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Do you Think there is Intelligent Alien Life?

^^ I've seen a lot of posts saying it would be selfish, over arrogant, short sighted etc etc to believe aliens don't exist. How so? To me it would seem short sighted to assume that intelligent life exists elsewhere despite our current knowledge suggesting that it would be extremely improbable. Of course, there is much we don't know, and maybe they do exist. It just seems far more 'arrogant' to go by the faith that they exist because they just should. This isn't being anthropocentric, it's concluding, using the knowledge we have, that they probably don't.
 
rantNrave said:
If GOD exists, HE IS AN INTELLIGENT ALIEN LIFEFORM!
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Its a bit of a hypocrite-type thing because with the idea of aliens existing, ppl are open to it, yet with god they are sure doesnt exist. Even science has SETI, which send signals, whale songs, and drawings of humans in some vain hope that aliens might give a fuck about it.

Why not send god some drawings or maybe our ipod playlist.
 
footscrazy said:
^^ I've seen a lot of posts saying it would be selfish, over arrogant, short sighted etc etc to believe aliens don't exist. How so? To me it would seem short sighted to assume that intelligent life exists elsewhere despite our current knowledge suggesting that it would be extremely improbable. Of course, there is much we don't know, and maybe they do exist. It just seems far more 'arrogant' to go by the faith that they exist because they just should. This isn't being anthropocentric, it's concluding, using the knowledge we have, that they probably don't.
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For all we know there are gods, intelligent life, and aliens, discussing whether there is intelligent life out there somewhere.
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
But the knowledge we have concludes that they probably do exist. Habitable zones, probability, anthropic principle, etc.
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Where is the evidence that it is probable for life to start? As I said in another post, the theories suggest that the chance of all the right chemicals, enzymes etc arranging themself in the right thousands of combinations for even the simpliest life form to arise is extremely small. That life then developing into something demonstrating anything resembling 'intelligence' is more improbable still. It's one thing to have the perfect habitat for life to survive, but it's another thing for it to actually begin. Earth is obviously a very suitable place for life, and yet, it's only happened once in over 4 billion years.

Portillo said:
For all we know there are gods, intelligent life, and aliens, discussing whether there is intelligent life out there somewhere.
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I don't really understand your point. There could be aliens out there, but my question is why people think it is 'over arrogant' (and the rest of the synonyms) to think there is, when the evidence suggests that life does not tend towards in intelligence, nor is it likely in the slightest to occur.
 
I agree the chance of it happening is very small, but our galaxy is very big, let alone the universe. All we need is for that chance to recur once out of every fifty billion in order for there to be another solar system with life in it in our own neck of the woods.

The possibility of life almost certainly means that there IS life if you consider just how vast of a time span we are talking about. This fact becomes clearer with more and more evidence. Just look at all the crazy places we've found life on our own planet: Hot springs, oceanic vents, soil samples miles beneath the crust, in crusts of ice, etc.... These organisms hardly have anything in common genetically from most of the stuff we see day to day, meaning their evolutionary path diverged some 3 billion years ago. 3 Billion years is quite a long time for all these improbable things to happen.

I think the fact that we exist is evidence enough that other stuff exists, just by extrapolation.
We used to think Earth was the only place that had dirt and mountains and stuff, and then we realized the moon was made of stuff very similar, and then we realized those other rocky planets are very similar, then we realized other solar systems are very similar, etc.
 
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footscrazy said:
Where is the evidence that it is probable for life to start? As I said in another post, the theories suggest that the chance of all the right chemicals, enzymes etc arranging themself in the right thousands of combinations for even the simpliest life form to arise is extremely small. That life then developing into something demonstrating anything resembling 'intelligence' is more improbable still. It's one thing to have the perfect habitat for life to survive, but it's another thing for it to actually begin. Earth is obviously a very suitable place for life, and yet, it's only happened once in over 4 billion years.

I don't really understand your point. There could be aliens out there, but my question is why people think it is 'over arrogant' (and the rest of the synonyms) to think there is, when the evidence suggests that life does not tend towards in intelligence, nor is it likely in the slightest to occur.
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If it can happen here why cant it happen anywhere else. I understand earth is suitable for life, but that raises further questions, like was it designed to be this way by an intelligence or did it happen by natural causes.

I think that it is pretty arrogant that life can exist on earth but nowhere else.
 
The chance is much smaller than one in fifty billion. It's been calculated as a one in ten to the 40,000th power chance - that's a one with 40,000 zeros after it! Though I am interested in the RNA world hypothesis, which seems like it could make it more likely. I need to do more reading on it, but even it is seeming untenable.

CoffeeDrinker said:
The possibility of life almost certainly means that there IS life.
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Why? If it only happened once, it obviously happened here, because we're the ones thinking about it.

