Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life?

I think that the chance of simple life (like monocellular organism) is pretty high. I think the chance of complex intelligent life is pretty rare, but it probably exists statistically.

I believe that the universe is a very, very big place that has existed for a very long time, and I would not be surprised if, by now, another life-friendly planet has made itself home to living beings; nor would I be surprised if it happens in the future.

I would be more than fascinated by evidence, absolutely, but not “surprised”.

Statistically, there has to be other life. The universe is huge, possibly endless.

That being said, I think discovering “aliens”, especially other complex beings, would not be handled well here on earth. So I hope to be dead by the time any contact is made.

I lack the capacity to cite the statistics, though people to whom I assign the credibility of being believable can. Stephen Hawking is at the top of that list. I believed in the distinct possibility before the above mentioned documentary, and any arguments he could add would lend weight to that belief. The area is just too vast to believe that we are the only intelligent life in the entire place. What an arrogance to think it.
What form/s could that life take? I could not begin to guess.

I think there is a chance extraterrestrial life does exist. Some where, far far far away. Why should we even worry about it? They will probably kill us anyway if they found our planet.

@kawohi “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,” now there’s a statement to make.

Absolutely. I’d bet just about everything I own on the fact that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe.

With that in mind, I’m very sure it won’t be discovered in my lifetime, or even while there are humans on earth. The universe is just too big and too old for supposedly rare intelligent life to exist simultaneously, within travel distance, and to develop technologically before being wiped out by something.

No, I don’t believe in extraterrestrial life. People like to tout probabilities which revolve around the size of the universe and the time it’s existed. They talk about “odds”, and base their beliefs upon a gamble. But there is more to it than that.

It’s even more interesting to me that some believe in ET when there is no hard conclusive evidence, but don’t believe in the necessary G-like being that is needed to create the material realm in the first place.

Here’s the scoop, the way I see it. Life requires a code, a genetic code. No physical life form may exist without one. And statistically, the math does not allow energy and matter or chaos to be the author of any type of code whatsoever. Code requires a sentient author.

OK, well our genetic code could have been written by extraterrestrials. But that only pushes the question back further. Who wrote theirs? Combine this necessity with the likelihood of discovering a system even remotely close to our own which could support life, and the odds drop dramatically. The very unique circumstances which allow life on earth to exist are becoming less and less obvious without a sentient architect creating it from a realm outside of our physical universe.

I don’t believe in extraterrestrial life. But I do believe there is sufficient reason to infer exoterrestrial life.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies

And statistically, the math does not allow energy and matter or chaos to be the author of any type of code whatsoever
You do realise that what you’re saying is like touting the improbability of hitting the lottery when you’re holding the winning ticket, right? No matter how small the statistical probability, we’re here thinking about it, so it happened, and so it can happen. No sentient author necessary.

If we did take your input at valid (yay, hypotheticals!), who authored the code for your sentient author? And who authored that author’s code? What about that guy? &c… ad infinitum.

Well I understand your position, but just because we’re here doesn’t mean that chaos authored a code. And what Atheists don’t understand, is that even if chaos did author a code, well, then that means the universe has somehow spoken. This lends credence to ancient myth and folklore of talking trees and whispering streams… It just dawned on me that we’ve had this discussion.

Anywho, what I claimed is that the sentient author is not from our physical realm of energy/matter space/time. It is not a physical agent. It is immaterial, and as such, is not held accountable to a tautology of previous sentient authors needed to account for Its existence.

I mean really, if Its eternal, as claimed, then nothing came before eternity. A state of eternal is-ness is all that is required. A hard swallow for the materialist no doubt. But science is rapidly touting the treasures of immaterialism every day. There is more to reality than mere physicality. And we should not expect it to conform to common notions of materialism.

And yet it is so conveniently understood by one such as you, with no evidence to suggest its existence or to explain its whereabouts.

Very logical.

The evidence to suggest Its existence is the genetic code.

