Christianity vs UFOs

[Kadagar_AV]

UFO believers vs Christians (http://www.sprezzatura.it/Arte/Arte_UFO_1_eng.htm)

You all should have a look at this page for a laugh... It reminds me of this movie from the 90's, dumb and...?

So what do you guys think? Is UFO in ancient symbolisms just a way of giving praise to god, or have art so tried to show us that we have visitors?

:juggle2:

I stumbled upon this page, but it made me smile for an hour or so...

UFO-believers vs christians, 3, 2 ,1 GO!

[PanzerJaeger]

More religion? Hrrumph.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Jesus, the Backroom is swamped with threads on religion... EDIT: Heh, PanzerJaeger got here first, while I was re-hosting the image in my post...

As for the site, meh, I have seen better arguments for ancient UFOs... Then again, the site has all sorts of stuff, good and bad. It is very expansive as I can see.


This one, though, shocked me, even if it can be easily rationalised less sensationally:
https://img8.imageshack.us/img8/913/trinitasalimbenimontalcs.jpg

[Beskar]

Some one has been playing Assassin's Creed.

[Centurion1]

God i played that game last night. As a catholic i was so insulted. but it was good.

[Cute Wolf]

https://i480.photobucket.com/albums/rr170/juangmandiri/314991.jpg

Well... this was an UFO cloud

http://misteridunia.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/salatiga2003.jpg?w=450&h=279&h=279

UFO again

http://misteridunia.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/rumbai2007sm.jpg?w=300&h=240&h=240

Ufo saucepan

and many more......

Well... God doesn't said that He create only human as intelligent life... He does imply that humans are His Images... perhaps we could use that to judge that all the "space aliens" are just intelligent animals.... or did they count as "humans" too...? ? ?

[Hax]

Well... God doesn't said that He create only human as intelligent life... He does imply that humans are His Images... perhaps we could use that to judge that all the "space aliens" are just intelligent animals.... or did they count as "humans" too...? ? ?

Ah, intelligent animals?

That's a sickening thought. You do know we use mice for testing purposes and they used dolphins in the army? Sickening.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Is it that ridicolous to believe in UFO's? If you consider how big the universe is, and how many planets there are out there that may well be harbouring life... then if there are many different life forms out there, surely the chances that we are the most developed would be fairly small? We don't know how far technology can go, so who knows, it doesn't seem that unlikely that some alien species may have got its own 'UFO'.

Although, I don't believe in all that for other reasons.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Is it that ridicolous to believe in UFO's?
Yes, because even with the more optimistic interpretations of the Drake equation, the space-faring civilisations will be far apart enough to make any visits quite rare. The chance that in all the thousands of millions of years an alien race visits us in the last 100-2000 years is quite laughable. Not impossible, but still unlikely. And our earliest radio signals have not reached far at all - in fact, they are barely touching the closest stars. If this was not enough, the modern signals we send are efficient, and with the end of analogue television, we are basically silencing ourselves.

Additionally, most races would probably rather avoid getting our attention, for various purposes, one of which may be to let ourselves civilise or destroy the whole planet. There is a hypothesis that the advanced civilisations are very peaceful, as intelligent life tends to be quite self-destructive and will destroy the planet/themselves unless it becomes pacifistic before. This is one very significant variable in to the Drake equation. We came far too close to wrecking the planet at numerous times during the Cold War to be comfortable. And if a state like the Nazis arose again/the Nazis were more powerful... You get the point.

Finally, there is another giant variable that may twist the Drake equation very significantly - we have no idea how frequent the gamma bursts are from current or former stars, quasars, etc. Those bursts are so intense that they scorch, no, sterilise, hundreds of star systems at once. Only an expansive space empire can insulate its survival from that.

[Centurion1]

UFO's are a rather ridiculous idea. Mostly peoples inability to think that the universe does not revolve around them. I at least am honest enough to say to myself, "hey maybe aliens have more important things to do with their time" I like to believe those UFO's are either fabricated hoaxes or military secrets.

[Aemilius Paulus]

UFO's are a rather ridiculous idea. Mostly peoples inability to think that the universe does not revolve around them.
Hehehe, but the same is even more true of those who completely deny the existence of alien intelligence. Do you not see how? On the contrary, the prime argument of the UFO believers is that the universe does not revolve around us and that there are other sentient spacefaring species out there.


But yes, I do see what you mean. Earth is not so special that we have all sorts of aliens fawning over us every year...

[Centurion1]

Exactly we are a rather poor example of a super race. Physically we leave much to be desired......

Im not saying its impossible i believe intelligence exists there somewhere, i just doubt the idea of a spacefaring race that spys on us.

[Hax]

Exactly we are a rather poor example of a super race. Physically we leave much to be desired......

Oh, we leave a lot to be desired mentally and politically as well.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Oh, we leave a lot to be desired mentally and politically as well.
:laugh4::laugh4::laugh4:

Yeah, forget the physical aspects, Centurion, who needs that? The brain and the hands are the only two important parts for an advanced civilisation, as HG Wells said. And in brains, oh, in brains we do lack, as Hax put it in such a coldly humorous manner.


EDIT: Dammit, I am running out of space to put the Hax quotes in my sig...



Im not saying its impossible i believe intelligence exists there somewhere, i just doubt the idea of a spacefaring race that spys on us.
Yes, most likely so.

[HoreTore]

UFO's are a rather ridiculous idea. Mostly peoples inability to think that the universe does not revolve around them. I at least am honest enough to say to myself, "hey maybe aliens have more important things to do with their time" I like to believe those UFO's are either fabricated hoaxes or military secrets.

Or simply stuff we don't know what is.

I love the logic FAIL most "UFO believers" use: If something can't be explained., then it's a UFO. They don't need any proof at all that there is a UFO, they just need the lack of an alternate explanation.

[drone]

I love the logic FAIL most "UFO believers" use: If something can't be explained., then it's a UFO. They don't need any proof at all that there is a UFO, they just need the lack of an alternate explanation.

