It's irrelevant to my beliefs. If intelligent species on other planets exist, than God probably reached out to them (or we can share the Gospel with them if we encounter them). But they don't seem to be there, at least not that we can see so far.
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Aliens and religious beliefs.
- Thread starter an anarchist
- Start date
cladking
Well-Known Member
Quite possibly, yes. But then this would imply several things that aren't really supported by evidence and logic. Most importantly being that a lone single celled life form was the origin of all life on the planet and the vast amounts of DNA with no known purpose arose from it (at least indirectly). It seems a simpler explanation that just as you envision there was "an original life form" but it landed here from, some distant place where all that wasted DNA was necessary to survival.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
The Life science make too much use of statistics to fill in gaps in rational knowledge. Statistics uses a black box approach which allows one to ignore the hidden details. All you need concern yourself with are input and output. The oracle then correlates the data, but since the innards of the box is black, we never know for sure if the hidden mechanics is based on rational theory or not.
I remember doing a development project that had political consequences, where I was working. It was connected to an environmental remediation emergency, where the needed to develop technology did not yet exist. I had to figure out a new process, which I did,. However, with the process untested in production, I was told I needed to be shadowed by a statistician, since this would satisfy the political needs, if things went south. I did not like it, but I was a good soldier.
The statistician did not understand my process nor did he need to. He placed it in a black box and was only concerned with input and output. We had two paths for defining the same process; rational and statistical, working side-by-side. This was unusual. In the end, the rational won, since the process was based on cause and affect and come out perfect, with not bad data, even though statistics tried to black box it into the nebulous reality of plausible deniability.
The opposite is what has happened in the life science. It is taboo to get too rational since the black box is overly used and all expected results need to be based on margin of error. They cannot work side by side and get the same results since rational hits the bullseye. Evolution, for example, still has too many gaps which is an artifact of the statistical approach. Statistics is a tool and not a statement of the reality of life. This has led to speculation about the origins of life being based on dice and cards.
When I was a kid, I got the impression that most scientists, and most astronomers and cosmologists, in particular, didn't believe in aliens from other planets. But, after planets started being discovered orbiting distant stars it became apparent that there were a huge number of planets that could sustain life, and perhaps planets where life might be spontaneously created from chemicals.
Amino acids were artificially created from the primordial soup of the ingredients of life (atoms that make up life, but were not combined and structured to make life until they underwent a lab created process). Now we realize that it only takes a zap of lightning to cause amino acids to form.
Yet, in the search for extraterrestrials, it became apparent that we could not seem to identify radio signals from aliens. But why require radio? Maybe aliens advanced far beyond that? Maybe they now use fiber optics or perhaps something even more advanced?
It is difficult to estimate the probability of creating life without other instances of life being found in the rest of the universe.
Recently, a new search for extraterrestrial life has begun by the United States government.
The famous psychic, Edgar Cayce, a devout Christian, sensed aliens on other planets, and felt that his ESP was from God.
Can we be sure that it was not from Satan? If his predictions helped people (cured illnesses) and didn't have side effects of war and greed, then likely Cayce was on the side of good. Example: President George W. Bush claimed to be fighting the axis of evil....yet we know that God ordered us not to kill (according to the Old Testament's 10 commandments), and especially not to fight Babylon, Iraq (according to the New Testament, Revelation).
How the 'Little Green Men' Phenomenon Began on a Kentucky Farm
Edgar Cayce died in 1945. In 1955 (10 years later), famously there was a report of an alien encounter, in the same town that Cayce lived (Sutton's Farm, Hopkinsville, Kentucky--website above). This was the first description of little green men (prior to this, no reports of little green men existed). "Lucky" Sutton had worked at a carneval, so could that have been a hoax to drum up business? My great great great grandfather moved to Hopkinsville in 1815, as one of its earliest settlers, and intermarried with the locals.
Because life arose here, and here is made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe, it is extremely likely that life has arisen not just once but many, many times on the trillions of planets out there. But why we don't encounter them is actually pretty easy to explain -- them getting here (or us getting there) may very well be really close to impossible.
Think about it -- what has been the cost of getting individuals particles (not whole atoms, only parts of them) up to nearly the speed of light at the Large Hadron Collider? Immense. Bloody immense. Now think how costly it would be to get not only atoms, but entire organisms, made of billions and trillions of atoms -- along with their ships, and life-sustaining equipment, fuel and nourishment -- going fast enough to get around the universe?
THAT seems really, really unlikely to me.
Maybe. Or they're not there. We don't know. Either way, it's irrelevant to my religious views or life in general.
Yazata
Active Member
I agree.
If they are intelligent, I would assume that they are curious. So they have probably asked the big metaphysical questions. So I expect that some of them are something like deists.
I certainly believe that it's possible. I have no way of actually knowing if that possibility is realized anywhere besides here.
They don't, really. My views on the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe is pretty much a strictly scientific question.
I find that wonder is never irrelevant.
No, it did not have to be a 'lone single celled organism'. It is likely that at the time of the MRCA that there was a whole ecosystem of different organisms. It's just that all life today is descended from one line at that time. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of evidence of what life was like before that (and precious little at that time).
DNA gets duplicated by processes we know about and that leads to large amounts of DNA with no known purpose, especially after mutation.
The problem with a 'seed' with a large genome is that the first life was bacterial and not multicellular. Once again, there were literally billions of years between the first life we know of and anything multicellular.
Well, sure. But the thread is about what impact this subject has on your religious views.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
Love that movie.
In Meher Baba's words there are indeed many alien worlds with life including intelligent life and even much more intelligent than we are. And they migrate to Earth as well at some point in their spiritual evolution.
Planets and Stars
Planets and Stars
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
And what qualifications does he have on the subject of alien life?
cladking
Well-Known Member
Back in the '50's you'd (or someone else
) have been very hard pressed to find anyone, especially scientists, who'd suggest any possibility that there was life anywhere but earth. It was a thing of science fiction and speculation about Martian "canals". But the numbers are so staggering that one funeral at a time has changed the common wisdom. I personally have great doubt that any "alien" we might encounter nearby is going to be too different from us. Any alien who is able to get here will have used experimental science to do so and will be able to hide from us if he chooses to remain hidden.
If you accept as I do that he's God in human form, that's the best qualification.
KW
Well-Known Member
There is no reason a Christian or other theist couldn’t think that other life is out there.
That was quite good!
But, of course, the battle of the gods agains God has always been around
Knowledge without wisdom creates chaos. But, "no", on the arrogance.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
I'd be happy to accept such a claim. Would you care to show me the evidence which supports that claim?
Sgt. Pepper
All you need is love.
I re-read my first post in your thread and realized that I didn't answer your second question. My answer to your second question is no, my religious/spiritual beliefs don't affect my view of aliens. I believed in their existence while I was still a Christian, and my view hasn't really changed now that I'm an ex-Christian. The only aspect that has changed in my view of aliens is that I no longer believe that it was the God of the Bible who created intelligent life on other planets. To be honest, I'm no longer convinced that the God of the Bible even exists, let alone created humans or anything on our planet. Besides, I'm not sure intelligent lifeforms who have the technological capacity for interstellar travel need religions and gods to believe in. They may think that believing in gods is primitive.
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