| Author | Message | ||
     Mr_grumpy |
You can split all the hairs you like about statistics or probability based on existing knowledge, but "misusing statistics"? Come on! you can do better than that, that's just plain weak. I just can't accept the conceit that the human race is the only sentient life in a universe so large. | ||
| Rick_a |
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| Reepicheep |
Funny how those flying saucers reflect the human architecture and styles prevalent at the point they were "spotted"...  Maybe it's a tardis thing. | ||
| Fahren |
Wow. Dude. Take it as a sign if you wish, but I've been off Badweb for a couple of days, and last night I was on Netflix and watched an episode of The X-Files TV show for the very first time. And now, all this. Duuuuude. | ||
| Hootowl |
I want to believe. | ||
| Xdigitalx |
No man... we are IT,... we have to build ships like Noah's ark so we can save the human race when this planet blows up... and why are we worried about this little planet if there are billions of other places to live? We need a Death Star type spaceship to live and travel to explore the universe...I believe....in Hollywood... | ||
| Blake |
"Conceit"? It might be interesting to review the probability calculus concerning abiogenesis, specifically the formation of the specific proteins into the required building blocks of life as we know it (carbon-based). | ||
| Hootowl |
Yes. Let’s build ark ships. Three of them. We'll put all the great thinkers on one, all the doers (the folks who build the things the thinkers think of) on the second one, and everyone else on the third one. Though this may lead to an epidemic spread by unsanitized telephones. | ||
| Torquehd |
We don't need Arkships, only spacejets for the relatively short journey to Mars. I really like the ideas to terraform Mars. It would be incredibly lucrative to be on the cutting edge of making Mars inhabitable. I don't know if it's realistically possible or not, but I sure like the idea. We could do the whole planet in a southwestern theme, with pueblo style buildings and Mexican blankets. Yes, I can see it now. Space cows would taste delicious, just flame kissed enough to be called "rare", with a nice glass of bloody MARs'y. I wonder how the reduced gravity would effect TQ and HP ratings. | ||
| Aesquire |
Blake, you comment seems to support the theory that life on Earth comes from elsewhere. Ancient astronauts? Surely not like the movie. ( unless it's "Predator vs. Aliens" and the battle for the Pyramid ) Panspermia, sure, possible...... http://helix.northwestern.edu/article/origin-life- panspermia-theory Of course if you seek the true origin of life as a spiritual creation, this just puts it off another step. Monotheists can just assume that Creation is everywhere, and ongoing. Takes a bit of an ego, or lack of imagination to think we are alone. There's probably a code in the new crazy manual for that. | ||
| Aesquire |
Rick_a, I've seen that swamp gas.  ( seen the real thing too. Spooky but not all that spectacular. Now a burning waterfall, that's spectacular, but not a UFO. ) I thought the "adamski type" saucer was the classic German secret saucer program model. Still one of my favorite conspiracy theories. ( secret Antarctic base, escaping ahead of the Soviet troops in the prototype saucer "Dora", etc. etc. ) Way more fun than JFK assassination craziness, ( it was the Comedian ) and still better than those groups that rule the world who drum nekkid in the woods to bond. | ||
| Torquehd |
It takes more imagination to believe that trillions of scientifically impossible coincidences occurred, magically producing one single planet capable of supporting life, than to believe that all matter was created by a singular source. I don't intend for that to sound buddhist or "spiritual". But if you assume that life evolved from solar dust, the solar dust had to come from somewhere. It only postpones (or "prepones?") the question of, "where did everything come from?". Regardless, I can't wait to have a tasty space steak in my pueblo house, with my SEBR (space EBR) parked outside my red-clay-adobe garage. I hope SEBR pioneers hoverbikes with some turbocharged version of ion propulsion, or something sciency. | ||
| Chauly |
Hoot, Which third are you in? And why does your ship get to leave first?  | ||
| Hootowl |
Being a mid level functionary (IT) that neither invents nor builds, I'll be on the third ark. But... ...the civilization of the folks I leave behind will be wiped out by a computer virus. | ||
| Hootowl |
I'm in the camp that believes that life is inevitable, given the proper ingredients. Look where we're finding it on Earth. I live in the universe that the Creator created, and that means life isn't limited to one place in it. I mean, if you were going to go to the trouble of creating an entire universe, probably multiple universes, why would you only create a single planet with life on it? I don't think God created the Earth, and said, OK, I'm done. Creation is the system of physics and matter that led to the formation of the Earth and the life that exists upon it. How do we know that the laws of physics aren't the physical manifestations of God's will? If it was the will of God that created the universe, then the universe must obey God's will. God willed that there be life on the Earth, and the universe obliged. Same would hold true for anywhere else God wanted there to be life, incalculable odds or not. | ||