No, that is not a logic fail. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. So if it can't be explained (i.e. unidentified), it is a UFO. The fail comes from automatically assuming every UFO is piloted by extraterrestrials, instead of the sighting being moonlight reflecting off of swamp gas, or Venus, or the Aurora Project, etc. :alien:

[HoreTore]

No, that is not a logic fail. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. So if it can't be explained (i.e. unidentified), it is a UFO. The fail comes from automatically assuming every UFO is piloted by extraterrestrials, instead of the sighting being moonlight reflecting off of swamp gas, or Venus, or the Aurora Project, etc. :alien:

Of course I know that's what it stands for. But in this discussion it should be quite obvious that "UFO" refers to "Aliens"....

[Myrddraal]

I'm completely on the fence about intelligent life being out there. The argument "The universe is huge, therefore statistically there must be intelligent life somewhere in it" is flawed imo. If we're going to talk statistics, we need a decent sample size before we can make any conclusions. If we looked at this solar system, we could say that one in 8/9 planets has intelligent life on it. If we looked at the X planets we have identified as uninhabited, we could say that 1 in X planets has intelligent life on it. Whatever we choose as our sample, we only have 1 planet with intelligent life, so we don't have a sample size big enough to make any conclusions. That's not to say there isn't intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but to say that there must be because the universe is big doesn't make much sense to me.

Does that make sense?

[Rhyfelwyr]

I'm sorry, I watched Independence Day a few days ago, and it seemed so real. :shame:

[Aemilius Paulus]

Of course I know that's what it stands for. But in this discussion it should be quite obvious that "UFO" refers to "Aliens"....
Yeah, it is a current trend to stretch/blur the meaning of 'UFO'. The game Spore, for instance, calls all player and NPC spaceships 'UFOs' even though there is nothing unidentified about them, especially when the spaceship you, as the player, designed is likewise referred to as a ‘UFO’

[Aemilius Paulus]

I'm completely on the fence about intelligent life being out there. The argument "The universe is huge, therefore statistically there must be intelligent life somewhere in it" is flawed imo. If we're going to talk statistics, we need a decent sample size before we can make any conclusions. If we looked at this solar system, we could say that one in 8/9 planets has intelligent life on it. If we looked at the X planets we have identified as uninhabited, we could say that 1 in X planets has intelligent life on it. Whatever we choose as our sample, we only have 1 planet with intelligent life, so we don't have a sample size big enough to make any conclusions. That's not to say there isn't intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but to say that there must be because the universe is big doesn't make much sense to me.

Does that make sense?
Yes, perfectly so, but it is not a scientifically valid conclusion, even if it conforms to logic - unfortunately, we make do with what we have, that is the real truth. Some things are not even remotely testable or provable within the limits of statistics, so a bit of out-of-the-box deductive logic may help. Inductive logic is more comfortable, but it is not as commonly applicable, alas.

If we are truly alone in this universe, then that means there is a God, because only that could explain how in a nearly infinite (nearly, because although the space is infinite, the question of whether matter is likewise infinite is not certain, although very likely) space there is but a single sentient species, and I seriously doubt there is a God, as proven by what happens on our planet...

Read about the Drake equation. It is more elegant than you think, although no more accurate.

[Myrddraal]

I haven't heard of the Drake equation, but I'll certainly look it up.

Let me explain my argument a little more scientifically, and looking a the question entirely statistically without bringing God into it.

We have some probability that a planet supports intelligent life which is not zero since we have Earth. As our population (size of the universe) approaches infinity, so does the number of planets supporting intelligent life. But the universe isnot infinite. It has some finite number of planets in it.

So what can we deduce about the number of planets with intelligent life in the universe? Without some notion of the probability of a planet supporting intelligent we cannot deduce anything. However big the universe may be, that probability can still be insignificant. We have no idea what that probability is, because we don't have a significant sample size.

The argument "the universe is nearly infinite so..." is flawed because the universe is not nearly infinite. Nothing is nearly infinite if it is finite, and even if we say (incorrectly) that the universe is so big it might as well be infinite, then we must come to the conclusion that there is also an infinite number of planets supporting intelligent life which is as ridiculous as it sounds.

We're talking probabilities here, so nothing in this argument says that intelligent life elsewhere is impossible. I'm just refuting the argument: The universe is very big therefore the existence of other intelligent life is likely.


On what has become a side note, the original link is really interesting, thanks! :smile:

EDIT: I just re-read your post and noticed this: "(nearly, because although the space is infinite, the question of whether matter is likewise infinite is not certain, although very likely)".

Is that so? I didn't realise that infinite matter was very likely, I thought the opposite was true. Haven't estimates been made of the mass of the universe?

If matter is infinite the argument that there are an infinite number of intelligent life supporting planets is not ridiculous at all, but I thought it was ridiculous because I thought the universe was generally thought to be of finite mass.

[Aemilius Paulus]

EDIT: I just re-read your post and noticed this: "(nearly, because although the space is infinite, the question of whether matter is likewise infinite is not certain, although very likely)".

Is that so? I didn't realise that infinite matter was very likely, I thought the opposite was true. Haven't estimates been made of the mass of the universe?

If matter is infinite the argument that there are an infinite number of intelligent life supporting planets is not ridiculous at all, but I thought it was ridiculous because I thought the universe was generally thought to be of finite mass.
Yes, thank you for noticing that - I was about to post before I saw you edit: tongue:

And yes, Universe is certainly infinite - or else it would have already collapsed on itself, and while we cannot prove that matter is infinite, it is the next logical step for a physicist to say so, and there is but a small probability that matter is not infinite - so the current model considers matter infinite, even if, for now, there is no direct mathematical proof for it. Now, density is not infinite (or at least not now - it could have been during the beginning of the Big Bang), but matter still is.

Do you still say intelligent life is unlikely, or even that our model is flawed? It would be mind-numbing if we were the only ones out there. As I said, only the existence of God could explain the absence of intelligent life in places other than Earth.

