Were humans created by aliens?

I would like to think so because that would be better than what is currently on television. Personally, I like to think that the “aliens” are future humans coming back in time to observe how they triumphed over adversity and eliminated destructive forces on Earth.. you know, war, poverty, crime, hunger, NASCAR, etc.

Seems a pretty far-fetched conjecture to me. The fossil record of human evolution form other hominids is getting more complete all the time. Ad saying aliens did it explains nothing. How then did they evolve? Did other aliens create them? Does it just going back in an infinite regression? If so, how could that be in a Universe with a finite age?

I’m with @ETpro – saying extraterrestrial life created life on Earth is just an abstraction of the problem to another spatial location, where the same issues need to be solved in an environment we cannot even observe. It does nothing to solve the issues of the origin of life. On top of that issue, it is unclear whether it is even theoretically possible to travel the distances required to reach the closest extrasolar planet.

Alright fluther peeps, but you are thinking inside the box still. Sure, the universe MAY have a finite age, but what was there before? My challenge for you is to grasp the concept that there just may be NO start, middle or end to anything in this world, or universe for that matter. The “issues” then can never be solved with our boxed in assumptions that we have made through false truths that make us believe that there are such things as starts and finishes. (ie- the concept of time)

Oh- and I do believe in evolution. What I am suggesting is that life on Earth itself is somewhat of an experiment… So basically, what if evolution is all part of the alien plan?

@Evelyn_475 It is a well established fact that space and time are inextricably linked, and that space began with the Big Bang, so I think it is safe to say that time had a beginning about 13.75 billion years ago. I’m not sure how you want me to think outside the box without going against established scientific theories. I’ve never taken panspermia seriously, so I would really like to know how it is a defensible scientific position.

No. Although Leonardo da Vinci had to be one. He was too talented to be human. :-)

If I get what you are inferring, you are suggesting that an alien species put us on the planet to gestate and are being survey as an experiment. I won’t deny the possiblity of teh idea that we were “planted”. It’s not really impossible, just improbable. But I personally hold the belief that our species is a result of a natural evolution due to the Earth’s relation to the sun.

@FireMadeFlesh I think Evelyn may have just been trying to remind you that ” established scientific theories” are indeed still ‘Theories.’

Thinking ‘outside the box’ or even fantasising has occasionally lead us to progress, :)
Its not flat !

Do you mean “Were humans spawned by aliens?” Or do you really believe their is an extraterrestrial race which can create humans?

@Evelyn_475 has an interesting thought stating there may be no beginning nor end to the universe. this would make ”eternity” an interesting possibility.

@FireMadeFlesh has an interesting statement, ”...that space began with the Big Bang…” but then you simply have to ask, “Who, or what, initiated the Big Bang?”

@Ben_Dover There is a scientific theory that when the universe dies it will implode on itself and create another big bang. Don’t quote me exactly, but that’s the gist of it.

@py_sue I understand that. However, if this imploding and exploding has been going on for several lifetimes of the universe, it begs the question, “When did the Big bang happen for the first time? And what compelled this Banging in the first place?”
Unless you are saying that this just has been happening over and over with no beginning point.

@Ben_Dover I guess I did infer my answer in reference to the short term. I’m not sure about the first one. People way smarter than me don’t even know.

@py_sue I know what you mean. I was reading Einstein and Hawking regarding the bang, and even those old boys are somewhat confuzzled.

Nanu Nanu…....quite possibly :¬)

@ucme I’d like to visit that planet, actually. :)

@py_sue They have flights out of Boulder Colorado on a regular basis I hear.

I forgot where I head this but recently “someone” equated the complete DNA sequence to a program….a brilliant quite sophisticated program and they said just like any other program we know of, this DNA “program” must have had a programmer. Think about that for a while.

@Odysseus In science, a hypothesis isn’t given the status of a theory until it is supported by a huge weight of evidence. It is not a term to be taken lightly. You’re right, imagination can be great, but I did not think the question was dealing with fictional possibilities.

@Ben_Dover As I said in my answer, the Big Bang involved the appearance of time itself. Therefore there was no ‘before’ the Big Bang, because the term is a temporal one that references the progression of time.

@py_sue The Oscillating Universe model doesn’t seem to be supported by current data, although it still has some adherents. Observations show that the universe is destined for a cold death, since it is expanding at an ever increasing rate. In three trillion years, galaxies outside our local cluster will be receding so fast not even light will be able to bridge the gap.

@FireMadeFlesh If this is so, and the Big bang = the appearance of Time itself, then just where did all the energy and matter suddenly materialize from?

@Ben_Dover It didn’t come from anywhere, it was just there at the beginning. If you say the mass-energy came from somewhere, or that there was anything ‘before’ the Big Bang, then you just create an infinite regression because that other place or time also needs a beginning. There must be a point in time where things just were, and that point was the moment of the Big Bang.

I honestly don’t believe so, but I do think humans have done a pretty good job of creating aliens. Especially on Star Trek: The Next Gen.

@FireMadeFlesh: I think this thread is starting to get to my point. There is no time. Time is a created concept by humans. Did you know that years ago credit card companies were in search of a great engineer to try to make the time gap smaller- almost instantaneous. This was because they wanted there to be no lag time on the processing of transactions. If you think deeply about it you realize that time has no “smallest gap” so in essence it is never ending. I love science- studied many a science course in college, but we simply cannot figure out everything in this universe, even the best scientist will admit that. Just like it is hard for us to fathom that there is no beginning or end to anything.

