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Do you believe in aliens? [split]


mattbimbo

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as an aside, how many people, in this forum and beyond, believe in aliens?

 

I stand by the numbers which say there is a very good chance that life exists elsewhere. If we will find it or not is another mater.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

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I stand by the numbers which say there is a very good chance that life exists elsewhere. If we will find it or not is another mater.

 

Cheers' date='

 

Ryan Jones[/quote']

 

The thing is, the chances of there not being life elsewhere in this universe are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very (almost inconceivably) slim. I just don't see how people can not believe in extraterrestrial life.

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The thing is, the chances of there not being life elsewhere in this universe are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very (almost inconceivably) slim. I just don't see how people can not believe[/i'] in extraterrestrial life.

 

I don't think people don't believe. I think a lot of people believe in some way but very few believe they have visted Earth, I am one of the later.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

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If and when they do visit' date=' care to bet, judged by our own standards, they won't zap us because we dont believe in [i']their[/i] God? Or If they get to us first, which would indicate they are smarter than us, they may fall about laughing saying "You dont still believe in that old God mumbojumbo, do you?"

 

Only time will tell.

 

Sounds like the scene from Statgate ;)

 

The idea of a god simply makes no sence, it only raises more questions. Either way I suggest we don't go down the whole debate road again or this will just get locked.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

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as an aside' date=' how many people, in this forum and beyond, believe in aliens?

it would be interesting if the statistics reveal that people believe both in God and aliens.

i ask this because first contact with extraterrestrials could be deemed the final blow to the bible.

not a death blow. don't you watch the history channel? there are plenty of places they could point to and say the bible talked about aliens the whole time.

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not a death blow. don't you watch the history channel? there are plenty of places they could point to and say the bible talked about aliens the whole time.

 

Yes the bible seems to magically change as science makes discoveries. They cam make it say what ever they like because its so obscure and thats part of the problem. :-(

 

Anyway it seems that evolution is not believed to be more credible then creationism at this point in most peoples opinions - there seems to be a trend that the more we use and understand science the less need for religion there is and so the less people seem to believe in creationism.

 

Also, I don't think we will see any aliens yet. The same odds that say life exists also suggest its probably far away.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

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yourdadonapogos

not a death blow. don't you watch the history channel? there are plenty of places they could point to and say the bible talked about aliens the whole time.

 

do you know of any parts of the bible where aliens are mentioned?

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hello

 

call me hopeful there are aliens out there, who come here.

why? because if they can do it maybe so can we.

right now we have a few theories on faster than light travel, but heck we can't even travel at the speed of light. and space is big... really big. and currently things are looking rather grim that we ever will go out beyond our own solar system in person.

but if an alien lands then hmmm.. maybe we might decide to divert the resources nessicary to discover just how to do that. or in the best human tradition whackem over the head and steal his saucer.

 

as for the bible... it is a book designed to try to explain how and why man is on the earth, and though teachings and stories provide morale guidance: and a believe system to reach an spiritual existance beyond the physical one people have here. it does not say aliens exist or do not exist, that is not its purpose, it is a story of man for man not et's.

that said however, if the aliens do showup and say 'hi, remember us. we created you and here's the video to prove it.'. run for the hills, trouble's a coming.

 

hmm.. sounded like a bible thumper for a moment.

 

mr d

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Depends on what you mean by "believe in aliens." Do I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe? Yes, absolutely. Do I believe there's an alien race flying around Earth, probing rednecks? Absolutely not.

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I certainly do believe in aliens. Just yesterday actually, I did my GCSE English oral about the probability of them and my thoughts on the subject. It was supposed to last 2-3 mins but it actually lasted more than 20 including some Q & A. I explained things like methanotrophs, endoliths and other extremophiles to get my point of diversity across. Then I said that even if we did find bacteria (which didn't come from Earth), say on Mars or another planet, it is still technically, extra-terrestrial. Something that is extra terrestrial is then technically alien. They don't have to have spaceships to be alien. Just my thoughts on the subject.

