Do extra terrestrials exist? If so...

[Saundie]

It would be very arrogant to believe we are the only living organism in the entire universe. I have no doubt that "life" exists out there but not as we know it.

As for little green/grey/one eyed/glowing finger men visiting us - I doubt it.

Another "+1" for Swordfish. There was a statement made (unfortunately I can't remember where I heard/read it) is that it's almost impossible for there not to be life on at least one other planet. Given the vast number of possible combinations of star type, distance, atmospheric composition etc etc the odds are that life occurs on a few other planets. As 4T5 put it; "Mathematical certainty, just look at the figures. "

 

[airrunner]

I believe there are other life forms, and potentially an unlimited amount. I think it is more than highly likely that at least one of those is among us or has visited / watches us.

I definitely believe we are being watched, as these numerous sightings of ufos all look untimately like some type of craft.
I cannot comprehend that thousands of these sightings of ufos are all false? I just don't believe that, the vast majority of sightings can be proven a load of nonsense, but that 5% like the belgium sighting for almost 30 minutes just cannot be explained to this day.

There is also the tehran sighting which is just baffling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Tehran_UFO_incident

I believe intelligent life has visited this planet on numerous occasions without a doubt in my mind.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Have a read of this, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler_life_search.html

 

[semi-pro waster]

I am agnostic about God, therefore logically I am agnostic about ETs......

That's about the closest description to my feelings. At the point where the question seems to make any appreciable difference to my life then I might have to give more consideration to such evidence as there is, right now it's an interesting topic of conversation at most.

 

[SlyReaper]

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......

The difference is there are very good reasons to suppose aliens exist somewhere in the universe. Also, it is in principle a verifiable/falsifiable hypothesis. There are no good reasons to suppose God exists.

 

[Glaucus]

I believe that there is probably life out there somewhere. However I do not believe it has come into contact with us

This,

despite seeing lots of funky stuff I couldn't explain at the time. It was all explained later. One was a hellicopter with search light, another was a passenger plane that initially looked like a silver cigar- only when it banked did the wings come apparent, rest was sleep paralysis. I can understand why people think they are abducted with sleep paralysis. I used to get a reacurring one where "aliens" injected me in the stomach. As well as massive flaming Satan and other crazy stuff.

Also I think it unlikely we will ever meet exterteristrials. Not only is there the vast distances and time/relativity. But theres also the time factor. The universe is billions and billions of years old. Other intelligent civilised could have evolved become far more advanced and died out, before our solasystem even existed. Once we've searched a few thousand sola-systems we will get an idea of how rare/common life is. But the lack of evidence so far would suggest it's a rare event rather than common.

 

[Skillmister]

No doubt in my mind there there is life out there somewhere.



On other life in the universe...
"People say, 'Well, have you found life yet?' 'No.' 'Well...' That's like going to the ocean, taking a cup of water, scooping it up and saying, 'There are no whales in the ocean.'"

 

[Swordfish]

This thread made me watch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE

 

[SlyReaper]

This despite seeing lots of funky stuff I couldn't explain at the time. It all was explained latter. One was hellicopter, rest was sleep paralysis. I can understand why people think they are abducted with sleep paralysis. I used to get a reacurring one where "aliens" injected me in the stomach. As well as massive flaming satins and other crazy stuff.

Also I think it highly unlikely we will ever meet exterteristrials. Not only is there the vast distances and time/relativity. But theres also the time factor. The universe is billions and billions of years old. Other intelligent civilised could have evolved become far more advanced and died out, before our solasystem even existed. Once we've stuccoed a few thousand solasystems we will get an idea of how rare/common life is. But the lack of evidence so far would suggest it's a rare event rather than common.

We may soon get to the point where we're at least able to detect alien life. If we detect an exoplanet, and spectrographic analysis reveals it has a substantial oxygen atmosphere, then that planet almost certainly has alien life on it.

 

[Van Hellseek]

Do you believe in extra terrestials/aliens?

I didn't believe in them before I started reading posts in GD, and clearly some of the posts here can only have been made by aliens. So yes.

 

[Glaucus]

consequently other planets, which are likely to have properties different to ours (eg different gravity) will develop different kinds of alien species.

.

Unless you are a supporter of convergence evolution. Where nature trends towards the best designs. So although things wouldn't look identical, they would look very similar. For example several species have almost identical eyes despite a different evolutionary tree.

 

[Castiel]

Haha I noticed your ninja edit, reflecting what I said.

There is, though, substantial evidence hinting towards the existence of life on other planets. And we know that the Earth is not the only planet which has the possibility of supporting life.

Also, currently scientists generally determine life supporting planets to be those
that have water on them, but in other parts of the universe it's entirely plausible that life does not need water to support it. It may even be that there is life closer to home that we, at the present moment, do not recognise due to our limited scope for testing these other planets.

