Christianity vs UFOs

[Kadagar_AV]

UFO believers vs Christians

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?



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:

[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]

Well... this was an UFO cloud



UFO again



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.

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.

[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.

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.

[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!

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?

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 )? Also, if you agree that matter is infinite, then how can we make an estimate of mass?






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 ).

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 ).

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

[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

[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







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

EDIT: your name is not helping my carpal tunnel

[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.

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.