Do Aliens Exist?

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I'm more interested in how "cognitive capacity" is possible in single celled organisms:

How brainless slime molds redefine intelligence

Been there, done that - in these very forums.

 

[Anguspure]

There is no evidence for the 'immaterial'.

The very origin of the Universe itself and its fine tuning to support life whether the physical forces of creation or the very rare location and composition of planets suitable for life, as well as the very origins of life itself are a very clear indicator of intelligent life beyond the physical universe.

At every point where the high background entropy of the universe is significantly reduced, there we have the influence of a Creator.

"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature." Fred Hoyle

"Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word." George Ellis

"There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming". Paul Davies

"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." Alan Sandage

"We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." John O'Keefe

"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" George Greenstein

"The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory." Arthur Eddington

"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan." Arno Penzias

"I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." Roger Penrose

"When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." Tony Rothman

"The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." Vera Kistiakowsky

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." Robert Jastrow

"When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." Frank Tipler

"We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it." Alexander Polyakov

"I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." Wernher von Braun

"Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." Carl Woese

"It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design." Antony Flew

What we have is evidence that humans have cognitive capacities similar to those of other animals, but more sophisticated.

This is simply not true. Our language, our abstract thought, our appreciation of abstract beauty and the way in which we Love are entirely unique to the human mind. If this all of this is simply "more sophisticated" it is an advance in sophistication that is a quantum leap in advancement (just as for every significant stage in the development of the universe and life) that requires significant fore thought and intelligent input to replicate.

Science attempts to describe and explain observations in testable ways - but even so, a great deal of effort goes into explanations that we do not yet have ways of testing but that are based on, or are predictions of, existing well-tested theories.

This from "Heretic" by Matti Leisola
The illness known as pellagra reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. in the early twentieth century. The scientific consensus attributed it to an infectious agent or moldy corn. It turned out to be a vitamin deficiency.3 Also, through much of the twentieth century, the conventional scientific wisdom was that the continents were fixed. When German geologist Alfred Wegener published Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of Continents and Oceans), arguing for the idea of continental drift, he was excoriated as a sloppy crank, a man so enamored of his pet theory that he was blind to the facts. Fully half a century after his book appeared, he was still viewed with suspicion. Today his idea of drifting continents is the standard one in geology. A third instance, even more recent: Backed by the authority of the U.S. government, the scientific establishment deemed eggs bad for your heart and pushed this narrative for years. These scientific authorities insisted eggs were bad for you, and ended up with egg on their faces.4 These examples underscore what should be obvious: How could science progress if we could never question or abandon the majority scientific opinion? We would all still be geocentrists who thought the continents were fixed and that eggs were terrible for you....


Here a single example will suffice. In 2012 the results of a project called ENCODE5 were published in the journal Nature. The name of the project comes from the words Encyclopedia of DNA Elements. Since 1970 leading evolutionists had claimed that most of the human genome is garbage left over from the random mutations said to fuel the evolutionary process. (See Chapter 8.) But the ENCODE project showed that the great majority of our genome is transcribed into RNA, suggesting that it is functional. These results were inconvenient to neo-Darwinists, but rather than objectively assessing the new findings and returning to the drawing board, many Darwinists responded with knee-jerk, sarcastic dismissals of the ENCODE results. The tone of the following passage is indicative (emphasis added): This claim flies in the face of current estimates… This absurd conclusion was reached through various means… Here, we detail the many logical and methodological transgressions involved in assigning functionality to almost every nucleotide in the human genome. The ENCODE results were predicted by one of its authors to necessitate the rewriting of textbooks. We agree, many textbooks dealing with marketing, mass media hype, and public relations may well have to be rewritten.6 Such reactions are telling. They suggest that many neo-Darwinists are ready to dismiss out of hand any observations that do not fit their theory.
In science we should follow the evidence, not cling to pet theories. Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman well described the scientific ideal. “If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong,” he commented. “In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”7 Wise words, but easier said than done. This book is the story of where the evidence led me after I decided to follow it into the wilderness of heresy, and of the battles I was drawn into along the way....