| Chauly |
Time for a bath... | ||
| Hootowl |
A long one. | ||
| Chauly |
It's depressing to think that we might just be God's first or second iteration before he got really good at it... | ||
| Hootowl |
I'm reminded of the far side cartoon, where God is making all the animals from clay, and saying "These are easy", with the caption "God Makes Snakes". | ||
| Hootowl |
I was off a bit...close.  | ||
| Torquehd |
God transcends time, space, knowledge. He doesn't have to practice something to be good at it. "good at it" is a human description of something that we don't even understand. The fruition of existence occurs from His transcendental thoughts. He has already seen all of time, because He created it. Otherwise, He is not God, but some random celestial being who is not ultimate or supreme. In that case, something else must have come before Him (and that something would have been "God"). He is the Architect of everything. The Archetype of creators, engineers, artists, poets, musicians, fighters, hunters, lovers, farmers, you can't even create a list of all that He pioneered. The Buddhists believe in "singularity". This is but a childish understanding of God. Norse mythology teaches that Odin is the Allfather. This is again a childish understanding of God. Christians tend to think that heaven is all clouds and harps and angels. This again is a childish understanding of God. God transcends our understanding in every way. The foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom. Not 100 percent sure how we got here from UFO's; but God created those as well, and the foolishness of man assigns biased meaning to them. Which we interpret as alien craft, or electro-static anomaly, or whatever. | ||
| Sifo |
Takes a bit of an ego, or lack of imagination to think we are alone. As I've already said, I'm completely open to both possibilities. I do disagree with your assessment of us being alone though. Before being able to speculate on if we are unique, or one of many, you first need to understand our origins. We really don't have anything on our origins at this point beyond pretty wild speculation, and/or religious belief. Is it really impossible that the spark of life is unique to our little rock? I'm guessing that to an atheist, it probably is difficult to believe that. That last sentence isn't meant as a put down, but simply a matter of reasoning. Basically, if you believe there is no God, then the spark of life is something that just naturally happened, and is likely to happen more than once given a large universe. I can fully understand that reasoning, but please take note of how it relates to one's spiritual beliefs. That entire reasoning is based on nothing but the belief that there is no God. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
I think Blake has a point about the probability of duplicating the circumstances leading to ourselves. However, we have to consider Spock's theorem in all this. "It's life Jim! But not as we know it!" | ||
| Hootowl |
The arguments so far: Life exists elsewhere because if it can happen once, it can happen again. Life only exists on Earth because if it can happen once, it is unlikely it will happen again. I like my theory better. Life exists elsewhere because the universe is full of stuff that life can spring from, and if God's will created the universe, the universe must obey the laws with which it is bound, and those laws are effectively the will of God. Therefore, chance and odds are not in play. Life exists where the will of God says it should exist. I happen to believe He didn't stop (or start) with us, and that life is inevitable given the right raw ingredients and enough time. | ||
| Aesquire |
"That entire reasoning is based on nothing but the belief that there is no God." Yes, if your premise is "then the spark of life is something that just naturally happened" Not my contention, at all. ( I'm not an atheist either, See Penn Jillette for arguments for that view ) Panspermia postulates that life drifts among the stars and colonizes places it touches. That has some merit, but does not address the Origin Of Life, at all. Just puts it off a few thousand light years away. A bad analogy would be "cars do not spontaneously appear in our town. A truck brings them here." Fine. But does nothing to explain how cars come to exist at all. I don't expect to read solutions for lift/drag equations or radiation resistant biology in a book left to us by nomadic stone age shepherds. What I do expect are proposed rules for living with one another, and I do find those, plus repeated advice to invest in high tech weaponry to stay alive in a hostile world. ( David's sling being the first written example of "bring a gun to a knife fight" ) Nor do I expect my 1950 book on Ham radio to explain neutrino communication by rotating polarization. | ||
| Aesquire |
Xtra point question. Who said "Stop telling God what to do"? | ||
| Xdigitalx |
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| Britchri10 |
Niels Bohr: (Something to do with dice.) Wasn't he a physicist or something? Chris C | ||
| Midknyte |
mmmm, space cows  | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Haven't thought about it for many years, thanks a lot... Sorry....lol |
