NASA looks to religious scholars for answers

[power1]

There is no other sentient life in the universe. The people who search for it are stupid

I can't really argue with that. The thing is that I suspect that they may find some micro fossils or something and claim that means there was life on a planet such as Mars. To simply say it is not life or that it was not found would be seen as ignorant.

 

[Norbert L]

Why is this in Ethics and Morality? There is the "Kitchen Sink".

It deals with "the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence". This is the first sentence from the Philosophy Forum Statement of Purpose. Any how..

"NASA has enlisted the help of theologians to examine how the world would react if sentient life was found on other planets and what impacts such a discovery would have on deeply-held beliefs about divinity and creation"

NASA looks to religious scholars for answers

When they announce that life was found on a planet or somewhere, I will view it is having originated on earth. Possibly ejected from out world in some impact event, or the flood year. So having a leftover micro organism encased in a rock or something on a planet will not mean life existed there.

This a topic that has a long recorded history. There is documentation that goes as far back as the 12th century iirc. It's when the very similar question about, can an omnipotent God create other worlds than our own? was being discussed.

It's nothing new but also not something the average Christian is going to hear from the pulpit.

And no, it doesn't discredit the the Bible, it only reinforces the message that can be found within its' pages. After all, God could not only create different planets with intelligent life but also it is an assumption to believe that other worlds He created need salvation. It does not follow that they must have chosen the wrong tree in the midst of their garden and sinned.

 

[Larniavc]

But it is odd we haven't discovered any yet.

How many planets have we taken samples from?

 

[Bradskii]

I can't really argue with that. The thing is that I suspect that they may find some micro fossils or something and claim that means there was life on a planet such as Mars. To simply say it is not life or that it was not found would be seen as ignorant.

Well...if it's a fossil and fossils are by definition the remains of life preserved in a petrified form, then yeah, it kinda proves life had been there.

 

[Larniavc]

OK. I couldn't care less about Nasa's beliefs or 'conclusions'. It was simply an interesting article how that they were seeking to find out what religions thought

My apologies. I incorrectly believed this thread would be a science bashing conspiracy style thread.

 

[Desk trauma]

But it is odd we haven't discovered any yet.

As odd as my discovering no whales nor evidence of whales in the shot glass of sea water I dipped out of the Pacific.

 

[Larniavc]

There is no other sentient life in the universe. The people who search for it are stupid

A cat is sentient.

 

[d taylor]

Science is merely a means of appreciating what the God of the Bible has done.

Without the God of the Bible, the gift of science would not exist.

How can lies, that speak directly against God's creation really be appreciated by a christian. Name one area of creation that scientist say is reality, that agrees with The Bible's descriptive accounts given in The Tanakh or even the New Testament.

This thread is a perfect example, it has christians entertaining the absurd idea there may be alien life somewhere. Why because the large majority believe in sciences creation not the creation in The Bible.

 

[public hermit]

How many planets have we taken samples from?

As odd as my discovering no whales nor evidence of whales in the shot glass of sea water I dipped out of the Pacific

Okay, maybe that was a stupid statement; y'all two seem to think it was. What should the expectation for finding life be?

 

[Tinker Grey]

It deals with "the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence". This is the first sentence from the Philosophy Forum Statement of Purpose. Any how..

yeah. This is the Ethics and Morality sub-forum, not the Philosophy sub-forum. That was shutdown years ago.

 

[Desk trauma]

What should the expectation for finding life be?

To me the issue is the infinitesimally small amount of planets we have data on compared to the number that likely exist, tens of billions of earth like planets by some calculations, making it beyond too early to draw conclusions.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

Right, so that would not be who Nasa was asking about this I guess. It almost seems like they are getting ready to break the news, but want to see how to do it gently for the religious types.

Yeah, those are the people to worry about their reaction. I think the government is in the process of doing it now. They are doing it in little pieces. We have government officials saying that we have exotic materials that are not from us. They are slowly doing it precisely because they are afraid of the religious reaction. But I don't find anywhere in the Bible where it says that we are the only planet with life.

I've thought for a long time that there must be life on other planets because the universe does not make just one of any kind of thing. It would be like there only being one cloud, or one grain of sand, star, planet, rainbow, windstorm, or galaxy. It would be an exception to what appears to be a general rule of the universe. That's an argument but in no way proof. We'll just have to wait for that but it will not be a big deal for me and it will be just one more thing to identify and integrate into the sum of knowledge.

 

[public hermit]

To me the issue is the infinitesimally small amount of planets we have data on compared to the number that likely exist, tens of billions of earth like planets by some calculations, making it beyond too early to draw conclusions.

That makes sense. It's too early to draw conclusions. I think the expectation is that we will find some form of life, isn't that why we put so much effort into doing so? I think we will find life only because it seems unlikely that this world, teeming with life, would be it. Granted, that's just an intuition, but I think it's reasonable given how much universe is out there. Still, it is surprising (odd) to me that nothing definitive has been found yet, not even microscopic life. Maybe I'm not grasping how much we really don't know even about the planets in our own solar system. Is there an expectation that we could still find some form of life on those?

 

[Tinker Grey]

Okay, maybe that was a stupid statement; y'all two seem to think it was. What should the expectation for finding life be?

To me the issue is the infinitesimally small amount of planets we have data on compared to the number that likely exist, tens of billions of earth like planets by some calculations, making it beyond too early to draw conclusions.

