Do extra terrestrials exist? If so...

ScoTTyBEEE said:
The evidence for it is very compelling wouldn't you say.

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No-one can dispute this image isn't real, all analysis says it is. It also fits descriptions from hundreds of people/police/military e.t.c.
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I'm not giving a definitive opinion one way or the other on the matter but a murky photograph doesn't strike me as the most compelling evidence that it is a UFO. For all I know it could as easily be a photograph of a set of underwater lights which is why the image is unclear but that would definitely be a real photograph with no photo trickery. I'm half-hoping that the improvements in cameras on mobile phones will enable us to actually get clearer pictures of these UFOs rather than so many which look as if they've been taken by a dodgy webcam and are then held up as final proof.

It's possibly also worth pointing out that the descriptions of eye-witnesses can vary wildly - both for situations seen contemporaneously and for claimed sightings of UFOs spread over a number of years. If memory serves the claimed sightings of UFOs have had a wide variety of shapes and styles over the years - maybe you can explain it as analogous to our cars but can all the different shapes be equally good for travelling vast distances or indeed do they need to be?

There's no doubt whatsoever that UFOs exist - that's any flying object that is unidentified. The question might be better as are they signs of extraterrestrial life?

djkav said:
I believe there is other life out there, that's less and more intelligent than us.

The fact that we're here now is proof to that. So if we can exist from space dust, then so can other things else where in this infinite void.
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Wouldn't that just be proof that life can exist in this universe rather than proof that other life must exist?
 
Nitefly said:
Ah, I'm glad because I was sure it would be right up your alley. It's one of those where at the end you go 'OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooh!'... not going to ruin it for you though :p

Enjoy :)
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So far it reminds me of the statement "God is nowhere" or is it "God is now here"......depends on your perspective and how you interpret things.

You are right, it is certainly right up my street....
 
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Castiel said:
I am agnostic about the issue. However in the words of my favourite fictional character...."I want to believe"

I do find it interesting that many people who profess a belief that God(s) do not exist citing that there is no evidence and as such the default position must be negative, will hold the contrary position regarding extra terrestrial life given the criteria are basically the same....

I am agnostic about God, therefore logically I am agnostic about ETs......
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There is a key difference, though. We know that life exists - us and all the rest of life on Earth. That means that the criteria aren't the same at all. With god(s), there's no evidence of their existence. With life, there is overwhelming and uncontested evidence of its existence right here on Earth, all over the place. So the question isn't "does life exist?" but "does life also exist elsewhere?". That's a very different question. The criteria are not the same at all.

I don't believe in extraterrestial life, intelligent or not. I think that given the limited and indirect evidence we have, its existence is very highly probable simply due to scale. Given the size of the universe, I think it's reasonable to argue that any type of thing that is possible will happen more than once. Not necessarily exactly the same (though that's possible) but the same sort of thing, i.e. life and intelligent life but not necessarily very much like Terran life and humans.

Estimates for the number of stars in the observable universe are in the region of 10^23. Even allowing for multi-star systems and stars that almost certainly can't support life on orbiting planets, there's an incomprehensible number of possibles. I think it's really rather unlikely that any type of thing that can happen on a planet would happen on only one of that incomprehensible multitude of places...and we know that life and intelligent life are types of things that can happen.

For the same reason, I think it's extremely unlikely that any people elsewhere (if they exist) know we exist. Even with technology we can only imagine and a massive exploration program spanning millions of years, the chances of them having looked at Earth at all, let alone since humans existed, is tiny.
 
VoG said:
I 100% believe there's life out there on other worlds, i also 100% believe there's intelligent, advanced life out there on other worlds, why?, because there are billions upon billions of planets out there, & you would have to be incredibley arrogant to believe that in the vastness of space, we are the only intelligent advanced race in existence, that i don't buy. [..]
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Why arrogant? If we are the only intelligent life in the universe, it would just be chance. That's not arrogance. It's just a fluke. You may as well argue that every lottery winner must be arrogant about winning the lottery.
 