In the Philebus of Plato (429–347 B.C.E.) Socrates considered this all-important question and laid out the two primary possibilities: “Whether we are to affirm that all existing things, and this fair scene which we call the Universe, are governed by the influence of the irrational, the random, and the mere chance; or, on the contrary, as our predecessors affirmed, are kept in their course by the control of mind and a certain wonderful regulating intelligence.”1

The scientific establishment of our day does not, for the most part, explicitly argue for the former over the latter. Instead they simply insist that we must assume the former anytime we are doing science, must entertain only those explanations consistent with atheism, regardless of what we believe in our private lives. The name for this dogma is methodological materialism, and I came to realize how irrational this view of scientific rationality was. Understand, most scientists who go along with methodological materialism put about as much thought into it as they do breathing.

What odds? I suspect you don't have any calculation to back up this claim, so explain what you think the odds are about and how you conclude that they are 'incredulously high'.

It seems to me the analogy is entirely false, but if someone says he has won a hand with royal flushes 30 times in a row simply by hitting "the jackpot", an intelligent scientist would know that it's possible but astronomically unlikely, so would look for evidence of cheating or fabrication. What would you do, invoke 'immaterial' influences?

The work has been done by Douglass Axe on the odds of just one functional protein appearing in the primordial soup and they are fantastically improbable.

The word "fantastically" in the term "fantastically improbable" refers to the number of possible events (as defined by planck time) that could possibly have occurred in the universe since the universe begun. The number is something in the region of 10 to the 80.

So a fantastic number is one that is bigger then this in that it can't possibly be represented in the physical universe, and a fantastic improbability is one that is so vanishingly small that there has been insufficient time and space for the chance to be realised.

Douglas Axe writes: For comparison, a single 80-character line of text would suffice to write out the number of atoms in the universe, with the total number of physical over the universe's history requiring only half a line more. So as large and old as our universe is, it envelops nowhere near enough matter and has spanned nowhere near enough time for each of the possibilities in this search space (referring to the random search for a 120 000 pixel image of Abraham Lincoln among all of the images ever made) to have been given a physical representation.

So if we're searching for a way in which life, any life, can begin without a physical law or a mind to suspend the other natural and mathematical laws of the universe for the purposes of creation it is indeed pertinent to consider the chances that we're up against.

And if we wish to discredit the very idea that life might arise without creative intelligence the fantastic improbability of accidental invention due to the same serves as a great encouragement, because accidental invention is indeed physically impossible.

 

[Anguspure]

Again, arguments from incredulity, some straw-man 'materialist claims', and a lot of hot air without any plausible alternative argument - to call materialist claims 'handwaving', then suggest that the 'immaterial power of the mind' is an explanation is more than ironic

Abstraction (generalisation, categorization, conceptualisation, etc.) can be achieved very efficiently by pattern-seeking and pattern-matching coupled with associative storage and retrieval - which happen to be functions that neural networks like the brain are particularly well-suited to. That's not to say that neural networks are necessary - computational abstraction is a major field of computer science and information processing.

The idea that you have to describe exactly how neurons fire together to perform abstraction indicates some basic lack of understanding of such networks - it's one of the remaining hurdles to safety-critical use of neural networks that we can't generally see exactly how they perform their tasks.

As for 'delicate complexity theory' as an 'attempt to explain why seizures and brain stimulation never evoke abstract thought', without a citation for the theory and evidence that, 'seizures and brain stimulation never evoke abstract thought', I can't really comment - I'm sceptical, it sounds like a straw man - but Egnor's citation of split-brain patients as counter-examples actually supports a materialist view.

Dividing the corpus callosum separates the two hemispheres and produces what appear to be dual consciousness's, each hemisphere having separate - and sometimes conflicting - views, preferences, & even beliefs. Yet Egnor decribes them as "... still one person". Assuming the 'delicate complexity' idea is a supportable claim, it would not be unexpected that abstract thought survives corpus callosotomy - the corpus callosum is a 'trunk road' of connectivity between two similar processing systems in which the 'delicate complexity' of abstract thought occurs.

I was puzzled why Egnor would not only wrongly describe the result of corpus callosotomy, but, surprisingly, try to use it in support of immaterialism - until I checked him out - RationalWiki has his details, which explain it, and more. Also a neurosurgeon, he must be aware of the split-brain studies, so his misrepresentation must be deliberate... Michael Egnor is clearly not a reliable source.

