Alone in the universe
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Topic: Alone in the universe
Posted By: biggerjohn
Subject: Alone in the universe
Date Posted: 03 April 2015 at 4:05pm
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Alone in the universe? One hundred octillion (100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), give or take a couple thousand septillion, is our best guess at how many stars there are in the Universe. Multiply this number by the average number of planets orbiting these stars and there are very few calculators in the world that would not gag on the number. With so many planets out there in the universe, it would seem silly to me to believe that this is the only planet where life would take hold. It also seems equally silly to think that God, the creator of all these stars and planets (as so many like myself believe), would only put life on this one relatively tiny little rock floating in space. My point: I do not believe that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. I also do not believe we are the oldest or most advanced. Actually I believe that we are nowhere near to being the oldest and most advanced. We haven�t even traveled past our own moon� oh sure, our probes have�. Yes, we have done some experiments in space, we�ve walked on the moon�. did experiments there too. We�ve done experiments on Mars� remotely anyhow. We�ve done a little exploring� but I think there�s still just a bit more out there to see. I do not believe it is all that much of a stretch to suppose that if there is other intelligent life out there that they too may be explorers, scientists, engineers�. creators. There are some who balk at the theory of �intelligent design.� But given the amazing things our underdeveloped minds have been able to conceive of in our short time in the universe; combined with what other, more advanced life forms, might have achieved� I believe that the concept of intelligent design is very plausible. Indeed, I would be quite shocked if it isn�t happening somewhere in this universe. For the record, I do not believe we were engineered by little green men from another galaxy (purple maybe J)� But, I do believe that there is a God and that he is far, far more advanced than we are; and that he indeed is the intelligence behind our existence. ------------- |
Replies:
Posted By: Tim the plumber
Date Posted: 04 April 2015 at 11:10am
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The question then becomes; Why are the aliens not here already? If we continue to develope as we are and become a space faring race we will spread across the galaxy. Even if this is a very slow process, say each new planet settled puts out a new colony ship every 10,000 years we will have filled the galaxy ina few tens of millions of years. So why have the aliens not arrived here many times in the past? There are several possible explinations; 1, God or some powerful thing is keeping us safe. Possibly this power is gardening the Earth and humanity. 2, We are the first intelligence in the galaxy. Not the universe, the numbers are just too big for that but we could be the first in this galaxy. The Earth is a fluke. It's just too good, like hitting the jackpot 10 times in a row. Humanity is even more of a fluke. No other animal in the history of Earth has gone down anything like a similar evolutionary path. 3, Perhaps just because a species gets intelligence does not mean they don't either stagnate in cultural development as many many cultures on Earth have. We were hunter gatherers for many tens of thousands of years before anybody statred agriculture and then it took 13,000 for stone tools to get replaced by metal ones. There have been lots of similar plateaus in our advancement. Perhaps they tend to blow themselves up as we nearly did in the cold war. 4, Something else that we have not thought of so far.... I hopde I live long enough to find out some of the answer. |
Posted By: Ron Webb
Date Posted: 05 April 2015 at 6:39am
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My money is on: 5. Interstellar travel is not practical. My back-of the-envelope calculations say that even if there were a million habitable planets in our own Milky Way galaxy, the average distance between them would be something like 3000 light-years. If we could travel at the speed of light (which is impossible), it would take you 3000 years at light speed to get to the nearest habitable planet. In practice, we could probably only manage a few percent of light speed, and even that would take an enormous amount of energy and would mean hundreds of thousands of years of travel time. That's quite a commute.  ------------- Addeenul �Aql � Religion is intellect. |
Posted By: Ron Webb
Date Posted: 05 April 2015 at 6:50am