Angilion said:
There is a key difference, though. We know that life exists - us and all the rest of life on Earth. That means that the criteria aren't the same at all. With god(s), there's no evidence of their existence. With life, there is overwhelming and uncontested evidence of its existence right here on Earth, all over the place. So the question isn't "does life exist?" but "does life also exist elsewhere?". That's a very different question. The criteria are not the same at all.
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you are missing the point somewhat, it is about attributing assumptions to make definitive statements as if they are fact without sufficent evidence to support that definite position. You can use the question 'does life exist elsewhere' if you wish, the criteria of having sufficent evidence to support the proposition still applies. The original question wasn't 'does life exist' anyway, it was 'does extraterrestrial life exist'.......to which the criteria regarding evidence remains the same from the perspective of those who dismiss one proposition for the lack thereof, yet accept the proposition for the other regardless of the lack thereof......

Whether one proposition is more likely than the other is immaterial, as the point was the acceptance of a definitive, therefore factual position for the positive with one, but the negative with the other using contradictory positions to assess the relative validity.

So it is not about whether ETs are more likely than God, but attributing a ' Yes Aliens definitely exist' based on limited evidence and assumption against attrubiting a 'No God definitely doesn't exist' based on the same......you can say 'The likelihood of God is somewhat less than the likelihood of Extraterrestrial life' and base than on the statistics, example of life on Earth etc...and assumptions made from that, but not that one definitely exists while the other does not......I hope that clarifies my opinion somewhat.:)

Also, with Life, we define it by our own experience of it, with God there is no such universal definition...if I define God as being the Universe in which we inhabit, can you say that there is no evidence for such......or simply that you don't accept the definition.
 
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I believe it's more likely that god was just an alien with advanced technology, rather than some all-powerful supreme being who created the universe.
 
arctine said:
Didn't they find bacteria on mars or something?
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Maybe, maybe not. It's gone very quite and pretty much all scientists saying we haven't found life outside of earth. Possibly natural geological formations rather than evidence of bacteria.
So pretty much no they haven't.

Here we go:
In 1998, a team from NASA's Johnson Space Center obtained a small sample for analysis. Researchers found preterrestrial aqueous alteration phases and objects[32] of the size and shape consistent with Earthly fossilized nanobacteria, but the existence of nanobacteria itself is controversial. Analysis with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) studied its high molecular weight polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in 2000, and NASA scientists concluded that as much as 75% of the organic matter in Nakhla "may not be recent terrestrial contamination".[24][33]

This caused additional interest in this meteorite, so on 2006, NASA managed to obtain an additional and larger sample from the London Natural History Museum. On this second sample, a large dendritic carbon content was observed. When the results and evidence were published on 2006, some independent researchers claimed that the carbon deposits are of biologic origin. However, it was remarked that since carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the Universe, finding it in curious patterns is not indicative or suggestive of biological origin.[34][35]
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dirtychinchilla said:
Perhaps they were doing long distance testing. It's important to speculate and not jump to an illogical conclusion here! To quote Sherlock Holmes, "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" and in this case, you have certainly not eliminated the possible, for example, the possibility that there are secret aircraft that we do not know the specs of.
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I think it's also worth noting that the "in excess of current technology" claims are made up, judged by people who don't know about cutting-edge aircraft technology, rely on guesses of altitude, apply to manned aircraft, or some combination of the above.

An unmanned aircraft moving on remote control a couple of thousand feet up can look (especially to inexpert observers) like a full-size aircraft much higher up making movements in excess of what is currently possible for a manned aircraft.
 
Castiel said:
I am agnostic about the issue. However in the words of my favourite fictional character...."I want to believe"

I do find it interesting that many people who profess a belief that God(s) do not exist citing that there is no evidence and as such the default position must be negative, will hold the contrary position regarding extra terrestrial life given the criteria are basically the same....

