Maybe and I would say probably He did. Why does it seem that some want to limit the limitless ability of God and place Him in a finite box that they can comprehend.
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Inhabited Planets
- Thread starter Neo Deist
- Start date
Skwim
Veteran Member
Then by using a telescope powerful enough I assume it could be seen from Earth, and perhaps we might even catch god watching us or whatever. Fair assumption?
Because I'm me, I'll play some devil's advocate here;
There's no reason to assume this planet couldn't exist outside the literally-observable-from-Earth-Universe. Of course, then you've got problems with contact and the like, but let's throw stuff at the wall, it's fun.
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
Did I say it was somewhere within our universe? I don't believe I did. As a matter of fact, if God created our universe, and existed prior to its creation, it would be more logical to assume that He resides elsewhere.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
So your whole argument is basically, "the Bible did not say so, therefore I don't believe it"?
The Bible predicted exactly what the math shows today.
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
No, the other way round, unless there are a trillion other planets with sentient creatures as part of of God's grand design or experiment or whatever it is.
Actually the universe is too vast and awesome to be confined by limited human notions about "God".
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Neo Deist
Th.D. & D.Div. h.c.
Unless I am mistaken, humans wrote the various scrolls that would eventually become the Bible. Those same people did not have telescopes or microscopes, and thought that epilepsy was a demonic possession.
I think I'll stick to my math instead of whatever fuzzy stuff you're going on about.
From a purely mathematical perspective, this view is simply wrong. It mistakes a frequentist argument for a position for which we have no (even would-be) frequentist basis for a Bayesian one (for an optimistic appraisal, see here). Quite simply, if there were googolplex times more the number of galaxies in the universe that actually exist, the assessment that the probability of life would change due to this is just a fallacious as supposing that "big numbers" matter here.We know that there are billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Those stars can each have several planets in orbit around them.
We know that there are billions of galaxies in the visible universe.
Using those two facts, let's estimate that there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe. Of those let's say only .000001% can contain life. That leaves a (conservative) estimate of 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) potential alien civilizations.
Yet our little mud ball of a planet is the center for religion, God's divine revelation, judgment, His son the Messiah, and the path to paradise in the afterlife? It is because of statistics like the above demonstrated that I reject revealed, earth bound, man made religions and embrace deism.
Imagine a lottery in which everybody in the world participates which consists of choosing a number with 30 digits all elements of the natural numbers (and which can be any natural number). It is easy to show that, even for a lottery with billions upon billions of players all of whom play every day, a single and unchanging winning number may never be chosen. The space whence comes any digit of the sequence is infinite, and therefore the number is a 30-tuple of selections of n digits each from an infinite number of possibilities. We don't know the space whence comes the conditions necessary to give rise to life, and hence can't calculate the probability that life will emerge no matter how large the number of planets.
Meanwhile, our "little mud ball of a planet" is the center for a scientific basis for theoretic and empirical reasoning and bases that all begin with our existence as the foundations (the varieties of the anthropic principles as well as the varieties of the fine-tuning principles).
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
My current view on the likelihood of life in the universe is based on looking at what we know about the universe. If the laws of physics are consistent, which they are as far as we can tell, then the basics of elements and their interactions (chemistry) are consistent as well. Being that there are a massive number of repeating, and predictable, processes based on these fundamental processes of physics and chemistry, if life arose here from these processes, it doesn't seem unlikely that these same processes would result in life forming elsewhere, especially considering the unfathomable number of instances of likely similar environments throughout the universe. Essentially, as a result of the consistency of the fundamental rules and materials of the universe, we see the same structures and processes repeated countless times. This being the case, and if life isn't something "different" from the rest of the universe (as it doesn't appear to be) it could be that life is simply an inevitable result of the laws of our universe - a systematic progression from physics to chemistry to biology.
Personally, I wouldn't say that I "believe" that life must exist elsewhere, but based on this perspective, the size and age of the universe, and that nothing in the universe seems remotely unique, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if life is common.