I'm not sure what intelligent design has to do with this. If anything, the assumption of an intelligent designer would make it more likely that we are alone. After all, why design something more than once? It's only because I believe that life arises spontaneously somehow (under conditions and/or by some process we can't currently imagine) that it makes sense to me that it would be happening all over the universe. ------------- Addeenul �Aql � Religion is intellect. |
biggerjohn wrote:Posted By: kiuyhyt
Date Posted: 05 April 2015 at 11:53pm
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Hi (new here) _the simplest protein (about 150 aminate acids) cannot appear somewhere by itself (in the right place, in the right order of aminate acids) _it would be worthless alone, and would quickly be destroyed by the environement. _DNA (describing perfectly that 150 aminate acids protein) would not exist without proteins to take care of it, it would also be destroyed by the environement if it came into existance. Once you see this, you see there is a God. There would be no need for other existing life to search for, as God can create us alone, or fill the universe with life and technology to a frightening point. i think it is enough to know that under God everything is possible, as logic itself is He's creation. Also. What proves to you that other people actually exist (meaning they "know" they exist), you have absolutely no proof that anything else really exists as you could speculatively be a very clever mind with a lot of imagination trapped in its own dream (but with short conscient memory). The only being that prooves everything else is God. I exist (i have proof of that) My environement exists (there exists something that is not me) So God exists (at least One being who knows he exists and who is responsible for my existence and my environement) i'm french, so my english may be bizarre sometimes |
Posted By: Tim the plumber
Date Posted: 06 April 2015 at 3:12am
Quite a commute, yes, but if the vessels in use are huge 5km diameter or more with billions of inhabitants then the question of what will they do whilst traveling is answered by carrying on with their lives. |
Posted By: Tim the plumber
Date Posted: 06 April 2015 at 3:14am
Try this video. I call the oil drops alive by my definition of life; http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_life_and_not_life?language=en |
Posted By: Ron Webb
Date Posted: 06 April 2015 at 7:28am
Welcome, kiuyhyt! (I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. )
This is the classic fallacy of http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity - argument from incredulity . What you're saying is "I can't think of an explanation, therefore God must be the explanation." But if none of your premises even mentions God, how can the conclusion be about God? A hundred years ago it was possible to calculate the total amount of radiant energy emitted by the sun, and to show that not even the hottest fire could produce so much energy. So would it have been valid to say "therefore God"? Of course not. It just meant that we hadn't yet discovered the process of nuclear fusion. We have no idea how life began. But you cannot conclude God from that. You can only conclude that we have no idea.
So which do you think it is? Did He create us alone, or did He fill the universe with life? Aren't you curious at all?
But you're not proving that God exists. You're assuming that God exists in order to prove everything else.
Your English is excellent -- much better than many native English speakers, in fact.  --- (Edited to fix my English.  )------------- Addeenul �Aql � Religion is intellect. |
Posted By: biggerjohn
Date Posted: 06 April 2015 at 2:50pm
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Good question. (I hope I am not presuming too much with the following) How many children do you have? Any grandchildren? I believe that God is big into family... VERY BIG into family.
Besides that, why not? Why would any intelligent being capable of designing, building, and creating not do so? In a previous thread I mentioned that I am an artist. I have had more than a few dry spells when I have produced very little work... not good times. I'm happiest when I am creative.
By the way, I like your "back-of-the-envelope" calculations earlier. Always sincere.... sometimes serious, John B ------------- |
Posted By: biggerjohn
Date Posted: 06 April 2015 at 2:55pm
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#5 The Aliens are ALREADY HERE!!!!!
Muooo Ha Ha Ha!
Sorry  couldn't resist------------- |
Posted By: kiuyhyt
Date Posted: 07 April 2015 at 7:03am
Hi
As information doesn't come out of nowhere, and in this case it's simultaneous concordant information at a scale we just "begin" to understand (talking about a living cell). Also, information is impossible to get out of energy alone. plus, energy destroys information, you need just the right amount, especially for proteins.