It's also worth noting that networks with connectivity involving key nodes that roughly scale in size with internodal distance, such as the brain (or the internet) are very resilient to both localised and diffuse damage.

As for the as-yet unsupported claims of human exceptionalism you're promoting, it's pretty clear that other animals are also capable of various levels of (less sophisticated) abstract thought, problem-solving and forward planning, e.g. Animal Reasoning.

However, it's a complex issue and discussions can be plagued by problems of definition, e.g. what is abstract thought? which often lead to fallacious arguments via Moving the Goalposts, Special Pleading, and 'No True Scotsman' claims.

This article, Can Animals Think Abstractly? sums it up quite well, and has some interesting links:

Quote: Holly Dunsworth: "...In fact, I think much of our own behavior that we believe is due to abstract reasoning is actually the same mechanistic, conditioned, plastic, and innovative behavior that's occurring in other species. That is, not only do we anthropomorphize gorillas and other animals too much, but we anthropomorphize humans too much."
​

Caution is always warranted in teasing apart these cognitive questions, yet there's convincing evidence that some animals reason abstractly under some circumstances (some other examples regarding nonhuman primates can be found here; data are available, too, for animals as diverse as dolphins and pigs).​

'Nuff said.

"As a young student, I used to laugh at those who, as I thought, placed God in the gaps of our scientific knowledge. This God-of-the-gaps criticism is often leveled against Christians and other religious believers, against all those who insist there is clear evidence of design in nature. To my way of thinking, such people lacked the patience and level-headedness that I possessed.

It was so clear to me: Instead of plugging away to discover the natural mechanism for this or that mystery about the natural world, these pro-design people threw up their hands and used the God-did-it explanation as a cover for ignorance. This criticism of intelligent design proponents struck me as reasonable, so I didn’t listen to their arguments.

But eventually I came to realize that this criticism cuts both ways, since a functional atheist also can reach for pat explanations in the face of mystery. It’s just that for him, the pat explanation will never be God. That is, you do not need God in your explanatory toolkit in order to short-circuit careful scientific investigation and reasoning. I realized that I myself had been all too willing to stuff vague materialistic explanations into the gaps of our scientific knowledge.

I also recognized something else that the god-of-the-gaps criticism obscures: The more we learn about the natural world, the more fresh mysteries open up before us. David Berlinski, who has taught at Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York, and the Université de Paris, put it this way in The Devil’s Delusion: Western science has proceeded by filling gaps, but in filling them, it has created gaps all over again.

The process is inexhaustible. Einstein created the special theory of relativity to accommodate certain anomalies in the interpretation of Clerk Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field. Special relativity led directly to general relativity. But general relativity is inconsistent with quantum mechanics, the largest visions of the physical world alien to one another. Understanding has improved, but within the physical sciences, anomalies have grown great, and what is more, anomalies have grown great because understanding has improved.1

The god-of-the-gaps criticism ignores this well-established pattern. Materialists think that because we continue to make discoveries about the natural world, the pool of known mysteries must be shrinking toward zero. Instead, whole landscapes of new mystery present themselves to science precisely when some major new discovery is achieved, like the explorer reaching the crest of a mountain and finding a new realm before him." Extract from "Heretic" by Matti Leisola

 

[46AND2]

The very origin of the Universe itself and its fine tuning to support life whether the physical forces of creation or the very rare location and composition of planets suitable for life, as well as the very origins of life itself are a very clear indicator of intelligent life beyond the physical universe.

At every point where the high background entropy of the universe is significantly reduced, there we have the influence of a Creator.

"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature." Fred Hoyle

"Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word." George Ellis

"There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming". Paul Davies

"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." Alan Sandage

"We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." John O'Keefe

"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" George Greenstein

"The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory." Arthur Eddington

"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan." Arno Penzias

"I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." Roger Penrose

"When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." Tony Rothman

"The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." Vera Kistiakowsky

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." Robert Jastrow

"When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." Frank Tipler

"We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it." Alexander Polyakov

"I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." Wernher von Braun

"Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." Carl Woese

"It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design." Antony Flew


This is simply not true. Our language, our abstract thought, our appreciation of abstract beauty and the way in which we Love are entirely unique to the human mind. If this all of this is simply "more sophisticated" it is an advance in sophistication that is a quantum leap in advancement (just as for every significant stage in the development of the universe and life) that requires significant fore thought and intelligent input to replicate.