If I understood you correctly, your post was protesting the notion that life has to be there, and your point was that life could be there, but does not have to be? Right? :dizzy2:

And why did you think matter was not infinite (was it sheer disbelief? - heh, that is what happened to me the first time I read it :tongue:)? Also, if you agree that matter is infinite, then how can we make an estimate of mass? :smile:






Let me propose you start off your reading on this, if you wish to do so, with Stephen Hawking. Not only is he the leading astrophysicist of today (damn cancer to hell for taking the last greatest astrophysicist [well, actually more of an astronomer] and also the greatest atheist [well, actually agnostic IIRC], Carl Sagan), but he also writes marvellous books on the depths of cutting-edge physics with a language that is both understandable, to us, mortals (no joke here), and at the same time not 'dumbed-down', or at least in comparison with other texts (I am sure real physicists are laughing at me now - to them Hawking's books may as well be Physics for Dummies :shame:).

And then, of course, you can go on to Sagan. Or in the opposite order. But A Brief History of Time is always a good place to start.



To summarise: for astrophysics, read Hawkings; for Drake equation and aliens, read Sagan; for practical application of space-travel and colonisation, read Robert Zubrin - he is certainly the best in his field, and unlike many of his comrades, he is actually a NASA engineer, so he knows what he is speaking of.

[Major Robert Dump]

Jesus was an alien. So is Tammy Faye.

[Myrddraal]

Universe is infinite, check. Density is finite (perhaps not at big bang), check. I knew that, but I didn't know that matter was considered to be infinite.

Please correct me if I'm wrong in this next paragraph, though I'm familiar with physics I'm not familiar with astrophysics so I might say things which might be commonly known to be wrong, but here goes anyway:

I'm not sure that the existence of infinite matter is an obvious next step for the physicist. It seems to me the universe has to be infinite almost by definition, since the universe is not defined by anything more than our three(/four) dimensions. I don't see the next step (saying that matter is therefore infinite) as obvious. Is it then thought that there was infinite energy in the Big Ban? As I'm sure you appreciate there's an awfully big difference between a very very large amount of matter and an infinite quantity. That was the essence of my previous argument: we must not be so daunted by the size of the universe as to apply arguments which are only valid when considering infinite systems.


Do you still say intelligent life is unlikely, or even that our model is flawed? It would be mind-numbing if we were the only ones out there. As I said, only the existence of God could explain the absence of intelligent life in places other than Earth.

Well if the number of potential inhabitable planets is truly infinite (something I'm naturally dubious about) and there is some non zero probability that a planet supports intelligent life then, as I said, the logical conclusion is that there is an infinite number of intelligent species 'out there'. The only explanation for intelligent life being truly unique to earth would be some external force (which we can call God if you like :smile:).

My point was that if the number of planets is finite, however large it is we cannot make any reasonable or logical conclusions as the the likelihood of the existence of other intelligent life. We cannot conclude that it is unlikely, but more importantly a large universe (however large) is not sufficient to make the existence of other intelligent likely. This is an argument which I've heard put forward a lot, most often in the form "The universe is really really big therefore there must be intelligent aliens". This is the argument which I'm saying is flawed.

As to it being mind numbing, the possibility of us being the only intelligent life-forms in a finite number of planets is not nearly as mind numbing as a universe with infinite mass :wink:

[Myrddraal]

Well this has prompted me to read a bit about the nature of the universe and boy does it get complicated very quickly. If you thought the concept of an infinite universe as tricky, what about a finite universe with no boundaries? That seems to be one of three possibilities if I'm understanding what I'm reading.

Here's a comment from another internet user which I found interesting:


As I understand the physics of space-time (and IANAP), the universe is not thought to be infinite, properly speaking. It is thought to be finite but unbounded. That is, there is a finite amount of space, but no boundary to it. You cannot reach the edge of the universe, beyond which would lie some metaphysical no-man's land, I guess. Space-time bends back on itself in other spatial dimensions of the manifold. In other words, think of peeling off the surface of a globe and laying it flat on a table. It would be a finite amount of 2-dimensional space on the table before you. Now take it and wrap it around the globe again; it is still a finite amount of space, but it has no boundaries because it has been wrapped back upon itself in three dimensions. Likewise, if you think of the three dimensions of space-time we are accustomed to experiencing being wrapped back upon themselves in a fourth dimension of the manifold, you could have a finite amount of space with no boundaries. Not that you could reach any such boundary anyway; you'd have to have been traveling the speed of light since the Big Bang just to catch up with the expansion. And you're certainly going to fit only a finite amount of matter into a finite amount of space.

Really interesting stuff. I will try to read more and see if general opinion agrees with this guy, but if it does I stand by what I said at the start: there is no way we can state that it is likely that other intelligent life forms exist :smile:

[Aemilius Paulus]

thought that there was infinite energy in the Big Ban?
Damn, am I getting perma-banned again? Frack, I knew I should not have been such a smart-mouth :shame:







P.S. I think I will get to a real reply out, Myrddraal if carpal tunnel has not killed me from spending the whole day in the Backroom - a busy day this was :beam:

EDIT: your name is not helping my carpal tunnel :stare:
:tongue:

[Husar]

No, that is not a logic fail. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. So if it can't be explained (i.e. unidentified), it is a UFO. The fail comes from automatically assuming every UFO is piloted by extraterrestrials, instead of the sighting being moonlight reflecting off of swamp gas, or Venus, or the Aurora Project, etc. :alien:

Well, I wouldn't call a reflection a flying object...
Other than that you're right.

And by the way, the thing in the second picture of Cute Wolf looks like a fast bird to me, how anyone would assume that is some extraterrestrial flying disc is completely beyond me...

[drone]

Well, I wouldn't call a reflection a flying object...

Well, that bit was from Men In Black...

[gaelic cowboy]

The possibility we are alone is just as likely as if were not alone if you sit for a moment and think about it.

1 Universe is infinite and a conservative estimate is around some 14 billion years ago the first stars estimated maybe as early as half a billion years after big bang possibly even earlier than that.