CoffeeDrinker said:
This fact becomes clearer with more and more evidence. Just look at all the crazy places we've found life on our own planet: Hot springs, oceanic vents, soil samples miles beneath the crust, in crusts of ice, etc.... These organisms hardly have anything in common genetically from most of the stuff we see day to day, meaning their evolutionary path diverged some 3 billion years ago. 3 Billion years is quite a long time for all these improbable things to happen.
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This isn't evidence for the beginning of life, it's evidence for evolution. What I'm talking about is the beginning of life, when life first occurred. Evolution is self propelling - once something is alive evolution can change its properties bit by bit so it can adapt to different environments. But there is nothing that is half alive - the building blocks of life can't be built upon bit by bit in the way evolution works. It has to happen all at once, and as I said, the chance of it happening is simply improbably small.

Portillo said:
If it can happen here why cant it happen anywhere else.
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Just because it happened here doesn't prove anything except that life did occur once - here. How does it prove that it could occur somewhere else? Can you explain please?
 
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Belisarius said:
If this one human race is the best that mother nature can do...fuck her.

That is all I will say.
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Ahh, come on. Homo sapien is a pretty dope life form if I ever saw one. :D

But yeah, hard to imagine that we're alone...


footscrazy said:
Earth is obviously a very suitable place for life, and yet, it's only happened once in over 4 billion years.
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Mm, you can't necessarily make that assertion. Nothing rules out the possibility of abiogenesis having occurred multiple times throughout Earth's history, with each independent line of life eventually trending toward extremely similar basic structures. In fact, convergent evolution has known examples.
 
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footscrazy said:
Just because it happened here doesn't prove anything except that life did occur once - here. How does it prove that it could occur somewhere else? Can you explain please?
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Well you say its impossible for life to occur yet here we are. What cant it happen somewhere else in the universe, has anyone visited the universe to see if there could be life elsewhere?
 
TheAppleCore said:
Mm, you can't necessarily make that assertion. Nothing rules out the possibility of abiogenesis having occurred multiple times throughout Earth's history, with each independent line of life eventually trending toward extremely similar basic structures. In fact, convergent evolution has known examples.
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Every life form we have found contains DNA/RNA which proves they have decended from the same lifeform. Even if life had happened a second time, been successful and converged towards a smilar shape as the DNA life, it's genetics would be able to prove without a doubt that it was a completely new form of life, despite how similar to anything else it looked. I'm not saying it's impossible that this has happened, just that we haven't found it yet.

Portillo said:
Well you say its impossible for life to occur yet here we are. What cant it happen somewhere else in the universe, has anyone visited the universe to see if there could be life elsewhere?
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I never said it was impossible, and I said the fact we are here proves life has happened once. It's just so unlikely for life to spontaneously begin (which at one point, it had to) that for it to have happened twice puts it in a realm of chance that basically means impossible. Your logic is flawed. You're saying it's happened here, therefore that means it has to have happened somewhere else. That basic premise is wrong.
 
Im going to say dumb explaining this because I don't know the scientific names for it all. Basically back in highschool in a class called physical geography i learned that they had this telescope that scaned the universe for other galaxys and it recorded it in etches of color in tiny lines. apparently what this does is it represents elements like our table of elements in other galaxys. knowing of a select few other galaxys we have recorded that one of them contains many many many more elements in theirs than we ever thought possible, only missing very little elements from our table it makes it almost impossible for life not to exist in that solar system although they could be single cell organisms.
 
footscrazy said:
I never said it was impossible, and I said the fact we are here proves life has happened once. It's just so unlikely for life to spontaneously begin (which at one point, it had to) that for it to have happened twice puts it in a realm of chance that basically means impossible. Your logic is flawed. You're saying it's happened here, therefore that means it has to have happened somewhere else. That basic premise is wrong.
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I dont believe that premise is wrong. The way i see it; we are like ants in an ant farm. We have no idea whats out there. I believe that there is a higher intelligence out there, hence why i believe in god/aliens/intelligence.
 
The argument that it's happened once so it has to have happened again is wrong. Whether or not there is other intelligent alien life though, is yet to be seen.
 
^ Of course. Weve never discovered any aliens. But just like we exist, other life could exist too.
 
There must/has to be, it wouldn't make sense that we're the only life in this infinite universe.
 
If ppl would realize how unique life is (all the things necessary for life to evolve and how many billions of years it took) we'd appreciate Earth more. (Species become extinct every day, now more than ever.)

Life really doesn't make sense unless U see it as evolving. Where are we to evolve today?

Unless we become more spiritual & rational (by learning to live without money, laws and international boundaries), we'll become extinct or face a mass die-off.
 
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