All codes have sentient authors, no exceptions. And since a materialistic explanation requires a tautology of authors, then an immaterial explanation is indeed “very logical”, especially when modern science is uncovering immaterialism that does not conform to common notions of space/time.

There is just not enough time or matter in the universe to even come close to writing the smallest code by accident. The Infinite Monkey Theorum has been soundly defeated.

“Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys typing from now until the heat death of the universe, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be less than one in 10^183,800. As Kittel and Kroemer put it, “The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event…”, and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed “gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers.”

This is from their textbook on thermodynamics, the field whose statistical foundations motivated the first known expositions of typing monkeys.

Your entire argument is a logical non-starter.

Why would the answer to an improbable existence be a creator that is even more improbable?

Life is not “random chance”, nor is it “intelligent design”. It’s called “Natural Selection”. Natural selection =/= chance. Now, I grant you that the beginnings of life (that is, the first self-replicating molecule) are as yet unknown, and we may never know them, but it only had to happen once. So no matter how improbable the origin of life in the universe was, it happened. And it’s okay to say that we don’t know how. Maybe we’ll figure it out someday. Maybe not.

You might like to read this portion of “The God Delusion”, by Dawkins. It’s the chapter entitled “Why there is almost certainly no god”. here He talks all kinds of probability numbers, which my brain is currently less than enthralled at trying to work around.

I believe that Earth is not the final word in Places With People, but I don’t think that we’ve got any aliens running around.

@Seek_Kolinahr “No sentient author necessary.” Unless, of course, there was.

One of the things that the Internet has taught me is that there are a number of convincing ways to view a given set of facts. Naturally, they can’t all be right, and it is at this point that the community splits along its lines.

I think life is very common throughout the outer edges of most galaxies. If you are skeptical I would suggest doing some very serious research on the Roswell cover up and the testimonies of many other people. Those including high ranking military and government officials. Dam even if you have doubts the logical assumption here would be to just say we have no way of knowing until proven otherwise.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Why can’t this genetic code exist outside of earth? Why would an intelligent force or creator make the universe so big and only limit life to earth?

@kawohi Well I think these beings, if they would discover us would probally be so more advanced than us that we would be like lower life forms to them. I do not think they would understand us, why we think the way we do and our habits.

Of course I believe in extraterrestrial life. It’s in the cube immediately next to me.

Let me first clarify something about myself @Seek_Kolinahr. I don’t believe in the supernatural. I don’t believe in miracles either. Like Dawkins, I believe in natural explanations for every event of our existence and beyond.

Where I differ from Dawkins, is where natural and supernatural intersect. Dawkins rules out all possibilities for a Deity from the beginning, claiming such belief as supernatural. Not very scientific of him to automatically rule out any possibility. For if there is a G-being, then it is perfectly natural for there to be a G-being, if and only if, there actually is one. Nothing supernatural about it whatsoever.

Dawkins seems confused, at one point arguing against the particular religion of Christianity, and at others, arguing against the possibility of a necessary sentient creator. I wish he wouldn’t conflate the two issues so readily, for it only serves to conflate and confuse the intricacies of the issue.

But my biggest gripe with Dawkins, is that he insists upon replacing miraculous religi with propositions of scientific magi. He simply believes in different miracles than the ones offered by the status quo of religion.

As he states:
“The origin of life on this planet… must have been a genuinely very improbable — in the sense of unpredictable — event: too improbable, perhaps, for chemists to reproduce it in the laboratory or even devise a plausible theory for what happened.”

Yet he asks us to accept this as science. How queerly hypocritical of him. He becomes a parody of the religious fanatics he mocks.

“My point is only that, given the number of planets in the universe, the origin of life could in theory be as lucky as a blindfolded golfer scoring a hole in one. The beauty of the anthropic principle is that, even in the teeth of such stupefying odds against, it still gives us a perfectly satisfying explanation for life’s presence on our own planet.”

His analogy and metaphor is laughable. But also sad to think that many fall for it so easily.