2 If we discard ideas of space borne life or some other exotic lifeform and stick with stars and planets for the development of advanced life and advanced civilisation we find countless chances and plenty of time for it to occur.

3 Given this large amount of time said life should be able to move to new solar system within few thousand generation or maybe less the entire galaxy can be populated on a cosmic scale relatively quickly.

4 First problem why is our galaxy not populated so best explanation is we are alone in our galaxy at the least.

5 Ideas of noble aliens avoiding contact with lesser species are unfulfilling as every advanced species in the galaxy would have to agree on this point this seems highly unlikely.

6 There may be physical limits to expansion but given enough time at least one race should overcome it resulting in galactic colonisation again has not happened.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Ah, intelligent animals?

That's a sickening thought. You do know we use mice for testing purposes and they used dolphins in the army? Sickening.

In the NAVY, Hax....dolphins don't do well in ghillie suits (take that Gregoshi!).


Kad:

A funny thing happened on the way to the troll-bridge, an actual thread appeared!

[Aemilius Paulus]

@Gaelic Cowboy: Not sure how do I put this so this does no insult others or you, but all of us (me, you, etc) here are pretty small minds, in the sense that we are not at all experts on this field. There are numerous flaws in your argument, but they stem from ignorance of certain scientific theories, hypotheses and laws - as opposed to logical flaws - your argument indeed makes sense in a purely logical sense, devoid of supporting information. Here, you are using deductive logic whereas very few things are purely deductive, in the sense that there are always supporting and conflicting facts that make a rhetorical proof inductive instead of deductive.

Yes, you could just dismiss my argument very quickly by saying that you are a being of logic, common sense and that you have a mind that works well enough - this supposedly making you qualified to speak on this subject. But the truth is, that if we had the knowledge to make such judgments, then we would not need real scientists.

Basically, what I am saying is that your argument contains too many flaws and incorrect assumptions for me to answer it. What you need is to read, read those books that I mentioned. Read more books. Seeing where your weaknesses are, Sagan would be the one to read, but he should not be your only selection. So many times I see people come in to scientific arguments and try to use common sense and logic, which is useless without background facts. I am not saying I am smarter or better knowledgeable than you are - but I am saying that you need to read on this field. I should have just Ctrl+V-ed from Sagan instead of making up my own arguments based on what I read, but that spoils all the fun, frankly.

In fact, you could even read Stanislaw Lem, an incredibly famous Polish writer who wrote books that were thinly-veiled philosophical discussions on the nature of alien life, human spacetravel and such topics - but mostly, on the 'alienness' of alien life. They call him a sci-fi writer, but he disliked the label, as his books were not written for simple pleasure, but to make people think. You may find some of his books tedious. But he is a true modern-age, xenobio-philosopher. Perhaps his writing will lead you to challenge your assumption that alien species have to be like us, with similar motives and desires. In fact, simply being a sci-fi fan (but NOT a fan of any specific purely-fiction works, as that generally leads to nowhere) will cause you to think deeper on this subject.

A knowledge of sociology will also help here. As I said, your flaw is that you have too many assumptions regarding the nature of other species (as well as about the nature of astronomy, but that is another, although more serious problem), whereas the variables are so large.









To start off: what makes you think the alien species will expand? Why should they expand? What is the purpose of that? We went through a fiercely imperialist stage ourselves.

We no longer strut around land-hungry, or at least not as a society - the leaders may have other views. But eventually we will change. Human personality will change. Just as we think of racism, for instance, as a bad thing nowadays, and so we will have negative views on some of the other currently acceptable things... A society so advanced as to travel through space will be advanced enough to have more lofty and benign social views - such is the trend, normally speaking.




Second, the environment affects the average personalities of species through evolution, believe it or not. A psychologist may argue nature vs. nurture (genetics vs environment), but in the scale of the world, in the scale of billions of years of evolution, everything is 'nurture' or environment. The genetics in the beginning are nearly non-existent, if I follow your hypothetical scenario of spontaneous abiogenesis.

So what is the environment on Earth? Well, we have plenty do water, and about an atmosphere, of say, average density with high oxygen content due to the early stromatolites, which poisoned themselves with their waste product - yes, oxygen. So plants as we know naturally arise due to all these conditions. Plants grow and die and fertilise the surface of the planet, at the same time breaking up the rock, 'fixing' nitrogen, extracting minerals. They create billions of tonnes of biomass. The environment we no have produces an even greater profusion of plants. Plants are common, and easily obtainable. Plants are not sentient, and very easily accessible. They have not out-evolved the grazers enough to make grazing difficult.

So, with this, the species which become the herbivores have it fairly easy. At the very least, we can say that their method of satiation of their need for the essential nutrients is fairly simple and requires little thought. The predators are not ultra-efficient either, and so the herbivores have the luxury of not evolving their brains. It will therefore be up to carnivores or omnivores to give rise to sentient species, unless of course, even they do not receive any pressures to evolve due to the generally balmy environment. But that is not likely, as the environment always changes. They will face pressure, and natural selection will leave only the smartest. It will not be the herbivores advancing, due to their complacent and undemanding lives.

And so the planet will have a single species evolve to sentience that is, suppose, carnivorous - since they have the most pressure exerted on them. However, this influence is in turn counteracted by the fact that carnivores focus too much on raw power, which in turn lowers the odds of sentient carnivores very significantly - - in our world, it left no space for a brain due to the large jaw muscles - the same problem herbivores face as well, but then again, herbivores are mostly hopeless on planets of our type. Yep, evolution is all about checks and balances, which ensure optimal configuration based on the environment.


NOTE: It is unlikely that two species will rise to sentience, since the probabilities of external pressures and all other factors create a small chance of sentience at a single time, and thus by the time next 'opportunity' for the advancement to sentience arises (this is speaking very roughly, in terms of science), the environment is already dominated by the species first to reach self-awareness. Anyhow, no time to explain this specific point much longer, I have to move on.

