Christianity vs UFOs

[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

[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.

[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. 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 Thinking outside the box, as the cliche goes, is tough.




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...

[gaelic cowboy]

Double post for some reason deleted