Evolution, Aliens ,Angels and Gods

sleepy

I'd like to start by asking the question can you belive in evolution and not in the possibilty of Alien life?
If the known laws of nature are all that are needed to create life undirected is there any basis for anyone doubting the probable existance of other creatures apart from our own?
If this is the case is there any reason to doubt that there could be beings of a different nature or more advanced than us?
Are then visits from creatures such as these the basis for stories of such things as Gods , Angels and Ghosts or do they come from ancient peoples lack of understanding the quirks of human conciusness and misinterperating everyday things such as dreams or hallucinations( well halucinations may be everyday for some people.).Or maybe both.
If nature can create life but the life created can then create new life would we be able to know whether that new life was created or came due to soley the laws of nature?
Just thinking aloud.
I'm interested in anyones opinion and any research you may have done on this.

NameWithheld

I would pose this question as well ... if 'god' were to show up tomorrow, wouldn't people in general think that he/she/it were just some scary space alien and perhaps try and nuke him/her/it?

Abaddon

Oh, this is the ERick von loadofbull, you know, Chariot of the God's fellow thing, amongst others.

I don't think we are alone in the Universe. It would be ridiculous, it's almost human speciesism to suggest otherwise. We are very unlikely to be special. We will probably end up as a minor holiday resort, famed for being a planet where the single moon orbiting it is of such a distance and a size that it could totally eclipse the planet's star. That's probably more special than ALL of us.

Maybe even more special than Bach... although I personally think that Earth will be the equivalent of the UK on the local spiral arm's charts, and export coffee, chocalate, and r e a l l y good grass.

But have they been here, they as in 'whatever the @uck can travel interstellar distances' they?

There's no real evidence... but it would be cool, and very Authur C. Clarke.

Are they here now? Again, if someone wanted to invade, there's probably planets with far less advanced civilisations that Earth's or no intelligent life that they could invade, without having Will Smith go whoop their ass... ass as in ASS IF. Yeah, they can travel bewteen stars but we can beat them with our pluck, and the American flag (natch), and an F15 that burns crushed plant and has to obey the laws of gravity... huh...

If they are out there, let's hope they are nicer than us.

But all the evidence, such as there is or isn't, for aliens NOW, is a bit illogical.

Just as they could whop our asses, or whatever they would call complete and utter total destruction with knobs on planet j@'>hskfgc!!D-shhh!!!, if they wanted to be here, and didn't want us to know, then I think they could be, to our technology, invisable, so not there you would look the opposite way as if even there was nothing there there would still be more than than where they were. They woudl take us, if they wanted, and we would not remember a thing.

If they want us to know, they'll call the UN, not Joe Bindwind in Duhmasphuck, Alabama (not that there aren't smart people in Alabama).

SO, maybe they were here, they're probably not now, and maybe that's a good thing.

Maybe one day it will be like the Lottery; "COngratulation, your planet has not had a major war in 100 years, welcome to the Federation of Love".

People living in glass paradigms shouldn't throw stones...

joelbear

Evolution -- Evolution is a biological process. Things are evolving everywhere, all the time. Evolution is part of life. Whether evolution is responsible for the first sparks of biological life is theory.

Aliens -- Quite possibly there is life somewhere else in the universe. I personally do not believe we or any other form of intelligent creature will ever invent transportation at the speed of light, so, im my opinion, we will always be separated from them by the vastness of space. Which makes keeping our little island habitable a very important priority.

Angels -- According to the witnesses they are not immortal but do have everlasting life. There is no indication of when they were created. Life must be awfully boring to them if all they have to worry about is watching over us like ants in an ant farm.

Gods -- No religion has offered a completely logical explanation/definition of god. Some come closer than others, but all are too fantastic to be credible.

peace

Joel

Fredhall

Sounds like you guys came out of college.

zerubberballz

Very excellently succinct sir fred.

(i'm still trying to decifer what this threads about)

cheers, unc.

sleepy

Maybe there are other forms of life out there who even if distance was no object , we could never detect due to incompatability .
Maybe there are antimatter creatures or creatures too small too hot too cold or a number of other things.
If consciousness is just the sum of the atoms in our brain maybe other complex structures can become conscious as well.
Maybe we dont have the relvent senses or equipment to detect them, or dont know what to measure.
More thinking aloud.

ISP

With the universe being so big...even with the small percentages at work re evolution....there would be a high likelihood of stuff living out there somewhere. The chances of coming across it are miniscule.

ISP

metatron

How can we speak about things we can have no direct knowledge
of?

I will say this - as here, so elsewhere. I believe it is more likely
that we are ordinary and common than extremely rare. So, I think
the universe is filled with life of all kinds, including
intelligent species. Being truly intelligent, they are wise
enough to back away from a planet that looks to them like
Somalia and Afghanistan look to us!

As for Gods and angels, at some point technology becomes indistinguishable from magic (did A. Clarke say that?). Thus,
aliens become the practical equivalent of angels and gods.

.... and if we can master new technologies (biotech, nanotech,
etc.), WE might too!

metatron

Mindchild

Stewart Kauffman is a physician by training but thinks a lot more like a physicist, and he works exclusively on problems in biology, large problems like: how did life come about?

Kauffman began playing with mathematical simulations on a computer that was designed to model the interaction of different molecules that would be present in the early Earth, and he made a very interesting discovery. Some molecules act as catalysts—that is, they speed up the chemical interactions between others. Molecules of one type might greatly enhance the rate at which another type of molecule comes together which in turn creates different molecules. When Kauffman studied random networks of interacting molecules he found that if the number of different types of molecules were small, there was nothing exceptional in the chemistry of the soup. When that number increased though, he found that inevitably what would arise is an “autocatalytic set.” This in turn creates a subset of molecules that can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, and eventually some other one would catalyze every molecule in the soup. This positive feedback loop is essential for the existence of life. It turns out that the number of different molecules needed to do this is actually small, and it is the basis of some theories of life that say the origin of life is not only improbable, but inevitable.

While there is a lot of serious debate about how ubiquitous intelligent life is in the universe, a large number of people in the bioscience field think that we will find primitive life on millions of planets. I personally believe there is an excellent chance of life existing in the warm ocean waters of Europa and microbial life on Mars. We are living in an exciting time because in the next few decades we should see a conclusive answer to the question of plural evolution when we reach these worlds by space travel. Further discoveries of life will come from future space-based telescopic observations that will enable us to actually observe different planets and determine their atmospheric composition by spectrometry that in turn will show us the chemical signatures of life for that world

I personally don’t believe in alien civilizations being anywhere near our solar system and scans of solar systems up to 100 light years away show no promise of extraterrestrial intelligence. Still, the galaxy we live in is an enormous place and there could literally be tens of thousands of intelligent life forms way out there. Only time will tell.

Skipper

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings." - William Shakespeare

Evolution, Aliens ,Angels and Gods

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