This from "Heretic" by Matti Leisola
The illness known as pellagra reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. in the early twentieth century. The scientific consensus attributed it to an infectious agent or moldy corn. It turned out to be a vitamin deficiency.3 Also, through much of the twentieth century, the conventional scientific wisdom was that the continents were fixed. When German geologist Alfred Wegener published Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of Continents and Oceans), arguing for the idea of continental drift, he was excoriated as a sloppy crank, a man so enamored of his pet theory that he was blind to the facts. Fully half a century after his book appeared, he was still viewed with suspicion. Today his idea of drifting continents is the standard one in geology. A third instance, even more recent: Backed by the authority of the U.S. government, the scientific establishment deemed eggs bad for your heart and pushed this narrative for years. These scientific authorities insisted eggs were bad for you, and ended up with egg on their faces.4 These examples underscore what should be obvious: How could science progress if we could never question or abandon the majority scientific opinion? We would all still be geocentrists who thought the continents were fixed and that eggs were terrible for you....


Here a single example will suffice. In 2012 the results of a project called ENCODE5 were published in the journal Nature. The name of the project comes from the words Encyclopedia of DNA Elements. Since 1970 leading evolutionists had claimed that most of the human genome is garbage left over from the random mutations said to fuel the evolutionary process. (See Chapter 8.) But the ENCODE project showed that the great majority of our genome is transcribed into RNA, suggesting that it is functional. These results were inconvenient to neo-Darwinists, but rather than objectively assessing the new findings and returning to the drawing board, many Darwinists responded with knee-jerk, sarcastic dismissals of the ENCODE results. The tone of the following passage is indicative (emphasis added): This claim flies in the face of current estimates… This absurd conclusion was reached through various means… Here, we detail the many logical and methodological transgressions involved in assigning functionality to almost every nucleotide in the human genome. The ENCODE results were predicted by one of its authors to necessitate the rewriting of textbooks. We agree, many textbooks dealing with marketing, mass media hype, and public relations may well have to be rewritten.6 Such reactions are telling. They suggest that many neo-Darwinists are ready to dismiss out of hand any observations that do not fit their theory.
In science we should follow the evidence, not cling to pet theories. Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman well described the scientific ideal. “If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong,” he commented. “In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”7 Wise words, but easier said than done. This book is the story of where the evidence led me after I decided to follow it into the wilderness of heresy, and of the battles I was drawn into along the way....

In the Philebus of Plato (429–347 B.C.E.) Socrates considered this all-important question and laid out the two primary possibilities: “Whether we are to affirm that all existing things, and this fair scene which we call the Universe, are governed by the influence of the irrational, the random, and the mere chance; or, on the contrary, as our predecessors affirmed, are kept in their course by the control of mind and a certain wonderful regulating intelligence.”1

The scientific establishment of our day does not, for the most part, explicitly argue for the former over the latter. Instead they simply insist that we must assume the former anytime we are doing science, must entertain only those explanations consistent with atheism, regardless of what we believe in our private lives. The name for this dogma is methodological materialism, and I came to realize how irrational this view of scientific rationality was. Understand, most scientists who go along with methodological materialism put about as much thought into it as they do breathing.



The work has been done by Douglass Axe on the odds of just one functional protein appearing in the primordial soup and they are fantastically improbable.

The word "fantastically" in the term "fantastically improbable" refers to the number of possible events (as defined by planck time) that could possibly have occurred in the universe since the universe begun. The number is something in the region of 10 to the 80.

So a fantastic number is one that is bigger then this in that it can't possibly be represented in the physical universe, and a fantastic improbability is one that is so vanishingly small that there has been insufficient time and space for the chance to be realised.

Douglas Axe writes: For comparison, a single 80-character line of text would suffice to write out the number of atoms in the universe, with the total number of physical over the universe's history requiring only half a line more. So as large and old as our universe is, it envelops nowhere near enough matter and has spanned nowhere near enough time for each of the possibilities in this search space (referring to the random search for a 120 000 pixel image of Abraham Lincoln among all of the images ever made) to have been given a physical representation.

So if we're searching for a way in which life, any life, can begin without a physical law or a mind to suspend the other natural and mathematical laws of the universe for the purposes of creation it is indeed pertinent to consider the chances that we're up against.

