_________________ The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs.
-John Dewey
Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 5541 Local time: 6:17 AM Location: Minnesota
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:43 pm Post subject:
not_a_theist wrote:
ShaSha wrote:
It is in other news sources and yes, he is scheduled for Larry King.
It might be true it might not be true. I don't know. I don't think any here know beyond an opinion.
I do know that if I saw one, I wouldn't let anyone know more than likely.
I knew it!!! Larry gets a major hard-on for this shit. Seriously, like once a month he has some new alien people on (ususally 4-5) and counter balances it with one skeptic who gets bombarded with circumstantial evidence from each guest. Its enough to make you hurl.
Of course no one here knows for sure if its true or not. But we air on the side of caution when it comes to extraordinary claims.
When it comes down to it, the best evidence that these alien encounter people have is their eye-witness testimony. That alone is not definitive proof of their claims, unfortunately, due to the numerous examples of false rememberings, misinterpretations, hallucinations, drunken stupors, etc, etc.
Being on the side of caution isn't stating that they don't exist. I don't know means I don't know and I don't But I think more than likely there is but at what forms they take, I don't know. It's interesting and always will be even to the skeptic because ya never know when somebody might actually have the evidence needed.
Joined: 06 Jun 2004 Posts: 2040 Local time: 6:17 AM Location: H-town
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:18 pm Post subject:
ShaSha wrote:
Being on the side of caution isn't stating that they don't exist. I don't know means I don't know and I don't But I think more than likely there is but at what forms they take, I don't know. It's interesting and always will be even to the skeptic because ya never know when somebody might actually have the evidence needed.
True. But it is being on the side of caution stating that these encounters are probably false.
I think its highly likely that there exists life somewhere outside of our lonely planet.
I think its highly unlikely that said life discreetly visits the rural areas of our world and shows themselves to a small percentage of or population at night.
And its gonna take more than fuzzy videos/photos and personal testimony to prove that the latter wrong. _________________ A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 2725 Local time: 5:17 AM Location: The exact center of my observable universe
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:23 pm Post subject:
jambrose wrote:
i think the odds of alien life visiting earth are not so low really(although im not saying they have)... billions of galaxies in the universe, billions of solar systems in the galaxies.... there has to be one advanced civilization in there somewhere and with technologies and modes of transportation that was havent even thought of .
Well, a fellow named Enrico Fermi once asked, "If intelligent aliens exist, where are they?"
Maybe they've been here all along, and we just have't seen them on Larry King yet! _________________ Only those with weak faith feel threatened by those with no faith.
2000 years of Christianity - haven't we wasted enough time!?
God Not Found
Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 2725 Local time: 5:17 AM Location: The exact center of my observable universe
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:26 pm Post subject:
chookrooter wrote:
So far,I haven't seen any convincing evidence of alien life.(although) I believe the the probability of such life is 1)
The claims of a geriatric astronaut are not proof.
Part of my scepticism is based on a simple question: WHY would any beings advanced enough to travel the distances involved with ease,bother with us?
What have we got to offer? Well I suppose a food source,but apart from that----
Do you know of anything in the universe more interesting than Earth's biosphere (which includes us with our complex brains)? If I found something like the Earth out there, and I had the means to easily get to it, I'd be off in a flash! _________________ Only those with weak faith feel threatened by those with no faith.
2000 years of Christianity - haven't we wasted enough time!?
God Not Found
Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 3564 Local time: 4:17 AM Location: Los Angeles
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:31 pm Post subject:
I often think of how we study animals in the wild. Usually we stay out of their way as much as possible. The whole point is to observe them without them realizing it.
If we discovered animal life on another planet that was fairly intelligent but not as smart as us, we'd study them if we could get there easily.
Why wouldn't they want to study us and our planet? They don't need to get anything out of it directly. Its the quest for knowledge _________________ "There's a new sheriff in town, and he's dedicated to fiscal discipline"
-Ari Fleischer, of Pres. Bush, 10/18/2002
"I love and treasure individuals as I meet them; I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to" -George Carlin
Celebrant: Forgive us, Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying.
Congregation: And bare-faced flattery.
--Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Joined: 30 Aug 2006 Posts: 8036 Local time: 7:17 AM Location: D-brane
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 5:03 pm Post subject:
Unbeliever wrote:
jambrose wrote:
i think the odds of alien life visiting earth are not so low really(although im not saying they have)... billions of galaxies in the universe, billions of solar systems in the galaxies.... there has to be one advanced civilization in there somewhere and with technologies and modes of transportation that was havent even thought of .
Well, a fellow named Enrico Fermi once asked, "If intelligent aliens exist, where are they?"
Maybe they've been here all along, and we just have't seen them on Larry King yet!
I got it through the grapevines that the Aliens hate suspenders...yes, all of them... telepathy...
Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 2725 Local time: 5:17 AM Location: The exact center of my observable universe
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 5:16 pm Post subject:
I think I may have seen a alien on The View once, though! No suspenders there. _________________ Only those with weak faith feel threatened by those with no faith.
2000 years of Christianity - haven't we wasted enough time!?
God Not Found
I like how when the 'witness' comes in, he immediately attacks Bill with the witty "You mind if I speak Mr.Comedian?" only to spout multiple one-liners at his expense. Also "I saw the damn thing on film, with my own eyes" is a pretty silly thing to say. _________________
Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 2725 Local time: 5:17 AM Location: The exact center of my observable universe
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 6:47 pm Post subject:
StrawDog wrote:
The process of evolution has no foresight. It doesn't strive to create something that is capable of scientific enquiry/discovery. There is no reason to assume that alien life would follow the same evolutionary path as we have.
It will adapt to it's environment and that is all, but you all know that.
I have two main thoughts really...
1. Even if life is common throughout the universe, I still have a hunch that intelligent life is still very rare, if not unique.
2. And if intelligent life did exist somewhere out there, we are never going to meet it, the distances involved are just too vast.
I guess this is a position of skepticism, I would need extraordinary evidence to move me from this position. If someone has an opinion different to this I'd be interested to hear your reasoning.
I also am skeptical about life inevitably producing self-aware complex beings. There's a piece I just finished reading, though, that says life, including complex life, is an agent of energy dispersal, and that complex life disperses enrgy better than simpler life:
Scott D. Sampson, in Life as an Agent of energy Dispersal, wrote:
The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity or knock us farther away from a central position within nature. The Copernican revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowlege, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.
The dangerous idea is this: The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high-quality to low-quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance - for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems, including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere - all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, as they continually attempt to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithoshperic plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.
There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said that life's complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work of either a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law's mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forrest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continuously reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs. Other kinds of lifeforms consume these "producers," making the most of the available energy pool.
In a very real sense, the, virtually all organisms, including humans, are sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, ecological succession - that is, changes in the species structure of an ecological community over time - is a process that maximized the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years - as indicated by increasing complexity in anatomical forms, metabolic pathways, and trophic interactions, as well as increasing biomass and biodiversity - is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to natures' efforts to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to internal and external perturbations.
Ecology has been summarized by the pithy statement: "Energy flows, matter cycles." Yet this maxim applies equally to complex systems in the nonliving world, indeed, it unites the biosphere with the physical realm. Complex, cycling, swirling systems of matter have a strong tendency to emerge in the face of energy gradients. This recurrent phenomena may even have been the driving force behind life's origins.
This radical idea is not new, and certainly not mine. Erwin Schrodinger was one of the first to highlight the modern energetic view, as part of his famous "What Is Life?" lectures in Dublin in 1943. More recently, Jeffrey Wicken, Harold Morrowitz, Eric Schneider and others have taken these concepts considerably further, bouyed by results from a range of studies, particularly within ecology. Schneider and Dorion Sagan provide an excellent summary of this hypothesis in their 2005 book, Into the Cool.