Now, as far as intelligent life, as we perceive it, it's more difficult to say, as the specific variables involved in an evolutionary process which would result in such a configuration are necessarily far less likely, as life seems able to propagate just fine without such a complex development.
Personally, I wouldn't say that I "believe" that life must exist elsewhere, but based on this perspective, the size and age of the universe, and that nothing in the universe seems remotely unique, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if life is common.
Now, as far as intelligent life, as we perceive it, it's more difficult to say, as the specific variables involved in an evolutionary process which would result in such a configuration are necessarily far less likely, as life seems able to propagate just fine without such a complex development.
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
Sure. That's fine. All I'm arguing is that it's a very reasonable conclusion, even if you pick the smallest percentage you can think of. Do you disagree?
Like I said, we're 1-in-8 and possibly 2-8 in just our Solar System, which orbits 1 of 100 Billion stars in the Milky Way alone... There's at least 100 Billion Galaxies out there.... Is anyone really going to argue that there's absolutely no chance of life having arisen anywhere else in the entire Universe?
Not only have many astrophysicists, cosmologists, astrobiologists, etc., done so, but that there is at least little-to-no chance is a basic part of much modern physics and cosmology (in fact, for many theoretical physicists, it is what should replace the reductionist search for a ToE derivation from first principles of physics).
It is quite possible to think of percentages low enough to make life outside the Earth unlikely, actually. We have no way of accurately gauging the odds or even ball-parking it yet.
I'm not saying that there's no chance of it. Just that the chance is unknown.
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
Show me something - All of the basic principles of science that we experience here on Earth have been found to exist everywhere else that we've been. The only thing we're lacking is confirmation of life somewhere in our Solar System besides Earth, and Imagine we will know definitively within the next few years.
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
I'll agree with that all day long - but in all fairness don't we have to assume that the chance of it happening is also much higher than we're speculating? I mean, if we use an infinitesimal chance of it happening because of the unknown then it's just as likely that the number could be much larger, right?
Or it could be even smaller than what we originally thought.
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
So we agree then?
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
- Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. A single statement made by a single leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, but is not meant to be officially binding for the whole Church. With divine inspiration, the First Presidency (the prophet and his two counselors) and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (the second-highest governing body of the Church) counsel together to establish doctrine that is consistently proclaimed in official Church publications. This doctrine resides in the four “standard works” of scripture (the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, official declarations and proclamations, and the Articles of Faith. Isolated statements are often taken out of context, leaving their original meaning distorted. See The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Newsroom -- the official resource for news media, opinion leaders and the public.
I have just one question for you, Skwim. Do you believe I (a) don't know my Church's doctrines or (b) am being dishonest in explaining Mormon doctrine? It's got to be one or the other. So which is it?
You've quoted from a history book and given one man's personal interpretation of scripture. (By the way, I'm guessing that you think Joseph Fielding Smith was the man who founded the LDS Church, don't you? Well, he wasn't.) If you want to get your facts straight -- which I strongly suspect is not the case -- you'll stop using unreliable websites for your information.
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If by agree you mean that we do not assume that life elsewhere is a guarantee then yes.
cambridge79
Active Member
We know that there are billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Those stars can each have several planets in orbit around them.
We know that there are billions of galaxies in the visible universe.
Using those two facts, let's estimate that there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe. Of those let's say only .000001% can contain life. That leaves a (conservative) estimate of 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) potential alien civilizations.
Yet our little mud ball of a planet is the center for religion, God's divine revelation, judgment, His son the Messiah, and the path to paradise in the afterlife? It is because of statistics like the above demonstrated that I reject revealed, earth bound, man made religions and embrace deism.
once again that would showcase the extreme inefficiency of God so called perfect creation.
He basically would have wasted all the time and the energy in the effort to create not only this galaxy but all the other galaxies in the universe, and they would all be dead places except from this planet.
at the same time he is not even able to create a cellular self replicating mechanism good enough that it would make us cancer free.
by the way i've yet to come up with the decision about what would pi$$ me off more:
- the idea that we're the only life form in the universe
- the idea that it's full of places like earth in the universe and we will never be able to overcome the distance and take a look at them.