I am agnostic about God, therefore logically I am agnostic about ETs......
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The criteria isn't basically the same though. I come from an Islamic background and even I can see that it's not the same. I understand both sides of the group though and I also understand the need for humankind to have a belief structure because without it there is no hope for many people. We as a race need something to hold on to because the thought of death is so moving that we must be able to comfort ourselves that if we live a life of with faith then we will go to a better place when we die.

Then there's the logic debate. Why are there so many Gods? If I believe in one God and the next man believes in another then which one of us will go to heaven? It's illogical for there to be 2 heavens from 2 different Gods. No religions book states that there are other Gods and that if you change religion you'll still go to 'a' heaven.

The logic debate kicks in big time with that kind of paradox.

Mathematics tells us that there must be life out there, our galaxy alone houses billions of stars in just one area of space in a photograph captured by Hubble. In fact it's probably far closer to us than we know. Some researchers believe there could be life below the surface of Mars as it shifted when its atmosphere got wiped out billions of years ago. There are other moons in our Solar system that have ice and water so life as we don't know it could exist there too.

I think we will likely find confirmation of life outside of our planet in our time. It won't be intelligent but it will be some form of life. Nasa has various probes that are due to be sent around the solar system over the next few years designed to look just for that.
 
I think the big test will be the Jovian moon Europa. If they do manage a mission to burrow beneath the ice layer and sample the liquid. If it does manage to identify microbial life, then the odds of life else where will be slashed.
 
mrk said:
The criteria isn't basically the same though. I come from an Islamic background and even I can see that it's not the same. I understand both sides of the group though and I also understand the need for humankind to have a belief structure because without it there is no hope for many people. We as a race need something to hold on to because the thought of death is so moving that we must be able to comfort ourselves that if we live a life of with faith then we will go to a better place when we die.

Then there's the logic debate. Why are there so many Gods? If I believe in one God and the next man believes in another then which one of us will go to heaven? It's illogical for there to be 2 heavens from 2 different Gods. No religions book states that there are other Gods and that if you change religion you'll still go to 'a' heaven.

The logic debate kicks in big time with that kind of paradox.

Mathematics tells us that there must be life out there, our galaxy alone houses billions of stars in just one area of space in a photograph captured by Hubble. In fact it's probably far closer to us than we know. Some researchers believe there could be life below the surface of Mars as it shifted when its atmosphere got wiped out billions of years ago. There are other moons in our Solar system that have ice and water so life as we don't know it could exist there too.

I think we will likely find confirmation of life outside of our planet in our time. It won't be intelligent but it will be some form of life. Nasa has various probes that are due to be sent around the solar system over the next few years designed to look just for that.
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It is not about the subject matter but the way in which people justify their opinion.

As I have explained above and several times in the thread, it is about how people attribute definitive positions, not what those positions actually are....if you dismiss one for lack of definitive evidence but accept another even though definitive evidence doesn't exist, that is a contradiction.

Whether one is more likely than the other is immaterial because those people are making statements of fact and not statements of relative likelihood.

Mathematics doesn't say there MUST be life out there, only that it is statistically probable....again this illustrates what I am saying about making assumptions on the factuality of a position.

Simply put, it is about holding an agnostic position on both until sufficent evidence presents itself, whether you believe the likelihood of one is greater than the other is largely beside the point.

Your point about Gods, much depends on the individuals perspective and definition of God, you yourself as a Muslim will understand that God is effectively unknowable, therefore is it not equally logical that ALL Gods can be The God and it is in fact only mankinds inability to comprehend God that creates this pantheon of interpretations of an unknowable entity?
 
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Of course they exist. We evolved which given how self-destructive we are is something of an achievement we've got this far!!

I'll bet they are far more intelligent than to risk getting mixed up with us. Would be like a grown-up and a child - they might watch us grow up but we're too irritating to bother with so let us get on with killing ourselves and the universe would be better for it.

I'm a happy soul today lol. :D
 
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