Does the existence of aliens change your belief in God and/or your religion?

[Guy Threepwood]

Only because, at that time, we didn't have the technology to send rovers. At least not like now. During that time, people were the most reliable forms of observation we had.

hmm- but probes started reaching the moon a decade before people- eventually taking good clear pictures and testing the surface, everything was pretty much already discovered about the moon before the vastly more expensive, risky, task of landing people- mostly for it's own sake yes?

Likewise today, unmanned craft can tell us everything we need to know about Mars, but we still desire, plan, a manned mission.

An illogical waste of money we could argue, with nothing new to be learned- why wouldn't aliens have the same illogical curiosity to experience Earth for themselves?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

We are only able to explore a tiny piece of the universe, so why would the lack of encounters lead you to believe that life only exists on earth?

Its the math as well, mainly perhaps

Maybe we can only explore a tiny piece - but what about all those hypothetical aliens?
Any one single alien civilization with tech. little better than ours, could have colonized the entire galaxy many times over by now, Earth would have been a very attractive piece of real estate.

Ancient alien theories not withstanding, this apparently never happened, why not?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Why would you assume that any civilization of aliens would be 1) more advanced than us and/or 2) be able to travel the cosmos. Even if they could travel near to the speed of light, it is most likely that they still wouldn't be able to make it here. If there is life, it is most likely that we will not be able to make contact in our lifetimes.

I was using the poster's premise of aliens, I don't think they exist.

But again, the point is that the galaxy has been around for billions of years, plenty time to be colonized over and over again, if technological civilizations were anything but either extremely rare or non existent.

i.e. claiming they exist, but are too rare and/or shy to encounter any trace of- direct or indirect - sounds a little like Bigfoot- a believer is forced to walk a pretty fine line to account for the lack of evidence

 

[Parsimony]

It's obviously not something we can nail down- but we are not without some rough numbers to throw in

There is a rough consensus of about 10^22 stars in the observable universe yes?, perhaps a few more, maybe several more zeros for the unobservable- that's still a long way from infinity
But that's one side of the equation- the other side, the odds against- keeps growing the more we learn.

The vast majority of stars are in dense/ multiple/ chaotic clusters, not nice orderly suburbs of a grand design galaxy like ours-
then most are too hot/short lived or too small cold, not a stable main sequence star
Then you have a very long list for the planet- habitable zone, large rotating iron core radiation shield- ratio of elements, ratio of land and water-
the improbability of a single massive satellite stabilizing rotation of a small rocky inner planet- just to name a few.

An intelligent species doesn't necessarily have to live in the same conditions as we do. It's not too hard to conceive of life living on a place like Europa, where it would be shielded from radiation in an ocean under miles of ice.

After all that- you still only have one species out of millions that develops intelligence (as SETI might define it)
i.e. we could find a million planets identical to Earth, and not find intelligence on any, far more likely the physically dominant species that ruled our planet for so long right?

1 in a million = 6 zeros removed from the 22- you can get to zero very easily without even using all the odds against

Saying "1 in a million chance on Earth equals 1 in a million chance on all habitable planets in the visible universe" makes no mathematical sense.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

An intelligent species doesn't necessarily have to live in the same conditions as we do. It's not too hard to conceive of life living on a place like Europa, where it would be shielded from radiation in an ocean under miles of ice.

Saying "1 in a million chance on Earth equals 1 in a million chance on all habitable planets in the visible universe" makes no mathematical sense.

Life Jim but not as we know it.. is a good premise for writing science fiction, but we really don't have any good reason to suspect that complex life can thrive in conditions any different than Earth.

The universe all came from the same place, it's made of the same stuff- a large chunk of all possible environments can be found right here in this solar system, many right here on Earth, - where even surrounded by complex life, it has never been able to adapt to the conditions, far less originate in those environments.

 

[leibowde84]

Its the math as well, mainly perhaps

Maybe we can only explore a tiny piece - but what about all those hypothetical aliens?
Any one single alien civilization with tech. little better than ours, could have colonized the entire galaxy many times over by now, Earth would have been a very attractive piece of real estate.

Ancient alien theories not withstanding, this apparently never happened, why not?

