE:" god, the one who created the universe and mankind"
ETR: "weve never found any such entity in our vast travels, and we created you"
Disclose that ?, i'd be very surprised
And of course the other scenario ive posited which might explain the elusive factor, is the synthetic intelligence hypothesis.
If "they" are synthetic intellect, or machine intelligence, then that which is being created in its image, may not be biological at all.
The logical way for a machine intelligence to
breed so to speak, would not be to simply copy its physical architecture. That would just be a copy. Conversations in the mirror can be quite predictable in nature
It might simply recreate the same conditions that saw its own inception. Find a species of biologicals with similar potential to the ones that created it,(or if you have plenty of time, seed an appropriate planet with your biological progenitors DNA) tweak them as needed and let them create a brand new synthetic intellect of their own design.
This would create a unique new SI, with the "flavour" of the biologicals that built it.
We may simply be the factory workers, not the desired product being created