And on another note when I was studying astonomy my professor explained that there is still unknown elements of the Big Bang theory- such as what was going on before the bang, and that there could be universes within universes. We also learned that the Earth will not freeze but will actually turn into a giant rock due to the expanding red shifting… we will be consumed by the suns atmosphere which will break apart the water molecules on earth.

Extraterrestrial intervention in our biological evolution is quite improbable.
E.T. intervention in our cultural development though, is a different matter.

type faster, ET!

@Evelyn_475 Indeed we do not have a clue what came before the Big Bang. It is possible that the “stuff” of the Universe has existed eternally, and that it keeps cycling through Big Bangs and Big Crunches or that constant Expansion somehow triggers the next singularity. But we do know what conditions were like immediately after the Big Bang. We can use general relativity to project backward toward the singularity. General Relativity only fails us when we try to enter the singularioty. None of the know laws of physics apply there.

From projecting back, we know that the conditions immediately after the Big Bang .would make it difficult for even the most robust life forms to survive. The Universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with an incredibly high energy density, temperatures 100,000 times as hot as our Sun, and enormous pressures. This homogeneous soup was very rapidly expanding and cooling. Approximately 10^−37 seconds into the expansion, a phase transition caused a cosmic inflation, during which the Universe grew exponentially. The Universe at this point had no elemental atoms. It consisted of quark-gluon plasma and the other indivisible elemental particles. It is very hard to conceive of a life form that could thrive in that environment and also adapt easily to the conditions on Earth.

@Evelyn_475 & @Odysseus Scientific theories are “just” theories, all right. But wild, unfounded speculation is wild, unfounded speculation as well. I’ll take my chances with theories, which fit large collections of observed data, accurately explain the observations and are falsifiable by predicting other observations which then turn out to exactly match the prediction—and have gone through rigorous peer review to verify that all that is the case.

That life evolved on Earth and humans evolved from that life is a theory. It has passed all the aforementioned tests. Aliens did it is wild, unfounded speculation. So far, it has none of the weight of evidence required to establish a postulate as a theory.

It’s great fun to speculate about over beers. But I wouldn’t base a cosmology on it.

@Cruiser: then, using that logic, anything sophisticated enough to program something, just must have been programmed. Think about that for a while.

I believe that theories are indeed based on a wealth of scientific evidence, but I will not go as far to say that things which are unexplainable should remain so because they cannot be defined by science. In this case I choose to look beyond what science can offer, because I believe that science is limited to the overall abilities of humanity, which I believe to be very limited in the scheme of the universe. Even though I cannot prove such beliefs as the one stated in this question, I choose to leave my mind open to suggestions which cannot be easily explained by some scientific theory. I do not believe that humans are the greatest life form to exist in this universe and I think we can all agree that there is more in this universe that we do not know than what we can actually explain.

@Evelyn_475 According to quantum mechanics, there is a smallest increment of time which is called Planck time (5.39×10^-44 seconds).

@FireMadeFlesh: That is so sweet. It’s like the amount of time it takes for me to lose interest in most Olympic sports these days. Although I’m especially fond of cross-country skiing nowadays.

@Evelyn_475 I did not say anywhere, nor do I believe, that things unexplained by science should be left investigated. Science would never have stepped beyond the flat earth belief if we had approached it in such a silly fashion as that. My mind os open to any new observations that challenge existing thought. It just isn’t defined by such ideas. THere is a finite but infinitesimally small probability that the Unive=rse was actually created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but I am not going to devote time to proposing that just because it’s not yet been disproved.

@Cruiser Not only is DNA a genuine codified program, but RNA is a genuine Operating System that processes that program into flesh and blood with its own little protein assembly line.

@Evelyn_475 I don’t believe in extraterrestrial life. But I do believe in exoterrestrial life.

Ohhh geeze, everyone needs to lighten up! The question was intended to be something to get you all truly thinking… something most rarely tend to do these days. @RERRL: I do believe in extraterrestrial life :)

I somewhat gathered that.

@Evelyn_475 What exactly do you mean by ‘lighten up’? I was truly thinking, and I truly think this is an extremely unlikely scenario. I presented my view of the evidence – what more do you want?

@FireMadeFlesh All my information about space comes from The Universe on the History Channel. They use words I can understand. :)

@py_sue Fair enough. There are is a lot of false information put out by popular science, and unfortunately I have fallen for it all too often. You need to read original publications to get the full picture, and they are way over my head too.

@FireMadeFlesh Thanks. :)

I suppose I never intended for this discussion to get so “heated.” I appreciate everyone’s input, but sometimes it gets to a point where people start getting condescending and that I am not a fan of. I enjoy comments presented in a positive way, even I do not agree with them.

@Evelyn_475 Fair enough. It is always good to get the perspective of a new user. Many people on Fluther, including myself, have some fairly strong opinions and have a lot of knowledge and experience to back them up, so it is no surprise that at times we can get very involved in our discussions. We also have a lot of fun though, so it really depends on the question.

You are closer than you might think about where modern man came from. But no to your question of Aliens controling us like an experiment. And no Aliens didn’t create us. The Universe has always been, there is no beginning to it nor will there be an end. And no beginning to life and there will be no end.

Dude Evelyn, I was totally just discussing this with my bro the other day. The way I see my theory tho. What if we aren’t even science projects? What if we are just pets? What if little aliens go out and but a little fish tank with water and drop some kind of chemical in there and.. BAM!! Big Bang and a universe is created for the child to watch, control, mock, and show to his friends and family. And u know how pets have an estimated number of years to live? What if our estimated time of death is in 2012?

@JustmeAman Do you know of some cosmological theory the rest of the world doesn’t? Hoyle’s steady state theory has been discredited – the universe had to have a beginning.