That carnivorous species will continue to advance and begin the first tribal societies. They are naturally aggressive, and so they continue this as they reach newer and newer milestones. By the time they have weapons of mass destruction, they will inevitably go to great wars as their natural aggressiveness influences their collective psyche. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to survive to the stage where they will have time to go to other star systems due to the likelihood of wrecking the planet before the colonisation of other systems (which they will not have time for with all the wars).

Such aggressive species will either all die or slowly change their collective psyche to a more benign, pacifistic one. It will be immensely difficult, but even now the process of natural selection will be weeding out the aggressive individuals (die from a violent death in a conflict of some sort or scale). Perhaps this, coupled with the unimaginable horrors of massive devastation suffered by global use of WMDs will lead to generally more peaceful philosophies. Then, the old generation will influence the newer, as it inevitably does, whether on purpose or accidentally. And so, the changed species may rise to the galactic stage, but they will only rise if they are pacifistic.

As usual, exceptions in the final stages will occur, but they will be few, statistically speaking. It is more likely that only the pacifistic species advance to the galactic stage. A different starting environment can influence the herbivorous species to rise to sentience, and that will make the species innately pacifistic. As so many opportunities lay to wreck one's own planet, it is possible that mainly the green/hippy sentient species 'in tune' with nature will survive on other planets. Who knows?

Even today, as flawed as we are, a very large portion of scientists dealing with anything in the outer space are saying that we should not terraform anything, even if there are no indigenous life-forms. So much talk of complete preservation, and with everyone setting different criteria - with some saying that any sort of planet should be left untouched, and other insisting on not touching anything with complex non-microscopic organisms, and so on... Such views may seem radical, at least today. However, the views are radical among us, the common folk - meanwhile, the scientists such as xenobiologists, astrophysicists, astronomers, space-travel engineers view such stringent preservation much more favourably.

The aforementioned viewpoint can easily increase with time. What other motivations for expansion exist? Populations pressures? But even as we speak, birthrates in all wealthy countries are falling. US is staying in the positive only because of immigration, and if not for the higher birthrates among Blacks and Latinos, even immigration will not sustain US. Without population pressures, and with mounting consensus against 'space imperialism' and 'eco-trashing', we could very well end up not moving anywhere. Societal view change drastically through time, after all. Additionally, natural selection on personal and planetary scales ensures that only the sentient species which best get along with the environment and with each other are the ones to survive.









All of this is a thought experiment, and it is in no way accurate, as the variables are endless, but the general spirit is nevertheless correct IMO - sentient species differ, or at least they differ in the beginning, and either die-off or survive, but much changed. Anyhow, the purpose of this is to open-up people's minds if they have the patience to read this. I do not have any more time to address any of your other points, gaelic cowboy.Once again, natural selection ensures that only the patient will become knowledgeable ~;):tongue:

[Centurion1]

We no longer strut around land-hungry, or at least not as a society - the leaders may have other views. But eventually we will change. Human personality will change. Just as we think of racism, for instance, as a bad thing nowadays, and so we will have negative views on some of the other currently acceptable things... A society so advanced as to travel through space will be advanced enough to have more lofty and benign social views - such is the trend, normally speaking.

Speak for yourself. I currently have my eyes on Canada but Mexico is coming up, when i'm elected Dictator for Life.

Enough of my Cesarean aspirations. Who is to say that these hypothetical aliens would share any facet of (not sure what word to use..... Sentience and culture?) Based upon their environments and other outside factors, even their own physiology could completely distort their relationship with humanity no matter their technological advancements. I think a good book to be read on divergent evolution and the like could be Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, true i haven't read it since like 6th or 7 grade and it has nothing to directly do with alien sentinences i believe it explains divergence of people. Imagine the differences that could occur with absolutely no contact and similar point of origin. At any one point in our evolution we could have taken so many different paths along our development.

[Centurion1]

Edit: oops double post my apologies.

[Myrddraal]

The question at the core of this is: is the number of planets in the universe infinite? Whether we can draw any conclusions depends on the answer to this question. It seems there's a few theories going both ways. The theories describing unbounded but finite universes are compelling.

[Centurion1]

The question at the core of this is: is the number of planets in the universe infinite? Whether we can draw any conclusions depends on the answer to this question. It seems there's a few theories going both ways. The theories describing unbounded but finite universes are compelling.

its a very hard idea to even consider. i mean how would the universe just end. And if it is at what point do planets and other physical objects just stop

[gaelic cowboy]

It is my fault for not stating that I meant advanced life when stating we are possibly alone of course there is other kinds of life it would not surprise me in the least to find bacteria on mars or venus.

I purposfully ignored beings that did not live on planets in solar systems at the start of there evolution as I cannot concieve of any laws for them I would understand.

My entire point should really be I think it is possibly maybe 90% likely were alone in the Milky Way at least as far as advanced beings go.

Now to your arguements



@Gaelic Cowboy: Not sure how do I put this so this does no insult others or you, but all of us (me, you, etc) here are pretty small minds, in the sense that we are not at all experts on this field. There are numerous flaws in your argument, but they stem from ignorance of certain scientific theories, hypotheses and laws - as opposed to logical flaws - your argument indeed makes sense in a purely logical sense, devoid of supporting information. Here, you are using deductive logic whereas very few things are purely deductive, in the sense that there are always supporting and conflicting facts that make a rhetorical proof inductive instead of deductive.

Yes, you could just dismiss my argument very quickly by saying that you are a being of logic, common sense and that you have a mind that works well enough - this supposedly making you qualified to speak on this subject. But the truth is, that if we had the knowledge to make such judgments, then we would not need real scientists.

Basically, what I am saying is that your argument contains too many flaws and incorrect assumptions for me to answer it. What you need is to read, read those books that I mentioned. Read more books. Seeing where your weaknesses are, Sagan would be the one to read, but he should not be your only selection. So many times I see people come in to scientific arguments and try to use common sense and logic, which is useless without background facts. I am not saying I am smarter or better knowledgeable than you are - but I am saying that you need to read on this field. I should have just Ctrl+V-ed from Sagan instead of making up my own arguments based on what I read, but that spoils all the fun, frankly.