Because you are using obviously false premises. Our technology is not even remotely close to being able to "populate the galaxy". It is absurd to suggest that we are even close theoretically, as our galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter. Even going the speed of light, traveling from one end to the other would take approximately 1,250 human lifetimes (80 yrs.). So, even theoretically, the idea of "populating our galaxy" is not even a future possibility (without the use of wormholes, which may or may not exist). So, your point here is severely flawed. You are making the erroneous assumption that the technology needed for traveling even to other stars is within our future grasp.

Chances are, if there is intelligent life out there, it is either not as technologically advanced and won't be able to contact us, or they are more advanced, but travel to our planet from theirs is simply impossible.

 

[leibowde84]

I was using the poster's premise of aliens, I don't think they exist.

But again, the point is that the galaxy has been around for billions of years, plenty time to be colonized over and over again, if technological civilizations were anything but either extremely rare or non existent.

i.e. claiming they exist, but are too rare and/or shy to encounter any trace of- direct or indirect - sounds a little like Bigfoot- a believer is forced to walk a pretty fine line to account for the lack of evidence

Populating the galaxy could very well be impossible for us and any other civilization. Why would you assume that it would be.

 

[leibowde84]

hmm- but probes started reaching the moon a decade before people- eventually taking good clear pictures and testing the surface, everything was pretty much already discovered about the moon before the vastly more expensive, risky, task of landing people- mostly for it's own sake yes?

Likewise today, unmanned craft can tell us everything we need to know about Mars, but we still desire, plan, a manned mission.

An illogical waste of money we could argue, with nothing new to be learned- why wouldn't aliens have the same illogical curiosity to experience Earth for themselves?

We gained a ridiculous amount of new scientific understanding from the Apollo missions.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Depends. If they're aliens like the Goa'uld who took on the personae of ancient deities to gain power it'd make me question everything I believed. Did I really worship a genuine god or an alien masquerading as one?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Because you are using obviously false premises. Our technology is not even remotely close to being able to "populate the galaxy". It is absurd to suggest that we are even close theoretically, as our galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter. Even going the speed of light, traveling from one end to the other would take approximately 1,250 human lifetimes (80 yrs.). So, even theoretically, the idea of "populating our galaxy" is not even a future possibility (without the use of wormholes, which may or may not exist). So, your point here is severely flawed. You are making the erroneous assumption that the technology needed for traveling even to other stars is within our future grasp.

Chances are, if there is intelligent life out there, it is either not as technologically advanced and won't be able to contact us, or they are more advanced, but travel to our planet from theirs is simply impossible.

Our planet is 24,900 miles in circumference, at an average speed of .01 mph, walking around it would take an ant approximately 2,000 ant lifetimes (50 days).

hence it is absurd to suggest ants are even remotely close theoretically to being able to populate the planet!

perhaps they discovered wormholes?

 

[viole]

I was using the poster's premise of aliens, I don't think they exist.

But again, the point is that the galaxy has been around for billions of years, plenty time to be colonized over and over again, if technological civilizations were anything but either extremely rare or non existent.

i.e. claiming they exist, but are too rare and/or shy to encounter any trace of- direct or indirect - sounds a little like Bigfoot- a believer is forced to walk a pretty fine line to account for the lack of evidence

Does that fine line include humans living three days in a big fish?

Ciao

- viole

 

[leibowde84]

Our planet is 24,900 miles in circumference, at an average speed of .01 mph, walking around it would take an ant approximately 2,000 ant lifetimes (50 days).

hence it is absurd to suggest ants are even remotely close theoretically to being able to populate the planet!

perhaps they discovered wormholes?

I'm not sure what you are claiming here with the ants comment. It has no relevance to the discussion at hand, as the lands of the earth were at one point connected. Solar systems in the milky way, however, are not, and there is a limit to how fast any object can travel. Thus, the "population of the galaxy" would not be possible unless it had spread throughout over billions of years (no evidence to support this or even speculate that it would be the case) or wormholes (which are speculative theoretical concepts not supported by any actual evidence). Theoretically they are possible, but there is no reason to assume they exist.

See, your assumptions about based on nothing but speculation and flawed reasoning.

 

[viole]

Our planet is 24,900 miles in circumference, at an average speed of .01 mph, walking around it would take an ant approximately 2,000 ant lifetimes (50 days).

hence it is absurd to suggest ants are even remotely close theoretically to being able to populate the planet!

perhaps they discovered wormholes?

