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Author Topic:   Aliens and the Bible
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 15 of 147 (419655)
09-04-2007 1:19 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Ihategod
08-26-2007 9:32 PM


Implausibility and Improbability
Hello, Vashgun:
...have become aware of the reality of UFO's
What reality is this? Before you can become 'aware of the reality' of something, that something must first be real. Now, speaking in the simplest sense of the word UFO”unidentified flying object”I suppose you could say that there are indeed things in the sky flying around that aren't often identifiable. But in the more specific meaning of UFO”alien visitor spacecraft hovering over Earth”, I highly doubt such things exist. We've all seen photos like yours before, so those certainly aren't going to convince us. No; you'll need images that are a little better than blobs on blue backgrounds that could just be scratches on the lens for all we can tell. You're also going to have to find more credible sources for your argument, since the majority of UFO sighters are sleep-deprived pilots and the severely uneducated. No evidence of alien spacecraft has yet stood up to the scrutiny required to allow us to scientifically declare them as real.
Is their life on other planets and if so what are the implications?
I'm going to give you some quotes from my physics text book of last year (good thing I didn't sell it, yet), and hopefully it should help you understand the improbability of your argument:
quote:
First, life probably exists all over the universe; second, nearly all of it is probably single-cellular. But we're unable to form any conclusions about intelligent life, or technological life.1
...
[It] is much easier for simple single-celled life to originate than it is for that life to develop into multicellular forms. Indeed, some scientists have argued that, while simple life forms are common in the universe, complex life is rare because it depends on many special factors.2
The author then goes on to analyse a series of these factors and concludes from them:
quote:
So it is plausible that intelligence should eventually appear on most planets having multicellular life. Bust most experts recognize that the great majority of life-supporting planets probably harbor only single-celled organisms. So a plausible high estimate might be that intelligence arises on 1% of those planets harboring life.... Combining these figures with our previous estimates, our heigh estimate is that intelligent life has arisen at some 2 108 (200 million) places in our galaxy...3
Now, that is just a high estimate regarding the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. But why is it not likely to have visited our little rock? The author of my textbook gives the following reason:
quote:
[Enrico] Fermi suggested only three plausible reasons for the absence of visitations: Either (1) interstellar travel is impossible, (2) interstellar travel is always judged not to be worth the effort, or (3) technological civilizations don't survive long enough for interstellar travel to happen. But Fermi and his friends that at lunch that day felt that interstellar travel is possible.... The second suggestion seems plausible only if we assume that the number of technological civilizations is very small. For if there have been, as Fermi believed, many such civilizations, then it's implausible that every one of them would regard space travel and colonization to be not worth the effort. If even a single civilization opted for colonization, the galaxy should be entirely colonized soon (within only a few million years) thereafter.
Fermi's third suggestion, that technological civilizations don't survive long enough for interstellar travel to happen, is called the short-lifetime hypothesis.... Our galaxy is about 13 billion years old.
So stars formed, burned, and died in our galaxy for 8 billion years before our 5-billion-year-old sun was born. If there have been previous technological civilizations, most of them should have become technological long ago.... [Let's] assume, for illustration, that technological civilizations developed on 1000 planets, a number that Fermi would have considered plausible. If 1000 civilizations have cropped up at various times during the entire 13-billion-year history of our galaxy, then on average one would start up every 13 million years.... This means that the most recent technological civilization preceding ours would, on average, have started some 13 million years ago! ... Unless the typical technological civilization survives for millions of years, we would expect that no other such civilizations are still around, even assuming that many have arisen.4
The author then discusses the available evidence”us”and decides that given the inability of our own species to fix problems that are bound to lead to our extinction, it's rather probable to believe that there is little, if any, life in our galaxy old enough for "interstellar travel," either having gone extinct long ago, or having arisen too recently to be much further advanced than us.5
For all of these reasons, I'd say that "the reality of UFO's" is anything but.
My position is thus: There are many planets in many solar systems in Jesus' vast creation that house life in abundance and perhaps they are without the filth of sin.
Yep, we've established that there are many planets with life in abundance, but we were only able to show that life to be single-cellular, which would make me wonder if it's really possible to judge the sinfulness of a bacterium. And you really haven't presented any convincing evidence to the contrary”either showing intelligent life, or showing God to care about bacteria.
Also I think maybe when it says "Sons of God" in the bible this might refer to these other creatures.
http://whatsaiththescripture.com/...bout.Marietta.Davis.html
What evidence do you have that the Sons of God are anything other than the followers of God in general? The source you linked to doesn't support any such notion that they are specifically extraterrestrial life forms. Do you have any other evidence that would lead us to believe that the writers of the Bible were referring to extraterrestrials when they wrote "Sons of God"?
So, here's why I think this.
In SCENES BEYOND THE GRAVE; VISIONS OF MARIETTA DAVIS an angel explains a view of the cosmos while on the way to the first heaven.
"'Behold,' said she, 'the countless, planetary hosts. Mark the rolling orbs, suns, and systems of suns, moving in silence and harmony. The vast expanse is occupied and peopled with universes, constructed in infinite wisdom. These are inhabited by holy beings, happy and immortal, though varied in degree of development and refined spirituality.'"
As for the reasons I've cited above, where are all these beings? Hell, if these creatures are immortal, then the short-lifetime hypothesis shouldn't have any meaning to their existence and they should've been here by now. Not just in the blips and dots that you talk of, but in an all out massive encounter. When the Europeans came across the Americas, they didn't keep showing up one ship at a time; they sent word back and their relatives came in massive numbers. Of all the useless rocks in the area, don't you think us and our planet would at least interest the aliens enough to come and investigate on a little bit larger of a scale?
Now, I don't want to be seen as rude or arrogant, so instead of calling your idea all-out malarkey, I'll just say that it's seemingly improbable .
Jon
__________
1 Art Hobson, Physics: Concepts and Connections 4th ed., 282.
2 Ibid., 281.
3 Ibid., 281.
4 Ibid., 287.
5 Ibid., 288.

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist... might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. - Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species
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En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10
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A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Ihategod, posted 08-26-2007 9:32 PM Ihategod has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 17 by Ihategod, posted 09-04-2007 4:31 PM Jon has not replied
 Message 20 by XFroGuy, posted 09-04-2007 10:03 PM Jon has not replied

  
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