Aliens and the existence of God

[Prodigy54321]

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Does the fact that we've never had undisputable evidence of an alien life form prove the existance of God? Talk amongst yourselves.

P.S. Would love to have a thread without negative banter. Thank you!

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If the number of planets is 10^20, and the likelihood of some kind of fluke chemical shuffling of aminos into proteins is 10^120: the only possiblity of us "not" being alone, is by some process that is non-random.

So finding other life would prove that life doesn't just happen by accident. Whether you call that God is another question.

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we know of ways that life could be created by an intelligent being, but as for the FIRST life in the universe, we still only know of ONE way that the first life could have began..that is the "fluke shuffling of amino acids" you speak of...

so finding other life does not prove that life doesn't just happen by accident, in fact, as far as we know..concerning at least one case (the first one)...it must.

any other hypotheses on ways that the first life could originate would have to be subject to scientific analysis

on a side note, of course there may be more to the story such as multiple universes..and ours being created by an intelligent being, but we would still have to reduce it to the first life.

[evank15]

More interesting reading...

Google Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question".

There still has to be original causation. WE may have been created by intelligent beings, but the first intelligent beings were not created by intelligent beings, they were created from interstellar soup.

[Paragon]

I think Carl Sagan helped popularize the idea that many intelligent alien civilizations could have existed, but that many of them might have accidentally destroyed themselves during their technological progression.

[JayTee]

Another thought to consider is that civilization can end, so we have to take into account the idea of civilizations in our own galaxy which have already become extinct.

Also some quotes from wiki :

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If two civilizations are separated by several thousand light years, it is very possible that one, the other, or both cultures may become extinct before meaningful dialogue can be established

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Thus it remains possible that human beings have neither been searching long enough to find other intelligences, nor existed long enough to be found.

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Artificial radio waves emitting from Earth have only propagated since first broadcasts made by Popov, Marconi and Tesla in 1895. This would mean that as of 2006, only intelligent extraterrestrial life within 55 light years would have been able to receive the signal and manage to send a reply back to Earth.

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DS summed it the best though, LIGHT.

[KeysrSoze]

You could look at it the other way too, That a lot of life in the universe also could be the result of god. Depends on how difficult/rare/improbable abiogenesis is, which we don't know. Maybe the chemical processes that led to life are so improbable that we're lucky there was even one planet in the entire universe that it happened on. Now if this is true and we start exploring near and far planetary systems, finding a thriving ecosystem on every other planet we visit, we may have to ask where it all came from: gods, aliens, spaghetti monsters, whatever.

Other arguments about our seeming aloneness I remember:

We are the first. Even if life and intelligence is very likely to evolve everywhere, someones gotta be the first to grow a brain.

Speed of light limitation/difficulty in space travel. Life is sufficiently rare that none are close enough to reach or communicate with.

All civilizations inevitably destroy themselves, either with nuclear/biological/chemical/robot wars or accidents, depleting resources, getting bored and jacking into the net then ceasing to reproduce again, etc.

Some others I forget.

[govman6767]

If god did create the universe and created us could you then make an argument that god wants us to explore the universe.

EXA Since in a billion years or so our solar systems sun is going to burn out (expand at first) Destroying the solar system.

Options

1) Develop tech. that will keep the sun from burning out.

2) Find a new solar system that won't burn out for 2 billion years. If this is an option without speed of light travel big of a population would have to be on the ship to keep the DNA pool viable.

If our sun is predestined to die is it gods way of saying get out there and explore ???

If we are still around I cannot imagine what we would accomplish in a million years

[kurto]

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Does the fact that we've never had undisputable evidence of an alien life form prove the existance of God? Talk amongst yourselves.

P.S. Would love to have a thread without negative banter. Thank you!

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How does the existence of life on another planet prove or disprove the existence of a supernatural creator?

I don't see how it makes any difference. (Note: it may hurt certain particular theologies who argue that God only created life on Earth... though in reality, it doesn't help or hinder the possibility of a supernatural creator.)

[kurto]

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I agree...that is the weakest part of my argument. But I am looking at odds here again. If there were that many alien life forms, surely one would have come by now.

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That's pretty much flatout wrong. If you simply imagine 100 other planets with life on it each one galaxy apart as advanced as we are. How many planets have we visited? We haven't gotten out of our solar system much less our galaxy.

Say we can travel to any 1000 panets instantly in the universe, 1 per day-- even if there are a million inhabited planets in the universe, the odds that any of those 1000 random planets being one of the ones with life is probably statistically insignificant.

[Mickey Brausch]

The period of our recorded history is provenly very small compared to the age of the universe. And the universe is provenly much larger than our planetary system. Finally, the chain of events leading up to Man's appearance and development is arguably based on the extremest of happenstance. (I.e there is no apparent necessity in the chemical transfromations.)

Father HyperionMark is essentially saying "Out of 'billions and billions' of planets, there's a very small chance that none of those with living beings on them has not yet contacted humankind! Ergo, planets with living beings on them do not exist, and therefore Man is alone. This, in turn, increases the probability that Man was indeed created in God's image, etc etc".

However, the correct argument (the argument based on our scientific knowledge) is actually this: "Given the very large age and size of the universe, it is more likely than not that something similar to what happened on Earth has already* happened in some far off corner** of the universe or will happen eventually in some far off corner. The fact that Earthlings have not encountered alien, intelligent lifeforms, even if such exist at the same time*** as we do, is to be expected (it's far more probable than not), given the size and age of the universe. Plus, given the extremest of happenstance involved in Man's appearance on the cosmic scene, moreover, the probability of Man being alone on account of that fact is certainly not zero".

In other words, while the appearance of aliens (and, moreover, the appearance of aliens having distinctly un-human form) would destroy a lot of Christian tenets, the non-appearance of those aliens most probably does not prove anything at all about the existence of God.

Mickey Brausch



* Of course, there might be disagreements about the exact meaning of "already".
** What is Far East to some, is Near East to others.
*** I don't even wanna talk about "same time" across the universe.

[bocablkr]

Don't see how that 'proves' the existence of God. I am an atheist but even if we did find aliens why couldn't God have created them after he did us?