Sagan is indeed a good writer I have read him and watched his programmes I am fully aware of his theories. His theories are coloured by his deep pacifism a trait that cannot be said to be a universal norm even on earth never mind the Milky Way who says aliens must be benign who says they alway extinguish themselves if aggressive. Why is this correct on a universal scale and incorrect on an earthly scale might it not be possible aggressive species are more likely to want to explore.

In fact, you could even read Stanislaw Lem, an incredibly famous Polish writer who wrote books that were thinly-veiled philosophical discussions on the nature of alien life, human spacetravel and such topics - but mostly, on the 'alienness' of alien life. They call him a sci-fi writer, but he disliked the label, as his books were not written for simple pleasure, but to make people think. You may find some of his books tedious. But he is a true modern-age, xenobio-philosopher. Perhaps his writing will lead you to challenge your assumption that alien species have to be like us, with similar motives and desires. In fact, simply being a sci-fi fan (but NOT a fan of any specific purely-fiction works, as that generally leads to nowhere) will cause you to think deeper on this subject.

I stated in my post I wanted too for a monemt dismiss truly exotic alienness precisely because it is too alien it is useless for me to write theories on it. In an infinite universe it is possible for a species to look simmilar and even exactly like us thats what I proposed

A knowledge of sociology will also help here. As I said, your flaw is that you have too many assumptions regarding the nature of other species (as well as about the nature of astronomy, but that is another, although more serious problem), whereas the variables are so large.











To start off: what makes you think the alien species will expand? Why should they expand? What is the purpose of that? We went through a fiercely imperialist stage ourselves.

Expansion comes because the energy consumption will tend to increase requiring greater inovation in its use overtime. Eventually the beings must die off for lack of resources or settle into an equilibrium within the resource limits last option left to the beings is escape from their solar system this must happen because we all know solar systems die eventually any advanced race knows this too you mistake my word expansion for something to do with space marines when I just litterally meant expansion neither benign or malevolent.I get the feeling you think the light barrier is the ultimate brake on expansion this is not true expansion would first start as one home world then two from two come four then eight obviously it wont be truly linear but you would be surprised at how quickly a galaxy could be filled even at current speeds. It only takes one specie to achieve real space flight and they will attempt exploration and colonisation because they can not because they need too.

We no longer strut around land-hungry, or at least not as a society - the leaders may have other views. But eventually we will change. Human personality will change. Just as we think of racism, for instance, as a bad thing nowadays, and so we will have negative views on some of the other currently acceptable things... A society so advanced as to travel through space will be advanced enough to have more lofty and benign social views - such is the trend, normally speaking.

You mistake human social evolution as a galactic norm if my argument is weak due to the alienness of these beings then the same holds true for our social conventions on them. If a society gained lofty ideals on its home world there is no rule says they must stay the same once they have left the cradle. A sort of parallel on earth is the fact you could shoot black people in Africa during the land grab but the same was not true in London two conventions one society.



Second, the environment affects the average personalities of species through evolution, believe it or not. A psychologist may argue nature vs. nurture (genetics vs environment), but in the scale of the world, in the scale of billions of years of evolution, everything is 'nurture' or environment. The genetics in the beginning are nearly non-existent, if I follow your hypothetical scenario of spontaneous abiogenesis.



So what is the environment on Earth? Well, we have plenty do water, and about an atmosphere, of say, average density with high oxygen content due to the early stromatolites, which poisoned themselves with their waste product - yes, oxygen. So plants as we know naturally arise due to all these conditions. Plants grow and die and fertilise the surface of the planet, at the same time breaking up the rock, 'fixing' nitrogen, extracting minerals. They create billions of tonnes of biomass. The environment we no have produces an even greater profusion of plants. Plants are common, and easily obtainable. Plants are not sentient, and very easily accessible. They have not out-evolved the grazers enough to make grazing difficult.

So, with this, the species which become the herbivores have it fairly easy. At the very least, we can say that their method of satiation of their need for the essential nutrients is fairly simple and requires little thought. The predators are not ultra-efficient either, and so the herbivores have the luxury of not evolving their brains. It will therefore be up to carnivores or omnivores to give rise to sentient species, unless of course, even they do not receive any pressures to evolve due to the generally balmy environment. But that is not likely, as the environment always changes. They will face pressure, and natural selection will leave only the smartest. It will not be the herbivores advancing, due to their complacent and undemanding lives.

Wrong given the size of the universe I would be highly surprised at least one world did not evolve a sentient herbivore. The benefit is obvious to the herbivore to escape predation and extinction it becomes more intelligent.

And so the planet will have a single species evolve to sentience that is, suppose, carnivorous - since they have the most pressure exerted on them. However, this influence is in turn counteracted by the fact that carnivores focus too much on raw power, which in turn lowers the odds of sentient carnivores very significantly - - in our world, it left no space for a brain due to the large jaw muscles - the same problem herbivores face as well, but then again, herbivores are mostly hopeless on planets of our type. Yep, evolution is all about checks and balances, which ensure optimal configuration based on the environment.


NOTE: It is unlikely that two species will rise to sentience, since the probabilities of external pressures and all other factors create a small chance of sentience at a single time, and thus by the time next 'opportunity' for the advancement to sentience arises (this is speaking very roughly, in terms of science), the environment is already dominated by the species first to reach self-awareness. Anyhow, no time to explain this specific point much longer, I have to move on.

It is unlikely to get two sentient species but not impossible the universe is very big it happened on uncountable worlds.

That carnivorous species will continue to advance and begin the first tribal societies. They are naturally aggressive, and so they continue this as they reach newer and newer milestones. By the time they have weapons of mass destruction, they will inevitably go to great wars as their natural aggressiveness influences their collective psyche. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to survive to the stage where they will have time to go to other star systems due to the likelihood of wrecking the planet before the colonisation of other systems (which they will not have time for with all the wars).