Probably. When I went to Australia, i think I spotted some ants.

How they managed to swim there after the flood is left as a simple exercise for the reader.

Ciao

- viole

 

[leibowde84]

Its the math as well, mainly perhaps

Maybe we can only explore a tiny piece - but what about all those hypothetical aliens?
Any one single alien civilization with tech. little better than ours, could have colonized the entire galaxy many times over by now, Earth would have been a very attractive piece of real estate.

Ancient alien theories not withstanding, this apparently never happened, why not?

I still can't get over this. Where do you get the absurd and obviously erroneous assumption that with "tech a little better than ours" we could populate the galaxy. I've never heard anyone make such an assumption, but do you have any evidence to support this beyond mere speculation?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I still can't get over this. Where do you get the absurd and obviously erroneous assumption that with "tech a little better than ours" we could populate the galaxy. I've never heard anyone make such an assumption, but do you have any evidence to support this beyond mere speculation?

don't give up too fast! the part of the equation you are missing of course is time, that's why ants were able to colonize something larger than the galaxy relative to their speed and lifespan.

The galaxy has been around for a little while now

Actually even with 1969 Apollo speeds, say 90,000 mph, any single alien civilization could have colonized the entire galaxy hundreds of times over by now

 

[George Manuel Oliveira]

Wow...

Some people would like to assume that intelligent life has to be like humans living on Earth?

There are literally trillions upon trillions upon trillions of planets in just our observable universe, according to science, and scientists don't even know how big the unobserved universe is. The whole universe could be infinite or there could be a multiverse as some scientists posit.

Scientists don't know what to believe yet, but many favor the idea of ET life in our universe, because the odds are in favor of ET.

~PEACE~

 

[notsoplainJane]

No it doesn't change my belief system. If God made this whole vast universe, why would he put life only on one teeny tiny little insignificant planet in a corner somewhere and leave the rest of it empty. I don't believe he did. I just believe humans don't have the technology yet to see other life.

 

[George Manuel Oliveira]

No it doesn't change my belief system. If God made this whole vast universe, why would he put life only on one teeny tiny little insignificant planet in a corner somewhere and leave the rest of it empty. I don't believe he did. I just believe humans don't have the technology yet to see other life.

Yes, I concur!

Or, maybe, we have seen extraterrestrial civilizations or entities, but the government keeps the disclosure top secret and us pee-ons are not privvy to the esoteric secrets? That's totally plausible, too, knowing that the government keeps copious amounts of secrets from us sheeple people?

I would imagine that the government is decades more advanced than the private sector.

If you watch the video in the opening post, you would see it assert that the Vatican has telescopes better than the Hubble space telescope, and the Vatican has been watching extraterrestrial "ships and entities."

So, one day, we will find out about extraterrestrial intelligence, but right now it's above top secret information, in My honest opinion.

EDIT- By the way, you have very pretty hair, and I wish I could see your pretty face

~PEACE~

 

[Parsimony]

Life Jim but not as we know it.. is a good premise for writing science fiction, but we really don't have any good reason to suspect that complex life can thrive in conditions any different than Earth.

The universe all came from the same place, it's made of the same stuff- a large chunk of all possible environments can be found right here in this solar system, many right here on Earth, - where even surrounded by complex life, it has never been able to adapt to the conditions, far less originate in those environments.

There are complex life forms at the bottom of the ocean, though: an environment that wouldn't be much different than what probably exists on Europa. It is due to those same complex life forms that we know that life can survive at extreme pressures. That being said, another way to regulate climate other than having a large moon would be to have a very thick atmosphere like what Venus has. The pressures at the sea floor are greater than on Venus' surface, too. So we know complex life could survive on a cooler, wetter version of Venus.

The biggest issue, to me at least, is not knowing the minimum requirements for abiogenesis. Even if life can survive in exotic conditions, we don't know if it could actually develop there or not. We need to do more research first.

I still can't get over this. Where do you get the absurd and obviously erroneous assumption that with "tech a little better than ours" we could populate the galaxy. I've never heard anyone make such an assumption, but do you have any evidence to support this beyond mere speculation?

Well, it could be done... as long as you are very patient, very rich and willing to accept casualties due to the steep learning curve.

 

[Parsimony]

Dupe.