Ok Terry, thats fair. Atheism is the one ideal I see you espouse. The other was an example written into the definition. Don't see you as an isolationist.
Sherry
Are you an a-xenist?
by AuldSoul 72 Replies latest jw friends
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Abaddon
AuldSoul
Are you someone who lacks belief in intelligent extraterrestrial beings?
Well, if by belief you mean an assured expectation, yes, I lack an assured expectation. I merely consider it quite probable.
Do you believe it is possible that such extraterrestrial beings exist? Likely?
Possible, yes. Likely; most reasonable statistical analyses indicate it is likely, but much of the calculation is based upon assumptions we can not validate yet, so the statistical analyses are not very robust.
Do you think it is possible or likely that our planet has had interactions with extraterrestrials?
There is no evidence for this. If we break down 'interaction with our planet' into different classes of interaction I can answer that question meaningfully;
If there ARE intelligent aliens;
It is likely our planet is known to them, the likelihood falling with the distance between their world/worlds/starships and ours, and raising with the technological sophistication and age of their civilisation. Example; any radio-age + civilisation within 50-100 light years is likely to know of our existence. A vastly ancient and sophisticated civilisation with non-FTL transport systems based on the opposite side of the galaxy is unlikely to know of our existence.
As to visits to our planet, this breaks down into two basic scenarios;
- FTL possible
- FTL not possible.
Each scenario further divides into 'Low cost of interstellar transport' and 'high cost'.
By high cost I mean major fractions of GDP. By low cost I mean private ventures are possible.
FTL possible + low cost = high probability
Non-FTL + high cost = low probability
... with a spectrum of various probabilities between the scenarios.
The basic probability above would be adjusted according to the distance from the civilisation and the age of the civilisation.
Example; if there are aliens on Alpha Centaruri's planets (assume there are suitable planets in that system), cost of interstellar transport is low and FTL exists, then alien sightings are probably the result of drunk alien teenagers from Alpha having a laugh winding up silly monkeys. If cost is high, there is no FTL, and the nearest civilisation to us is around Deneb, then it is unlikely we have been visited.
As so much of the above is speculation and as there is no evidence we have been visited, it would seem safer to assume 'no'.
Assuming 'yes' in the absence of hard evidence requires a fervent belief in Star Trek like civilisations with low cost of FTL transport, and a assumption there would be a sound business case or philosophical inclination to add will to ability. It seems to assume we are extraordinary, whereas if there is intelligent alien life, we are probably barely worth knowing if at all.
Do you think it is possible or likely that primitive peoples encountered Gods and/or Goddesses possessed of incomprehensible capabilities?
As I could be a god to a stone-age civilisation who had no contact with other humans, them thinking they had encountered gods or goddesses seem to be irrelevant. An idiot with a torch could be god.
Could our special advancement have been aided along by benefactors of an extra-earthly origin?
Special advancement? Please prove 'special advancement', starting with a definition of what it is.
I am very wary of Gene Roddenberryesque human elitistism that assumes we are special (us showing Vulcans how to make a multi-species intergalactic Empire, humans being just so damn clever and foxy compared to Klingons and Romulans even if they have older civilisations).
It is just a tarted-up form of Eugenics (beloved of another Sci-Fi writer) where 'the African' is replaced by 'the Alien'.
Each tribe tends to assume they are somehow superior to the others near them (often the tribal name is 'the people' in their native tongue, as if the other tribes aren't quite people).
Each nation tends to assume they are somehow superior to others.
We should be growing out of this, not now believing that somehow humans are special compared to other intelligent species elsewhere (or even unintelligent ones on this planet).
Of course, you might have a reason why you consider humans have 'Special advancement'. I'd be interested to know what it is.
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AlmostAtheist
>>I'm sure this makes sense to you somehow.
Never a safe assumption. ;-)
>> "Why is there something rather than nothing" in the universe? Is it just as likely that there could nothing? Or is it less likely?
Hmmmm... I don't think I have enough information to venture a guess on this one. I don't have anything to base the odds on.
>>For life to exist there has to be the probability in some measure for it not to exist. Otherwise, it inevitably exists as a certainty.
We'd agree that there's no certainty about life, wouldn't we? Earth has it, the moon doesn't. (Or if the moon does, I'm sure we can find some rock somewhere that doesn't.) I don't think I get the point of what you're saying here.
>>It isn't really PROBABLE that life exists other than us. Not based on the raw uniqueness of our origins.
Are you saying it's IMPROBABLE, or just that there's not enough information to call it probable?
When you say "raw uniqueness", what do you mean?
Dave
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Terry
It isn't really PROBABLE that life exists other than us. Not based on the raw uniqueness of our origins.
Are you saying it's IMPROBABLE, or just that there's not enough information to call it probable?
When you say "raw uniqueness", what do you mean?
There is only one Earth with exactly what Earth has or had at a particular time in a particular way. That makes Earth a UNIQUE (unlike others) incubator. The fact that there are billions of similar (not identical) planets is not enough.
The convergence of time and place and chemistry and happenstance unique to Earth triggered what was possible. Not probable. Possible. We have life swarming all over the EARTH.
If the Earth were closer or farther from our Sun there could be no life. Our placement is unique.
The difference between the POTENTIAL for life elsewhere has nothing to do with the ACTUAL probability of life happening.
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fahrvegnugen
There is only one Earth with exactly what Earth has or had at a particular time in a particular way. That makes Earth a UNIQUE (unlike others) incubator. The fact that there are billions of similar (not identical) planets is not enough.