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Logic seems to indicate that the idea of there not being "aliens" is simply absurd, bordering on the same sort of reasoning that convinces people to believe in the literal interpretation of a certain book.

 

I personally feel that life may be rather common, maybe even enough to show up in our solar system on multiple worlds at some points. I think it's likely that life is prevalent throughout the universe, ranging from the most simple to beings far beyond us (the more complex/advanced the rarer of course), but i do not think it is at all likely that we will ever encounter anything from beyond our solar-system (even in the form of picking up some sort of alien broadcast), and I do not believe that aliens have ever been here. Perhaps at some point in earth's long history something showed up, but I doubt it.

 

The sheer vastness of space seems to me to be the factor in there being many living worlds, as well as the factor that leads to us never encountering anything of extra-solar origin.

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The idea that aliens exist is, as previously method, completely logical and very probable. However, the chances that aliens even slightly resemble any life forms on Earth are very improbable. I'm a supporter of the idea that extra-terristrail life maybe be vastly different from anything we even concieve of as life.

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Ray Kurzweil more or less invoked the Fermi paradox in order to support his conjecture that we are alone in the universe.

 

See the "Why SETI Will Fail (and why we are alone in the Universe)" section of the Law of Accelerating Returns article:

 

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

 

Particularly this chart from Scientific American:

 

chart32.gif

 

I feel that if there are aliens more intelligent than us, they're outside of our light cone and the speed of light must be a truly insurmountable barrier.

 

Here's the summary of the Fermi paradox from the Wikipedia article:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

 

The belief that the universe contains many technologically advanced civilizations, combined with our lack of observational evidence to support that view, is inconsistent. Either this assumption is incorrect (and technologically advanced intelligent life is much rarer than we believe), our current observations are incomplete (and we simply have not detected them yet), or our search methodologies are flawed (we are not searching for the correct indicators).
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My biggest problem with the graph, is that we don't really know how big the black section is, or if life exists in the red parts, but the life just doesn't transmit radio signals. Perhaps they are less "evolved" then we are, or perhaps they have more efficient methods of communication.

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However, the chances that aliens even slightly resemble any life forms on Earth are very improbable. I'm a supporter of the idea that extra-terristrail life maybe be vastly different from anything we even concieve of as life.
I'm of the line of thought that there will be at least a few standard "variations" of life-origins. Each might occur a number of times depending on certain conditions or simple chance. I think some would lead to completely alien organisms, or even entities unrecognizable to us as life, while other modes might share a similar abiogenesis and method of developement as earth-life, leading to lifeforms at least vaguely similar to earth-life.
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while other modes might share a similar abiogenesis and method of developement as earth-life, leading to lifeforms at least vaguely similar to earth-life.

 

Why? How many planets are similiar to earth, and even if they are, why would they evolve in a similiar way... mutations are random events, after all.

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How many planets are similiar to earth
We can't really even begin to guess at how many are enough like earth to host earth-like life.

 

and even if they are, why would they evolve in a similiar way... mutations are random events, after all.
When I say similar, I mean recognizable as being alive. Probably far different, but possibly with recognizable traits convergently similar to some of the features earthers have got.

 

I just don't think it's wise to make assumptions at this point about how life originates, we only have one example. Anyone's guess is as good as any other. That's just the one I feel is more likely.

 

---edit--- particularly because we know it happened at least once this way (even if we're not sure what way that happened to be:P ), I'd say it's safe to assume life could originate in such a away again without much problem, but there are still likely other modes of abiogenesis or development from the get go that will lead to other variations too.

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That's a poor assumption with no reasonable fact behind it. For instance, you have infinite numbers of papers, and how would you know if a single paper would have something written on it, other than the original written paper (Earth)? That's why we have scientists exploring the space everyday trying to find other type of living (species) than on the Earth.

 

This post is relative to post #21.

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If the universe is infinitely large

 

Which the most recent WMAP data regarding omega would lead us to believe is less likely than a finite universe

 

we have to assume there will be a planet similar to Earth with animals similarly evolved.

 

An infinite flat universe can still have a finite amount of matter, so there's no reason to assume that either

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