my own answer to that is this: let's say we have two kind of objects: A and B they can be assembled to form stable entities. A are conscious of their own existence B are not. _if i make an entity using B i won't be conscious of it's own existence regardless of how well it could simulate intelligent life, because it will never be able to experience things itself. _if i make an entity using A it won't be conscious as a whole, because you cannot mix consciousness (as we can't mix ours). A wouldn't process information, each part would be alive, but wouldn't do much. What this means for me is that being intelligent and being conscious of its own existence are two seperate things. One is a computer (makable, even if not by chance), the other is unmakable. You wouldn't even know if you have A or B objects (stones could as well be alive). that's why, my own existence prooves me there is a Creator of everything. I'm functionally complex and i "am"
As i already went through the "there is a god / islam is the way / islam informations are true", i'm curious but i have enough information (in "our" litterature) about that to kind of "see the big picture" about life around us. But the universe is BIG, take this hadith for example (from memory): "Each one of the 7 heavens is in the next like a ring thrown in the desert of the next heaven and the last one has the same proportion towards Gods throne" So our universe (until the limit we can't see from here) is like the arquilian galaxy from MIB 1.
true.
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Posted By: Ron Webb
Date Posted: 07 April 2015 at 10:05am
And what kind of life would that be? Generation upon generation, wandering in the black emptiness of space, never seeing the sun, never feeling the rain or walking under an open sky? Who would condemn their descendants to that, for a hundred thousand years -- and why? Even if they were crazy enough to start such a journey, my bet is that in about a hundred years it would occur to their grandkids that the nearest habitable planetary system is the one that they just left. ------------- Addeenul �Aql � Religion is intellect. |
Posted By: Ron Webb
Date Posted: 07 April 2015 at 11:35am
Ah, well, I try not to talk too much about my family on public forums. You'll notice that I use my real name, unlike most people. It was a conscious decision I made many years ago that I would not hide my identity, and that I would be willing to stand by any opinions I expressed in real life. However, that decision is not without its risks and I can't make that choice for others, including my family. That said, the whole point of family is to stay in touch with them. It does us little good to know that there are fellow beings somewhere out there, ten thousand light years away, if we can't even communicate with them.
That's a good point. So I guess either way, there's a good chance we're not alone. But an even better chance we'll never know for sure. ------------- Addeenul �Aql � Religion is intellect. |
Posted By: Tim the plumber
Date Posted: 08 April 2015 at 11:06am
If you have a 50km diameter asteroid as your starting material and create large habitats with multiple layers, say 100m vertically separated then you will have more land space to use as park land or whatever than humanity currently actually lives on. I am confident we will go into space and create heaven. In fact many heavens. |
Posted By: biggerjohn
Date Posted: 08 April 2015 at 12:42pm
I like your point about family and staying in touch. Sadly, I'm not all that good at keeping touch with my own family less than 400 miles away. Plus I imagine my cell plan would stick me with some heavy charges if I phoned someone ouside the solar system... again.
As far as never knowing for sure... if Hollywood is even remotely close to what alien life is like then I am OK with not knowing for sure
I like the way you think.
Always sincere.... somteimes serious,
John Bigley (actual name
 )------------- |
Posted By: Caringheart
Date Posted: 19 April 2015 at 2:13pm
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I tend to view earth as the original 'melting pot'. I fail to see any other explanation for the diversity of beings on this planet, except that we all have differing origins... i.e., people came here, or were brought here, from other galaxies/planets/places/ whatever. ------------- Let us seek Truth together Blessed be God forever "I believe in Jesus as I believe in the sun... not because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.: - C.S.Lewis |
Posted By: Caringheart
Date Posted: 19 April 2015 at 2:15pm
This is why there must be a dimension of travel that we have not yet fathomed. ------------- Let us seek Truth together Blessed be God forever "I believe in Jesus as I believe in the sun... not because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.: - C.S.Lewis |
Posted By: Matt Browne
Date Posted: 06 May 2015 at 7:01am
Sending frozen embryos to be raised by androids might work. At some point we might even send digitized genomes plus synthetic zygotes. Seven billion genomes easily fit on today's hard disks. ------------- A religion that's intolerant of other religions can't be the world's best religion --Abdel Samad Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people--Eleanor Roosevelt |
Posted By: lindseynicole
Date Posted: 03 July 2015 at 1:28am
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It is very difficult to live alone in the universe and I want to ask a question that you all posted reply according to their state of mind after reading the post but don't give the solution. |