And if the wars were held in the pre WMD period and were won by the aggressor giving them time to develop space flight why will they suddenly become Picard. You think because they can extinguish themselves they will reform but what if the threat was removed first then WMD is devoloped do they not have the possibility of a differing answer to your social view. Your thinking far too small open up to the size of the universe and you will realize your placing far too many "Human" assumptions on Aliens

Such aggressive species will either all die or slowly change their collective psyche to a more benign, pacifistic one. It will be immensely difficult, but even now the process of natural selection will be weeding out the aggressive individuals (die from a violent death in a conflict of some sort or scale). Perhaps this, coupled with the unimaginable horrors of massive devastation suffered by global use of WMDs will lead to generally more peaceful philosophies. Then, the old generation will influence the newer, as it inevitably does, whether on purpose or accidentally. And so, the changed species may rise to the galactic stage, but they will only rise if they are pacifistic.

No again humans norms placed on an alien race where is this assured law stating all races become benign. Millions of them do die off like yuo said and millions do not die off but never leave there homeworld but other millions make it out there and bring there violent tendencies with them. Why can I state this fact its simple give it plenty time and space and it will happen I mean thats what where discussing here right.

As usual, exceptions in the final stages will occur, but they will be few, statistically speaking. It is more likely that only the pacifistic species advance to the galactic stage. A different starting environment can influence the herbivorous species to rise to sentience, and that will make the species innately pacifistic. As so many opportunities lay to wreck one's own planet, it is possible that mainly the green/hippy sentient species 'in tune' with nature will survive on other planets. Who knows?

Yes it could be likely but it is wrong it would require every race to conform to a single norm of behaviour again this is extremely unlikely on the scale of a galaxy and even less likely on a universal scale. The temptation to achieve a short term economic benefit of interaction with a lesser race would be too great and has likely happened many times.

Even today, as flawed as we are, a very large portion of scientists dealing with anything in the outer space are saying that we should not terraform anything, even if there are no indigenous life-forms. So much talk of complete preservation, and with everyone setting different criteria - with some saying that any sort of planet should be left untouched, and other insisting on not touching anything with complex non-microscopic organisms, and so on... Such views may seem radical, at least today. However, the views are radical among us, the common folk - meanwhile, the scientists such as xenobiologists, astrophysicists, astronomers, space-travel engineers view such stringent preservation much more favourably.

Yes our scientists say that but I believe I never mentioned tereaforming once in my post far easier to find ready made planets of a suitable nature out there given the vastness of space there are some and thats a fact and millions nay billions are devoid of anything more complex than an earwig.

The aforementioned viewpoint can easily increase with time. What other motivations for expansion exist? Populations pressures? But even as we speak, birthrates in all wealthy countries are falling. US is staying in the positive only because of immigration, and if not for the higher birthrates among Blacks and Latinos, even immigration will not sustain US. Without population pressures, and with mounting consensus against 'space imperialism' and 'eco-trashing', we could very well end up not moving anywhere. Societal view change drastically through time, after all. Additionally, natural selection on personal and planetary scales ensures that only the sentient species which best get along with the environment and with each other are the ones to survive.

Thats as long as were not counting extra-galactic or even inter-galacic beings human social, political and economic norms fill this section how likely is this in just our home galaxy. The norms and pressures of earth are a nice warm place to put our ideas in but we must disregard them till proved otherwise these criteria tend to be simmilar to ones we faced but the results of the pressure may cause differant answers to the problems. Hence we have convergent evolution which give similar answers to simillar questions but misses the point the questions came from the same book ie Earth. Aliens will have been given differant pressures to overcome and required differant answers.









All of this is a thought experiment, and it is in no way accurate, as the variables are endless, but the general spirit is nevertheless correct IMO - sentient species differ, or at least they differ in the beginning, and either die-off or survive, but much changed. Anyhow, the purpose of this is to open-up people's minds if they have the patience to read this. I do not have any more time to address any of your other points, gaelic cowboy.Once again, natural selection ensures that only the patient will become knowledgeable

Even Richard Dawkins would never claim natural selection is assured on other worlds he does believe that a process simmilar to it would have to occur to generate complexity of life from simplicity which to us would seem to be the same but its not.

In an infinite universe the likelhood of a violent aggressor race achieving dominance over more than on solar system is assured all it requires is the universe to continue to ask the question of life and eventually it will suceed. Instead of reading social sciences and astronomy books read maths and engineering books and gain an understanding of infinity and resource use and its implications for life in the universe.

To reitierate I was really only trying to generate a line of thought in my post not a completely hard and fast rule.

I very much enjoyed this challenge to my post I so rarely post nowadays because I often find little that interests but not your post I hope you also do not feel insulted by my reply.

[gaelic cowboy]

Double post for some reason deleted

[gaelic cowboy]

I'm not sure that the existence of infinite matter is an obvious next step for the physicist. It seems to me the universe has to be infinite almost by definition, since the universe is not defined by anything more than our three(/four) dimensions. I don't see the next step (saying that matter is therefore infinite) as obvious. Is it then thought that there was infinite energy in the Big Ban? As I'm sure you appreciate there's an awfully big difference between a very very large amount of matter and an infinite quantity. That was the essence of my previous argument: we must not be so daunted by the size of the universe as to apply arguments which are only valid when considering infinite systems.:

Any part of an infinity can be broken into what we would say for want of a better word a smaller infinity it is however correct to call this infinity also.

[Aemilius Paulus]

I very much enjoyed this challenge to my post I so rarely post nowadays because I often find little that interests but not your post I hope you also do not feel insulted by my reply.
Thank you:bow:. Nah, your post was harmless - I was worrying about mine, because your first post struck me as very narrow-minded instead of you simply not having time to elaborate on all the possibilities. But when it comes to thinking about aliens, we all turn out to be narrow minded :tongue: Thinking outside the box, as the cliche goes, is tough. :no:




Anyhow, I will reply, but not today, as much as I would love to - this is really getting interesting. And this is coming from a bloke who normally loathes .Org science debates for the reason that people think they can argue as if it were politics - but you are not like that, which is what makes it interesting. It is 23:06 local time, I came back from a full day of classes, starting in the wee morning, ending late evening (every Wednesday is like this) and I stayed up late yesterday... Must keep my eyes open long enough to crawl into my bed...