The convergence of time and place and chemistry and happenstance unique to Earth triggered what was possible. Not probable. Possible. We have life swarming all over the EARTH.
If the Earth were closer or farther from our Sun there could be no life. Our placement is unique.
The difference between the POTENTIAL for life elsewhere has nothing to do with the ACTUAL probability of life happening.
There is no evidence that earth is unique at all. At the present time we don't have the technology to detect most earth-sized planets orbitting other stars--for all we know the universe might be (and probably is) full of them. Also, even if you accept the notion that the earth IS the optimum distance from the sun (open to debate), there is no reason why any other star system couldn't have a planet orbitting at a similar distance. The main factor is the presence of certain essentials such as water and we now know that Mars had substantial water for billions of years and the moon Titan currently is covered with an ocean underneath its icy crust. So just in our solar system alone we have two other locations which could theoretically have supported life and may do so now. When you mutiply this by all the stars in the universe you have countless posibilities for life.
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Terry
There is no evidence that earth is unique at all.
I'm tempted to ask you what your definition of unique is!
Despite all efforts to obtain some scintilla of evidence for it, the fact remains NO LIFE has been discovered.
Would you regard the absence of LIFE to be evidence for the absence of life?
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eclipse
Earth is unique.
But that should not negate the possiblity that life exists on other planets, in other systems.
Is it not possible for life-forms to develope on other planets that are not carbon based, as we are?
Just because we have a narrow definition of what makes up life on our planet,
does not mean that we should take that same template for life, if you will, and apply to other planets.
Of course it will not match, since there are so many variables that make our earth unique -
distance from the sun / mass of the sun and earth / geology of the earth, etc.
Perhaps life came from unknown elements, and then adapted to their environment.
Yes this all sounds sci-fi, but I we cannot say, it is impossible.
For instance, there has been life discovered on earth in places that was at first thought to be inhospitable to life.
and there, scientists found organisms and bacteria that are thriving.
There is so much that we do not know.
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Paralipomenon
I don't see how anyone can claim that life evolved on earth, then turn around and claim that this is the only place it has happened in the universe.
Recent pictures from mars alluded to oceanic erosion on the landscape. With the possibility of oceans on mars, the next logical step is to figure out if plant life existed there at one time.
Not all foreign life needs to fly space ships and abduct humans for anal probes. If it is possible that mars at one point had plant life, I think there is a much stronger possibility that other planets in our universe contain intelligent life. -
Terry
I don't see how anyone can claim that life evolved on earth, then turn around and claim that this is the only place it has happened in the universe.
I don't see how anyone can claim that life evolved elsewhere without evidence.
You see, they can't.
That is why the people who make these claims try to cover their tracks with talk of "probability". This talk is not founded in an understanding (math or philosophy) of what they are talking about.
You know how upset Creationists get when Evolutionists try to "explain" the process by throwing raw numbers of infinities around? Just as mindless. A million monkeys pounding away at typewriters does not produce the works of Shakespeare for a VERY GOOD REASON. Probability has nothing to do with organized sentience and purpose.
Shakespeare's MACBETH is not probable. It was only possible.
Until you understand the difference between probable and possible the argument is silly when applied to life elsewhere in the universe.
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Terry
In a public lecture by Stephen Hawking the subject of Life Elsewhere in the Universe is presented in Hawking's inimitably intelligent manner.
Please read Hawking's opinion:
What are the chances that we will encounter some alien form of life, as we explore the galaxy. If the argument about the time scale for the appearance of life on Earth is correct, there ought to be many other stars, whose planets have life on them. Some of these stellar systems could have formed 5 billion years before the Earth. So why is the galaxy not crawling with self designing mechanical or biological life forms? Why hasn't the Earth been visited, and even colonised. I discount suggestions that UFO's contain beings from outer space. I think any visits by aliens, would be much more obvious, and probably also, much more unpleasant.
What is the explanation of why we have not been visited? One possibility is that the argument, about the appearance of life on Earth, is wrong. Maybe the probability of life spontaneously appearing is so low, that Earth is the only planet in the galaxy, or in the observable universe, in which it happened. Another possibility is that there was a reasonable probability of forming self reproducing systems, like cells, but that most of these forms of life did not evolve intelligence. We are used to thinking of intelligent life, as an inevitable consequence of evolution. But the Anthropic Principle should warn us to be wary of such arguments. It is more likely that evolution is a random process, with intelligence as only one of a large number of possible outcomes. It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. Bacteria, and other single cell organisms, will live on, if all other life on Earth is wiped out by our actions. There is support for the view that intelligence, was an unlikely development for life on Earth, from the chronology of evolution. It took a very long time, two and a half billion years, to go from single cells to multi-cell beings, which are a necessary precursor to intelligence. This is a good fraction of the total time available, before the Sun blows up. So it would be consistent with the hypothesis, that the probability for life to develop intelligence, is low. In this case, we might expect to find many other life forms in the galaxy, but we are unlikely to find intelligent life. Another way, in which life could fail to develop to an intelligent stage, would be if an asteroid or comet were to collide with the planet. We have just observed the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter. It produced a series of enormous fireballs. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out. It is difficult to say how often such collisions occur, but a reasonable guess might be every twenty million years, on average. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.
A third possibility is that there is a reasonable probability for life to form, and to evolve to intelligent beings, in the external transmission phase. But at that point, the system becomes unstable, and the intelligent life destroys itself. This would be a very pessimistic conclusion. I very much hope it isn't true.
That is all I have to say. Thank you for listening.