When weighing Dawkins metaphor against the math of Kittel and Kroemer, I’ll plum for the mathematicians.

When Dawkins says: “Yet, given that there are at least a billion billion planets in the universe, even such absurdly low odds as these will yield life on a billion planets.”, he should consider that it’s much much greater than “a billion billion”.

Beyond metaphorical speculation suggesting miraculous accidents, Kittel and Kroemer suggest a more realistic figure:
“less than one in 10^183,800… (and) therefore zero in any operational sense of an event”
_________________

Alas, I also believe in Evolution and Natural Selection. However, what Dawkins doesn’t go into from your provided link, is the mechanism that Natural Selection works upon or the necessary Informational catalyst to get it all started. And beyond that Info catalyst, he still doesn’t address simply communication concerns as transmitter or receiver, redundancy, error correction, noise reduction…

Yet he demonstrates his hypocrisy by insisting upon the religi to provide every explanation to a tee: “But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself. To be sure, we do need some kind of explanation for the origin of all things.”

His duplicity approaches vulgar ad-hoc. Which is great for selling books. But the scientific method requires the same resolute standards be applied to all hypothesis.

Please play fair Mr. Dawkins, otherwise admit your hypocrisy. At least you’ve admitted your conjecture: “Whether my conjecture is right that evolution is the only explanation for life in the universe, there is no doubt that it is the explanation for life on this planet. Evolution is a fact…”

But what type of Evo are you speaking of Mr. Dawkins? Classic or Neo Darwinism? Does Natural Selection function on the mechanism of Random Mutation or Controlled Mutations? And again, how exactly does your Evo begin without an Informational catalyst?

Speaking of Informational catalyst, it is the argument that he doesn’t address whatsoever. Either out of ignorance or avoidance, only he can answer. Though he fully admits: “First, most of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished.” Key term “most”. And by not addressing the ones not “so easily demolished”, he reveals himself again to be a parody of “the disingenuous hypocrisy of religious people” that he ridicules. What a chump.

I suggest that he specifically avoids the argument from Informational catalyst and Sentient authored code because is completely resolves the Paley’s Watch argument that he so often rejects. Sure the watch could have formed from the properties of chaos alone. But if we were to find a set of genuine codified plans that predicted the existence of the watch before it ever manifest into physical reality, then we know that it was designed and not a product of chaos at all.

The Plans… The Code, IS the smoking gun that demands we infer sentient authorship. It passes the scientific method with flying colors and presents itself with centuries of precedent.

Mr. Dawkins is a pseudo-scientific magi who is not interested in scientific truth nearly as much as he is in selling bibles to his congregation of unwitting followers.

To his credit however, the chapter I critique is called: “WHY THERE ALMOST CERTAINLY IS NO GOD”. Key term, “Almost Certainly”. I’d love to see the peer reviewed opinions about having that phrase in the title of any scientific paper.

@Jabe73 “Why can’t this genetic code exist outside of earth?”

Well certainly it could. But there is no evidence that it does. Thus there is no reason for anyone to be so confident in the proposition. And it only pushes the argument back further as to where their genetic code came from.

We must look beyond material explanations to resolve this question. The only solution that I can muster is an Immaterial Sentient being that is not subject to the constraints of our material realm.

@Jabe73 “Why would an intelligent force or creator make the universe so big and only limit life to earth?”

I have no more or less idea why such an intelligent creator would do such a thing any more than my dog doesn’t know (and can’t know) why I tie my shoes in the morning. How preposterous to think that my dog could even begin to fathom the reasoning behind my most simple of tasks. How much more distant is the intelligence of a purported G above and beyond our own?

If there is a G, then even if IT explained it all to my face, I wouldn’t have the capacity to understand. I keep telling my dog why I tie my shoe. He just doesn’t get it.

I’m no math whiz, and I don’t even know what that probability figure stated above means, but I’m certain that “very, very, holy shit that’s really fucking improbable” is still way more probable than “God did it”.

