Do you believe there is life other than on Earth?

Marie5656

Marie5656

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Location
Batavia, NY
I had this conversation once with a friend who is a devout Christian. He says no....because in his view, God created Heaven and EARTH only. No room for life on other planets. I disagree, as I think with so many systems out there, most of which we have not explored, I think there has to be life elsewhere. Will we ever interact with them, as in Star Wars or Star Trek. Who knows. Not in our lifetime. But, as Carl Sagan once said, if there was no other life out there, it sure would be an awful waste of space.
 

The odds against life on other planets are pretty bad. The universe is not a friendly place. It's hostile. You need just the right combination of a friendly sun, an atmosphere that absorbs harmful rays, just the right distance from the sun so that humans can survive, and there are extremes in temperature and we only live where the temperatures are favorable. Many place on Earth are uninhabitable. And the most important of all. Liquid water. Not ice.

We are limited to living in a zone. Go up too high and no oxygen and you die.

They keep looking and looking and spending tons of money on exploring space. I think they should give up and look after our own.

And it's really unique when you think of it but there are no two people exactly alike on this Earth.

So why should there be two Earth like planets.?
 
Yes.

I would find it astounding to think that God would create this whole enormous universe, and not populate it with any more than just one planet full of beings.

It's amazing how hung up some people can get, with literal interpretations of thousands of years old writings, that have been

translated / interpreted across several [ancient] languages.

It's like: they're afraid that if they make some tiny little mistake, that they are going straight to Hell.

...well, they might be anyway, but that's a different story.
 

I try to keep an open mind about most things, so yes, there probably is life out there. Why not? It's pompous to think we're the only life in the universe. We haven't traveled that far into it and know so little of it, and yet we say, "there's no life except on earth." How pedestrian.
 
chic said:
I try to keep an open mind about most things, so yes, there probably is life out there. Why not? It's pompous to think we're the only life in the universe. We haven't traveled that far into it and know so little of it, and yet we say, "there's no life except on earth." How pedestrian.
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It's an argument you can't win or lose. The evidence to date.? Earth is the only planet we know of that has all the requirements to sustain life as we know it and in the time span of the universe we are just recent arrivals. Not pedestrian at all. It's science.
 
chic said:
I try to keep an open mind about most things, so yes, there probably is life out there. Why not? It's pompous to think we're the only life in the universe. We haven't traveled that far into it and know so little of it, and yet we say, "there's no life except on earth." How pedestrian.
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It's an argument you can't win or lose. The evidence to date.? Earth is the only planet we know of that has all the requirements to sustain life as we know it and in the time span of the universe we are just recent arrivals. Not pedestrian at all. It's science.

Earth just happened to hit the jackpot in the lottery of the universe.
 
The operative phrase being life "as we know it". Assuming any other life form would be O2 breathing Human like creatures. You are right though, we only know what we know. But It IS hard to believe there is no one out there. We are not even sure how vast space is.

 
Marie5656 said:
The operative phrase being life "as we know it". Assuming any other life form would be O2 breathing Human like creatures. You are right though, we only know what we know. But It IS hard to believe there is no one out there. We are not even sure how vast space is.
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I agree, Marie.
 
I have no reason not to believe that life, in some form, doesn't exist on other planets.

It seems to me that if you believe that God is universal and that he created heaven and the earth it would be reasonable to believe that he may have created life on one or more of the other planets that he created. Maybe even God had a plan B.
 
Marie5656 said:
The operative phrase being life "as we know it". Assuming any other life form would be O2 breathing Human like creatures. You are right though, we only know what we know. But It IS hard to believe there is no one out there. We are not even sure how vast space is.
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I know what you are saying because we are accustomed to thinking that way.

There's a pile of horse manure so there has to be a pony out there somewhere. But that pony might have died a long time ago and that pony couldn't be exactly the same as another pony.

Let's compare it to the lottery. What are the odds of your ticket being drawn even though you and millions are holding tickets.? Sometimes the lottery is carried over for weeks. And that doesn't compare to the universe and the requirements for life as we know it. I'm not really interested in one eyed Mushrooms.
 
Aunt Bea said:
I have no reason not to believe that life, in some form, doesn't exist on other planets.

It seems to me that if you believe that God is universal and that he created heaven and the earth it would be reasonable to believe that he may have created life on one or more of the other planets that he created. Maybe even God had a plan B.
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But now us mere mortals are trying to figure out God? Good Luck with that.
 
My favorite dream is to have some "people" from a VERY advanced planet to come here and explain to us

how they got so "Advanced". Like curing diseases, solving gravity problems, transporting themselves, food etc.

Ever read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World ?
 
With all the billions and billions of other planets out there, it stands to reason that there must be life on some of them. Maybe on millions of them! But we'll never know.
 
Sunny said:
With all the billions and billions of other planets out there, it stands to reason that there must be life on some of them. Maybe on millions of them! But we'll never know.
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I know, I know. But it doesn't stand to reason. We happen to be a freak in the universe. Just look out there with the hubble telescope and what do we find? Chaos.

Billions of grains of sand on a beach. Does one of them have to be a gold nugget?
 
I suspect that with all the billions of galaxies we know about, it's very probable that life other than on earth exists or has existed in the universe. But, I also suspect that the odds of any intelligent life being close enough or current enough to communicate with are pretty slim. We did indeed win the lottery. I recently read that if the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs had arrived a few minutes earlier or later, we wouldn't be here.

Don
 
Marie5656 said:
The operative phrase being life "as we know it". Assuming any other life form would be O2 breathing Human like creatures. You are right though, we only know what we know. But It IS hard to believe there is no one out there. We are not even sure how vast space is.
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Exactly. There could be life forms in the universe we could never have imagined. We measure everything by ourselves and by this planet, which is naive IMO.
 
Grampa Don said:
I suspect that with all the billions of galaxies we know about, it's very probable that life other than on earth exists or has existed in the universe. But, I also suspect that the odds of any intelligent life being close enough or current enough to communicate with are pretty slim. We did indeed win the lottery. I recently read that if the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs had arrived a few minutes earlier or later, we wouldn't be here.

Don
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I love probability studies. But we are dealing with a very narrow probability of life as we know it.

We don't even know how life got started on Earth.

Scientists know all the ingredients but they simply cannot create life from scratch.

They can clone. But cannot create life.
 
Camper6 said:
I love probability studies. But we are dealing with a very narrow probability of life as we know it.

We don't even know how life got started on Earth.

Scientists know all the ingredients but they simply cannot create life from scratch.

They can clone. But cannot create life.
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All of this is over our pay grade, so to speak. Us humans have our limitations and understanding our role in the universe is one of them.
 
Camper6 said:
I love probability studies. But we are dealing with a very narrow probability of life as we know it.

We don't even know how life got started on Earth. That's true.

Scientists know all the ingredients but they simply cannot create life from scratch. That's true right now. It's a risky prediction for the future. Think of the advances in knowledge just in our lifetimes.

They can clone. But cannot create life.
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Don
 
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