And if we wish to discredit the very idea that life might arise without creative intelligence the fantastic improbability of accidental invention due to the same serves as a great encouragement, because accidental invention is indeed physically impossible.

Throughout history, a great many things have been attributed to a divine being. One by one, mechanisms are discovered which explain some of them, and every single time, those mechanisms have been natural explanations. Never has a divine being been confirmed as the explanation. Not once. And this, in spite of conviction every bit as strong, from people with just as much intelligence (though not education, obviously) as the men you quoted.

And indeed, as your quotes say, when we fill one of these gaps, more gaps are observed. And we are just as ignorant of the explanations for these gaps as those before us were of their gaps, even though the answers to theirs seem trivial to us now. I see no reason to believe that our lack of explanations for our unknowns are any different than theirs.

 

[Anguspure]

Throughout history, a great many things have been attributed to a divine being. One by one, mechanisms are discovered which explain some of them, and every single time, those mechanisms have been natural explanations. Never has a divine being been confirmed as the explanation. Not once. And this, in spite of conviction every bit as strong, from people with just as much intelligence (though not education, obviously) as the men you quoted.

And indeed, as your quotes say, when we fill one of these gaps, more gaps are observed. And we are just as ignorant of the explanations for these gaps as those before us were of their gaps, even though the answers to theirs seem trivial to us now. I see no reason to believe that our lack of explanations for our unknowns are any different than theirs.

Where I have been going with this is pointing out that it is plausible to consider that Alien activity (should there be any evidence of it) is hyperspatial or spiritual.

This is of course anathema to the materialist point of view where all explanations must be narrowed to that of a physical nature.

I am skeptical of the idea that Aliens could or would travel to this planet without using hyperspace of some sort, even if they did originate from a physical planet somewhere. But I tend to be of the opinion that reports of modern Alien encounters are just a contemporary manifestation of dragons, angels and demons etc.

 

[46AND2]

Where I have been going with this is pointing out that it is plausible to consider that Alien activity (should there be any evidence of it) is hyperspatial or spiritual.

This is of course anathema to the materialist point of view where all explanations must be narrowed to that of a physical nature.

I am skeptical of the idea that Aliens could or would travel to this planet without using hyperspace of some sort, even if they did originate from a physical planet somewhere. But I tend to be of the opinion that reports of modern Alien encounters are just a contemporary manifestation of dragons, angels and demons etc.

My point remains. Where I spoke of divine beings in my previous post, substitute "dragons, angels, and demons," or any other supernatural being you wish.

 

[MyOwnSockPuppet]

Oh, if only I could post Monty Python's Galaxy Song.

Sadly I think that even if the lyrics are only borderline against the rules then the graphics would be comfortably the wrong side of postable.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... Materialists think that because we continue to make discoveries about the natural world, the pool of known mysteries must be shrinking toward zero.

Another straw man.

Extract from "Heretic" by Matti Leisola

Ah, yet another Discovery Institute creationist - 'nuff said

 

[Ophiolite]

I am skeptical of the idea that Aliens could or would travel to this planet without using hyperspace of some sort, even if they did originate from a physical planet somewhere.

On the one hand we have multiple methods by which aliens might travel here using plausible material techniques.

On the other hand we have this hypothetical "hyperspace", invented to facilitate SF stories.

And yet you are sceptical of the option that has a reasonable foundation and favour one that is known to exist only in works of fiction.

Do you see why it is difficult to take your arguments seriously?

 

[loveofourlord]

SETI would have picked up signals from any civilisation advanced enough for this sort of thing less than a couple of centuries old, then they have to come from somewhere and no plausible candidates for star systems capable of supporting intelligent life are anywhere near within that sort of range.

Seti has barly scanned 20% of the night sky, plus there is the issue of how long range comunications can be before they are too faint to detect.

One other issue is one I thought of, which is if FTL travel is possible, then some form of FTL comunications would be likly needed if possible, so there is a very minimal time period where any form of comunications would be sent that we could detect.