I agree with Desk trauma, public hermit.

But let me be wordier. I think there are two implied issues here: 1) the likelihood of life in the universe, and 2) the likelihood of finding it.

We don't really know the answer to either. There are roughly 100-400 billions stars in our galaxy. There are roughly 100-400 billion galaxies in the observable universe (I believe the estimates may have gone up.) It seems now that a star is more likely have planets or eventually have planets than to not or never have planets. So on the low side a reasonable guess is at least one planet per star which gives us 100 billion x 100 billion which is 10²² planets. If even there is only 1 in a trillion chance of forming a planet like ours, there would be 10 billion planets in the observable universe like ours. I'd wager the odds are better than this. (Note that this discounts the idea of habitable asteroids and moons of large planets.)

Too, it doesn't seem necessary that a planet must in fact be like ours to support life. Perhaps it's not even necessary to support sapient life. So the odds are better yet.

The Drake equation - Wikipedia is famous for this. It's mostly about finding intelligent life but it is instructive as to why it's not surprising that we haven't found life, or at least sentient life.

So we've had space flight for ~50 years. We've had a couple missions to the moon where we've found no signs of life. (I believe some non-american, Chinese(?), found something promising in the last year or so). We've had satellites fly by other planets and moons just to take pictures. (Spectrographs, etc., can give us hints but so far we've nothing definitive.) We've had a few probes actually land on Mars. They are capable of analyzing soil samples, but at what rate? A teaspoon at a time?

So the analogy of looking at a shotglass worth of the ocean and declaring that there are no whales is somewhat apt. We've looked at about a shot's glass worth of Mars. We shouldn't be surprised we haven't found life. IIRC, we haven't landed anything on any other moon or planet. So it's premature to suppose there isn't life just because we haven't found it yet.

Now suppose we do find microbes. Suddenly the idea that life is not rare is not silly. The universe could be absolutely teeming with life, sentient or not. Suddenly, the effort to move our species to someplace habitable or to a place that can be made habitable a bit more than hopeless.

HTH

 

[durangodawood]

...I've thought for a long time that there must be life on other planets because the universe does not make just one of any kind of thing. It would be like there only being one cloud, or one grain of sand, star, planet, rainbow, windstorm, or galaxy. It would be an exception to what appears to be a general rule of the universe. That's an argument but in no way proof. We'll just have to wait for that but it will not be a big deal for me and it will be just one more thing to identify and integrate into the sum of knowledge.

Ive found this to be a sensible argument for a while now.

Can anyone think of a natural process for which there's only one unique example?

 

[The happy Objectivist]

Ive found this to be a sensible argument for a while now.

Can anyone think of a natural process for which there's only one unique example?

I have tried and tried to think of one. I think the only way that our planet is the only planet with life is special creation, and I don't believe for very sound reasons that there was any special creation.

Now I think that intelligence may be rare. I mean out of billions of species that have lived and died out on Earth, only one that we know of developed the conceptual level of consciousness. But even if that is the rate at which intelligence arises, there are trillions of planets out there, possibly just in the Milky Way. There must be a virtually unlimited number of candidate worlds in the Universe as a whole.

I used to think the Roswell story was a hoax but I'm now more convinced that it really was some kind of crashed ship. That doesn't mean it is necessarily extraterrestrial. It could be humans from way far in the future who have developed time travel. I'm more convinced now because eyewitnesses who apparently never met tell the same story with the same details. And recently the clerk who wrote up the original press release that they had captured a flying saucer left a sealed affidavit to be opened after his death and in it he said that it was all true, that the weather balloon story was an attempt at a coverup.

 

[durangodawood]

...Now I think that intelligence may be rare. I mean out of billions of species that have lived and died out on Earth, only one that we know of developed the conceptual level of consciousness. But even if that is the rate at which intelligence arises, there are trillions of planets out there, possibly just in the Milky Way. There must be a virtually unlimited number of candidate worlds in the Universe as a whole....

I also wonder if our human ancestors would brook another conceptual level intelligence as co-inhabitants of the land (The sea is another story). Or if the other intelligence would brook us.

Otoh it worked out in Middle Earth for a while.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

I also wonder if our human ancestors would brook another conceptual level intelligence as co-inhabitants of the land (The sea is another story). Or if the other intelligence would brook us.

Otoh it worked out in Middle Earth for a while.

That's a good question. We kind of have an answer.
The Neandertals were another species of human weren't they and they are no more.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

"NASA has enlisted the help of theologians to examine how the world would react if sentient life was found on other planets and what impacts such a discovery would have on deeply-held beliefs about divinity and creation"

NASA looks to religious scholars for answers

When they announce that life was found on a planet or somewhere, I will view it is having originated on earth. Possibly ejected from out world in some impact event, or the flood year. So having a leftover micro organism encased in a rock or something on a planet will not mean life existed there.

I belive earth is the only planet with all elements perfectly aligned to create life. Everything else is only in part. If one day an ET lands then I would obviously be wrong. All the accounts I read and watch ( only because I'm a huge sci-fi fan) still remain very, very obscure. Kind of getting bored with them.

 

[durangodawood]

That's a good question. We kind of have an answer.
The Neandertals were another species of human weren't they and they are no more.

I thought of them. But I dont know myself whether they were killed off or simply diminished through interbreeding. Or some of each.

Would be interesting if there was, say, a feline intelligence for us to contend with. We'd make great pets?