:sleep:

[Myrddraal]

Any part of an infinity can be broken into what we would say for want of a better word a smaller infinity it is however correct to call this infinity also.

Of course, but no amount of individual real numbers will ever 'fill' the gap between two integers, so this is irrelevant. What matters is whether matter itself is finite or infinite, and this is well defined.


its a very hard idea to even consider. i mean how would the universe just end. And if it is at what point do planets and other physical objects just stop

The arguments that describe boundless but finite universes describe universes curved in some fourth dimension, such as 3 dimensional hyperplane in 4 dimensional space, or a 3 dimensional hypersphere in 4 dimensional space.

I'll refer you back to this quote from someone who explains the concept quite well:

As I understand the physics of space-time (and IANAP), the universe is not thought to be infinite, properly speaking. It is thought to be finite but unbounded. That is, there is a finite amount of space, but no boundary to it. You cannot reach the edge of the universe, beyond which would lie some metaphysical no-man's land, I guess. Space-time bends back on itself in other spatial dimensions of the manifold. In other words, think of peeling off the surface of a globe and laying it flat on a table. It would be a finite amount of 2-dimensional space on the table before you. Now take it and wrap it around the globe again; it is still a finite amount of space, but it has no boundaries because it has been wrapped back upon itself in three dimensions. Likewise, if you think of the three dimensions of space-time we are accustomed to experiencing being wrapped back upon themselves in a fourth dimension of the manifold, you could have a finite amount of space with no boundaries. Not that you could reach any such boundary anyway; you'd have to have been traveling the speed of light since the Big Bang just to catch up with the expansion. And you're certainly going to fit only a finite amount of matter into a finite amount of space.

I'll be the first to admit that a half decent understanding of space-time is beyond me, but this is intriguing stuff.

[Tellos Athenaios]

The problem with inifinity is that it bends & breaks other conventions. IOW: it is possible to fit inifinitely many things on a finite space:

Consider this mapping (excuse the lack of proper Mathematical notation):

f= [ x/(1 + |x|) | x<-R]

This fits maps all numbers in the set of Real numbers (cardinality: c, i.e. the continuum, i.e. 2^N with N the aleph-nought, i.e. the cardinality of the powerset of the set of all natural numbers) unquely onto the interval [-1,1]. This mapping is bijective: for every x in R there is only one f(x) (injectivity/one-to-one); and for every y in f there is an x such that f(x) is y (surjectivity/onto).
Thus: there are as many Real numbers between [-1,1] as there are Real numbers at all!

Change the 1 to 0.5 and the same magic shows that the same thing holds for [-0.5, 0.5]. Change 1 to any finitely small number as you wish it will still hold. But as we know the interval [-1,1] is very much finitely large.

[Myrddraal]

Yes this is all true, but also all beside the point. Cardinality is an interesting topic in itself, but not really relevant to the problem of mass. Mass is measured as a real number of kilograms. All this stuff about cardinality has nothing to do with whether the mass of the universe is finite or infinite.

{And before somebody pipes in and says something about mass being flexible and mass/energy equivalence, that's also beating about the bush :tongue:)

[Tellos Athenaios]

I am not too sure whether or not it is. At the lowest level particles stop being continuous process and swap for a more discrete nature. And it is some of these particles which constitute the building blocks for “mass” (which is really just how much gravitational pull you generate; just like charge (Q) is really how much electric field you generate). And there are other issues with how many dimensions actually exist (11 is a promising candidate for instance).

[Kadagar_AV]

About finite or infinite universe, remember time is a factor. Planets and whole systems collide, break apart, create new stars and planets. So you don't really need an infinite amount of mass to have an infinite universe, or rather, an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to evolving sentient life.

Then, when it comes to star-travelling species, time becomes less of a factor. For them to be able to reach us, you almost will have to strike time from the equation. They might have been looking for soemthing like us for billions of years by now! As has been mentioned, time is a big factor when it comes to civilazations. But then, if a society evolved past its planet, or star system, there would be very little stopping them.

When it comes to hostility, it's very hard to guess. Maybe we are the first race tehy encounter? maybe they encountered millions of races before?

Maybe they even fought an interstellar war or two allready and are now very centered on never letting it happen again.

However, the fact we aren't whiped out IF any other species knows about us, says a lot about their hostile level.

About them being something like us... We just need to have a look at our own world to see the possibilities of life he could be more sentient.

Ants, as an example... Hundreds of drones for every queen, the queen being the only sentient life... If you add genetical engineering to ants allready impressive genetic abilities in creating various offspring, we could have a race with very specialised individuals (if individuals would be the right word).

But to get the church into this, could the church cope with a handfull of ant-alikes suddenly visiting us? Or would it be the end of religion as we know it?

[gaelic cowboy]

But to get the church into this, could the church cope with a handfull of ant-alikes suddenly visiting us? Or would it be the end of religion as we know it?

My gut feeling is proof of alien life be it the advanced space faring or some kind of space cabbage from Zeta Reticuli will only prove to be minor a inconvienience to religon. These kinds of people are used to taking the long view especially the Vatican which prides itself on its longevity probably.

Most people do not spend a whole lot of time thinking about these questions so there world view is unlikely or maybe that should be less likely to change with this being proved. Religons in the USA will likely split into two camps relatively quickly of an anti and pro nature given the cash generation potential from either position they will be relaeasing statements with blindling speed. The Vatican and Anglican world will naturally release a bland meaningless statement after probably a week or two of consultation within there respective religions which is likely to touch on the new testament ideas about spreading the gospel to others etc etc Islam will have no problems it is human politics that will have the problem.