The concept of life as energy flow is profound. Just as Darwin fundamentally connected humans to the nonhuman world, a thermodynamic perspective connects life inextricably to the nonliving world. This dangerous idea, once it has been broadly distributed and understood, is likely to provoke reaction from many sectors, including religion and science. The wonderful diversity and complexity of life through time, far from being the product of intelligent design, is a natural phenomena intimately linked to energy flow within the physical realm. Moreover, evolution is not driven by the machinations of selfish genes propagating themselves through the millennia. Rather, ecology and evolution togetrher operate as a highly successful, extremely persistent means of reducing the gradient generated by our nearest star. In my view, evolutionary theory (the process, not the fact of life's common ancestry) and biology generally are headed for a major overhaul once investigators fully comprehend the notion that the complex systems of earth, air, water, and life are not only interconnected but interdependent, cycling matter in order to maintain the flow of energy.
Although this statement is reductionist and materialist in the sense that it accounts for a broad diversity of phenomena with a single physical process, it must be noted that the idea is entirely mute with regard to spiritual meaning. That is, the word "purpose," as applied here, refers soley to naturalistic function - the workings of natural systems. Thus in no way does it exclude other, "higher" purposes. Nonetheless, the notion of life as an agent of energy flow is likely to have deep effects well outside the boundaries of science. In particular, broad understanding of life's role in dispersing energy has great potential to help humans reconnect to nature at a pivotal moment in our species history.
_________________ Only those with weak faith feel threatened by those with no faith.
2000 years of Christianity - haven't we wasted enough time!?
God Not Found
Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 1366 Local time: 7:17 AM
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 6:57 pm Post subject:
It is my opinion and indeed my hope that even if aliens do not exist that the grand scheme to "invent" them succeeds, and at that the consensus is that they come to kill us, for nothing unites brothers, even those trying to kill each other, like one who is intent on killing them both.
I cannot believe a creature superior to our cognitive, logical, and creative minds could exist with an intent to kill other cognitive, logical, creative creatures.
Space travel would require such cooperation and mutual respect and consideration that it would seem the thought of mass genocide would be a foreign thought. This of course is my human understanding, but I don't think a race of "Klingons" could exist and have the means of travelilng through space. Violent cultures historically as violent as the "Klingons" were shown, could never have enough respect and consideration to reach a plateau of thought and intellect as needed, imho.
But for me, if aliens don't exist, please,, lets work to prove they do, and if we can do that, lets work to prove they intend to kill us all.
Joined: 28 May 2008 Posts: 857 Local time: 7:17 AM Location: Tennessee
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 7:13 pm Post subject:
aitm wrote:
It is my opinion and indeed my hope that even if aliens do not exist that the grand scheme to "invent" them succeeds, and at that the consensus is that they come to kill us, for nothing unites brothers, even those trying to kill each other, like one who is intent on killing them both.
I cannot believe a creature superior to our cognitive, logical, and creative minds could exist with an intent to kill other cognitive, logical, creative creatures.
Space travel would require such cooperation and mutual respect and consideration that it would seem the thought of mass genocide would be a foreign thought. This of course is my human understanding, but I don't think a race of "Klingons" could exist and have the means of travelilng through space. Violent cultures historically as violent as the "Klingons" were shown, could never have enough respect and consideration to reach a plateau of thought and intellect as needed, imho.
But for me, if aliens don't exist, please,, lets work to prove they do, and if we can do that, lets work to prove they intend to kill us all.
we are really close to checking for aliens (fossils) on mars.
There is a canyon on mars, Hebes Chasma, where a debris slope has arisen.
In the foreground:
potential fossils or anything else that might be in the soil will be churned up.
Quote:
Latest data acquired by the OMEGA spectrometer on-board Mars Express has revealed water-bearing minerals such as gypsum in some areas of Hebes Chasma. This is proof that at least significant quantities of water once existed in Hebes Chasma.
Joined: 15 Jul 2007 Posts: 153 Local time: 7:17 AM Location: Ont, Canada
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 1:00 am Post subject:
This isn't the first old astronaut to say Aliens exist. I don't buy it. He could be doing it for the money (easy to get a book deal now, plus payment for interviews). Or he could just be crazy.
It's just too odd that these guys wait until they're in their old age before they throw out all this conspiracy stuff. _________________ "Years ago, we hardly had anything to eat. Now I earn more money and see every opponent as a man that tries to put me back to that poorer period.
That man has to be eliminated."
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But I think more than likely there is but at what forms they take, I don't know. It's interesting and always will be even to the skeptic because ya never know when somebody might actually have the evidence needed.