I do know a fair amount about this Castiel. I shall cite evidence if you want me to as there is very strong evidence, unlike for God (and I'm only mentioning that because you suggested that there was none).

My edit was prior to your post, however the supposition that a planet may be capable of supporting life is not proof that it does or has or even can to the level that we see with complex life on this planet....it also assumes that by definition any supposed advanced lifeform cannot be defined as God by ancient man (the so called ancient astronaut theory etc)

I also know far more than you might think about the subject and the evidence supporting such conjecture.....

The Earth may very well be unique in the universe in that a million things all came together by chance (or design depending on your philosophy) to create the exact, precise criteria necessary for complex life to evolve....it may be that simply being in the 'life zone' of a suitable star is not enough, for example our unusual moon that stablises the Earth enabling Life to continue....Mars for example is not stable on it's axis as it's moons do not have the same relationship with its parent and as such cannot support life and was unlikely to have ever done so.

You can make the argument that life may well be so different to what we recognise that we wouldn't know it even if we coexisted with it, you could argue that in an infinite Universe the criteria that led to life on Earth must statistically mean that it exists elsewhere....but then when it comes to a more metaphysical opinion the same may well be true by those criteria.

And that is the point being made, not that the possibility exists or the respective value of that possibility, but that people will make a definitive position that God doesn't exist based on lack of definitive evidence, yet make a definitive position that Aliens do exist although there is still a lack of definitive evidence.....

 

[Housey]

I'm fairly confident there are other life forms out there somewhere though I have no idea how developed they are and I'm not convinced they've ever visited our world, though again I would be happy to be proved wrong by some solid evidence, which has been presented yet I don't believe or at least I'm not aware of.

 

[Castiel]

Have a read of this, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler_life_search.html

so we really don't have a good idea of what the chances are for advanced life

 

[edscdk]

250 billion galaxy's x 1 trillion stars A pop = a big number so it's highly probable that there is other life

 

[Glaucus]

Yep, at the moment we are totally clueless as to how likely life is, it could equally be unique to earth, or exist on most planets or anything in-between. The drake equation is meaningless, it's based on random numbers as we have no idea of the chance of life or the chance of advanced intelligence. These numbers aren't even guess work, just some number he thought up.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

My edit was prior to your post

Then I apologise for making that assumption.

The Earth may very well be unique in the universe in that a million things all came together by chance (or design depending on your philosophy) to create the exact, precise criteria necessary for complex life to evolve....it may be that simply being in the 'life zone' of a suitable star is not enough, for example our unusual moon that stablises the Earth enabling Life to continue....Mars for example is not stable on it's axis as it's moons do not have the same relationship with its parent and as such cannot support life and was unlikely to have ever done so.

You can make the argument that life may well be so different to what we recognise that we wouldn't know it even if we coexisted with it, you could argue that in an infinite Universe the criteria that led to life on Earth must statistically mean that it exists elsewhere....but then when it comes to a more metaphysical opinion the same may well be true by those criteria.

And that is the point being made, not that the possibility exists, but that people will make a definitive position that God doesn't exist based on lack of evidence, yet make a definitive position that Aliens do exist although there is still a lack of evidence.....

You are absolutely right in saying that there is no firm evidence, but the indications and current evidence based on planets in our own solar system suggest that the planets are capable of supporting life. But this does, indeed, not mean that there definitely is life there.

The point you made about the infinite universe does not guarantee the existence of life, but makes it statistically, virtually impossible, for there not to be life. If we assume, though, that the universe is infinitely large and that there are therefore infinite possibilities of anything happening, life then MUST exist, and possibly, by the same theory, something equivalent to God probably exists, but not in the way that it is acknowledged by humans.

I think, really, we both agree.You're just picking me up on the evidence point, which is fair enough.

 

[Gackt]

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......

People who assert that (a) God(s) do not exist are as erroneous as those who assert aliens must exist.

There is however, more cause to believe that there aliens based on what we can observe and measure about the Universe than there is about God.

The only possible stance to take is:

"I don't believe or disbelieve anything. There is a high-probability of extra-terrestial life in the Universe, but until that is proven, I can't say for sure."

Difference is when people consider God, they associate it with religion which promises answers that it can never hope to provide and it seems rather illogical to base your life and perspectives of the Universe on something so obviously fallacious and arrogant.

i.e. If there's a God, then okay. If there's a God from a particular religion, then okay. But until that can be proven to be true (if it can at all) then I won't base my life around what could just be scrawlings of a madman or the masterpiece of a group of very powerful, dangerous people.

 

[Kemik]

I believe there is a mathematical certainty that there are intelligent (i.e. capable of using tools of some form) life forms out there. I don't believe we have been visited by intelligent life.

 

[ElliorR]