 

[loveofourlord]

No. Your statement carries too many assumptions. Here are the counterpoints:
1. Are alien civilisations a close enough match to human to civilisation so that they make use of EM transmissions for communication? This may be true, but it is presumptuous to assume it.
2. Loss of signal strength over distance makes it highly improbable that signals can be detected from anything other than close neighbours.
3. At present the Earth is a "bright" radio source. Increased use of directional signals and fibre optics will reduce then practically eliminate this brightness.
4. If aliens are sensibly paranoid they will make sure they are not detectable

You've made an apparently random decision as to the range these travel methods could operate. What do you think it is the limit for each one? You must have a precise idea, for you are basing your rejection upon it.

The single strength and such is why we've been looking not for alien transmissions persay but more the carrier signal that a alien species might leave in orbit of a planet so that they could comunicate with others of their species, simular to the carrier signal of a FM Am radio thats stronger then the acual raddio messages

 

[Kaon]

Hello

I've always wondered if aliens existed. Many Christians say yes while many say no. Something I just read stated many Christians believe they do as why would God create such a huge universe? The answer to that was that to our minds it's huge but to God's, probably not. However, despite this, many Christians still believe aliens could exist.

Would God have created aliens and not told us? Would He have visited each creation separately and created a Bible separate for each species?

He created an entire society of entities - He has told us this. He has also told us these celestials/angels/luminaries exist in different planes of existence - what we would call dimensions.

Some of these celestials/angels/luminaries choose to leave their original plane of existence, and fall to other lower dimensions/planes of existence. Indeed, many scores of them came directly to the terra firma, and had relationships with women. Again, He has told us this already.

There are no "aliens" from other planets; they are entities that have always existed, or are a result of some abominable union masquerading as entities from other planets (wanderers) that - in their vast intellect and progress - choose to mess with our primitive race. They are malevolent entities, and unfortunately the majority of the world wont realize what these entities are until it is already marked.

 

[durangodawood]

S.... then some form of FTL comunications would be likly needed if possible, so there is a very minimal time period where any form of comunications would be sent that we could detect.

You have to purchase the ftl receiver/decoder.

 

[Anguspure]

Seti has barly scanned 20% of the night sky, plus there is the issue of how long range comunications can be before they are too faint to detect.

One other issue is one I thought of, which is if FTL travel is possible, then some form of FTL comunications would be likly needed if possible, so there is a very minimal time period where any form of comunications would be sent that we could detect.

FTL travel would be hyperspatial. If you think about it hyper space is another way of saying spiritual. Look at the way Yeshua got around after his resurrection, and the way He is going to come back.

 

[Anguspure]

On the one hand we have multiple methods by which aliens might travel here using plausible material techniques.

The idea of using a bicycle to travel to the moon is about as plausible as any material technique that could be used to travel between star systems capable of supporting intelligent life.

 

[Ophiolite]

The idea of using a bicycle to travel to the moon is about as plausible as any material technique that could be used to travel between star systems capable of supporting intelligent life.

Your personal incredulity does not invalidate physically plausible methods, especially when you have done nothing whatsoever to refute them.

 

[Anguspure]

Your personal incredulity does not invalidate physically plausible methods, especially when you have done nothing whatsoever to refute them.

The onus is on the postulator to provide a convincing argument for her assertions.
You should not expect the credulous acceptance of materialistic fantasy as if it has any special standing in reality.
Materialism shoe horns itself by apriori commitment and the mainstream practice of science plays along with its imposed methodological limiter.
But this does not mean that anybody else should put the blinkers on.

 

[Ophiolite]

The onus is on the postulator to provide a convincing argument for her assertions.

What do you find incredible about generation ships?

Note: the argument is only required to convince a reasonable, educated, open-minded person.

 

[Anguspure]

What do you find incredible about generation ships?

Note: the argument is only required to convince a reasonable, educated, open-minded person.

The concept of the machinery itself is relatively straight forward.
Positing that it is a superior explanatory candidate to any other for the observed phenomena is only valid on materialism.
If we open our eyes beyond materialism we see a number of plausible explanations that fit the observations.

 

[Ophiolite]

The concept of the machinery itself is relatively straight forward.
Positing that it is a superior explanatory candidate to any other for the observed phenomena is only valid on materialism.
If we open our eyes beyond materialism we see a number of plausible explanations that fit the observations.

I did not offer it as a superior candidate. I offered it, along with several other alternatives, as a candidate. What scientific objection do you have to it?