Why do I say that? Because the only concept of god that we have comes from ancient religions that are laughably improbable. If there is one single shred of actual evidence that a creator being existed, no matter how small, I’ll eat my shoe. And so would every other atheist on the planet. Claiming that “god did it”, and then trying to find a hole in the scientific evidence for that god to hide in is a conclusion in search of data.

The Plans… The Code, IS the smoking gun that demands we infer sentient authorship. It passes the scientific method with flying colors and presents itself with centuries of precedent.

The Atheist must reject the traditional depictions of a G-being every bit as much as they accuse the Theists of committing the same error.

And again, “less than one in 10^183,800… THEREFOR ZERO in any operational sense of an event”. That’s not odds. That’s begging for a miracle. An even more miraculous miracle than the typical Theist would promote, for Dawkins miracle would happen without a G to manifest it. At least Theists have a reason behind their miracles.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies

As far as I’m aware, more than zero does not equal zero.

And “materials did something” is more probable than “something made of nothing came out of nowhere and made everything”.

Well, we have to examine those words. First of all, materials don’t do, they react. Doing is an action, not a reaction. Actions are a property of sentient minds. Reactions are a property of chaos. Chaos has no mind to do anything at all.

The words “nothing” and “nowhere”. No+Thing, as in no (physical) thing. This is the typical materialist view of “things”, in that they are physical things. Same goes for some+thing.

The Hard Marxist Dialectic Materialist will never be capable of getting past this notion. They believe that all of reality is based upon the physicality. But there are other ways to view reality. And whether it be Plato’s Forms, or Metaphysics, humanity has a long history of promoting Immaterialism.

We’re also at an age where we understand that Information is not a material substance.

“Information is Information. Not energy and not matter. Any materialism that does not allow for this cannot survive in the present”.
Norbert Weiner, Cybernetics p147

There is nothing mystical about believing in Immaterialism. The materialist should not hold science back by insisting otherwise.

Now to give you a perspective on just how big 10^183,800 really is, and why that represents Zero, it’s because it is vastly lower odds than all the particles in the universe would actually allow for. There are only 10^80 particles in the entire universe. It’s not even close.

Compare those odds with the 100% 1:1 ratio of code and sentient authors. Not much of a comparison. There is nothing miraculous about attributing code to sentient authors whatsoever.

The information sciences have taught us much over the last 50 years. Google and credit card companies rely on the fact that chaos cannot author code. They have also taught us that Random Mutations are not beneficial at all. Google adworks survives on a principle of sentient authored code under Natural Selection operating from a mechanism of Controlled Mutations.

I think we as a species would be pretty arrogant to asume that we’re the only sentient life in the universe. I’m certain that life would also have evvolved elsewhere and I expect, given the right amount f time, that there’s probably sentient life out there too, although probably very different from ourselves. What I definitely don’t believe is that aliens visit earth, buzz shepp with their flying saucers, make crop circles and abduct people. If they were truly sentient they’d have much better things to waste their resources on.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies

At the point that you start nitpicking definitions to common English words, I lose interest. Hasta lasagna.

Sorry to hear that. I believe it is critical to establish definition of terms when discussing scientific matters. It’s certainly more appropriate than Dawkin’s metaphor.

All the more so important to establish the meaning of “thing” as physical, non-physical, or both when discussing topics of materialism vs immaterialism. That is of course if one really wishes to move the conversation productively forward. Otherwise we get caught in the Dawkin’s log jam of insisting infinite regression for a G that must conform to materialistic standards. I don’t believe in that kind of G either.

Yes.

And so I pose to all you flutherites out there, hard at work and such, do you believe in Aliens?

YES

If not then what is your reasoning as to why?

If yes then are you curious to know more?

Very Curious.

Would you like for contact with such creatures or would you prefer that they remain an exaggerated cinematic idea to us?

Depends on the species of Aliens you are talking about. Some I would like contact with others not so much.