If they do exist, what are the odds that some of them are wearing little gold crosses around their necks?

(if they have necks)

I would think pretty high actually. Not as high as say them wearing little gold triangles but still a cross isn't such a unique symbol that it would be farfetched to discover an alien civilization wearing them.

There's much more to it than this. Especially when we consider certain aspects of stability in the Earth, such as an extra large moon, the tilt of our axis, etc etc.

We actually have a strangely stable environment where life evolved, and even then if something didn't wipe out the dinosaurs we're not sure we'd have evolved, would we?

I think there's more factors than you realize. Some people believe Earth could be unique.

+1

I can believe something is likely, without believing that it is a fact. I do not have evidence of it existing, therefore I don't "believe." Strictly going by wording, I should answer "do not believe," but I think that would be very misleading.

edit: And of course, it depends a bit on the definition of "intelligent," that we're using. The stricter the criteria, the lower the chances. Any form of life at all, is much, much more likely than a lifeform meeting a certain set of standards that might not even be reasonably testable in many cases.

Believe it's possible but it's not something that keeps me up at night.

I don't think we will ever discover it either. A single galaxy can have trillions of stars within it - how do we even begin to try and detect life anywhere within that system?

And consider the fact that we're looking at that galaxy in a tiny dot of a timeframe of it's lifespan - it may have had intelligent life 2 billion years ago or may get it 800 million years from now.

That's a good point Bradley. NASA found traces of water on Mars that when calculated showed there would have been large salt water oceans on Mars.. 5-10 billion years ago.

I think scientists are getting pretty close to an answer. First, they said space is just a vacuum, then they said they'd have to have water (supposedly very rare). Now, we've found traces of water on Mars, the Moon, Titan, and I believe one other Moon on Enceladus (Saturn) also has a large underwater ocean.

When we consider that there are hundreds of millions of galaxies we still don't have the technology to explore, it's pretty neat to think there could be thousands, even millions of species similar to us or completely different.

I think if any of these civilizations do have the technology to reach us, they would be peaceful as monks, and would not consider "contacting" us until we've at least evolved out of killing each other. In the large scheme of things, collectively we don't place a high value on human or animal life, and it's understandable that other entities would steer clear of our negative energy.

Yep, this makes a huge difference:

If there were intelligent beings capable of space travel in our galaxy, they should be able to colonize the galaxy fully in a few millions years, as Enrico Fermi figured out with a simple back of the envelope calculation. (Even by "slow" space travel.)

There doesn't seem to be any believable evidence of alien presence, so I think it's most likely we're the only space travellers in the Milky Way.

The Universe is incredibly much larger than our galaxy, however, and inter-galaxy travel is probably insanely much harder than within one galaxy, so the "then why aren't they here?" of the Fermi Paradox doesn't really apply.

You are committing intellectual suicide with every other post of yours I read.
Atheism has NOTHING to do with "believing" in God based on "personal experience" (sic!) or not, it has to do with the lack of evidence of one existing. Not a SINGLE "God" has been proven to exist and there has NEVER been any evidence provided that one exists at all.

Now "believing" in life's existence somewhere else is completely different, because there HAS been provided evidence that "life" exists, BECAUSE YOU AND I AND A BILLION OF OTHER SPECIES DO LIVE HERE ON EARTH!!!
It's an "odds vs. possibility" game. Where life is "odds" and your God is "possibility".

Do you see why you fail to understand this simply difference of "fact vs. baseless speculations"?

For me to believe in God and "knowing his words and when he wants me to worship him and in which position and when to have sex" would be the same as claiming that I know that not only aliens exist somewhere, but where, that they like strawberries and only watch football standing on one leg.
It's nonsense. I mean, come on, I've read many of your posts and you seem really intelligent and can deal with analogies and metaphors, but when it comes to this topic, your brain changes into auto-pilot mode.

Now searching for life on planets that are similar to our own, on orbits around suns similar to our own, is speculating on the conditions life forms in.
It is more likely for us to find lifeforms similar to our own, because we have factual proof that it is possible to exist in conditions we find here (read: us and all life on earth).
That doesn't exclude the possibility of sentient clouds of interstellar gas or equation-solving jellyfishbirds on some Avatar planet. It just turns a (serious) investigation into a journey in to the land of Baselessspeculatistan.

Some researches have already found planets similar to our own and there are even candidates for planets that likely are already "inhabited" by life.
The researchers can't say that it's either plant or animal life, or how intelligent it is (it'd be a speculation, again), but that it's very likely that said planets host life.

So once we find many of these, we have to categorize the search for this "algorithm". We start at saying "How many galaxies are there?" (we estimate it at roughly 100-150 BILLION (!!!)). "How many stars are there in an average galaxy?" (we estimate that at roughly 100 BILLION (!!!)).
Now you go on to "How many of said stars have planets similar to our own?".
Then "How many have conditions similar to our own here?".
After that "How many Earth-like planets, with conditions similar to our own host life?".

You should come up with a fairly high number. But that's an "odds game" now, not a complete, baseless speculation. So if you think about it, real deep, you should come up with the following:

1. Stars having planets is a common thing.
2. Stars having planets like our own, is not so common, but given the sheer number of possible candidates, pretty standard.
3. Such planets having conditions similar to our own is rare, but given the number of possible.............
4. Such planets hosting life is probably rare, but given the number........
5. Life on said planets EVOLVING into higher states (say from bacteria, through plants to animals) is rare, but given.......
6. Intelligent life having enough time to evolve into something like humans is really, really rare, but given.....

So playing the "odds game" you should say that life is pretty standard, but human-level intelligence is extremely rare. But if you look at the numbers and continue to play the "odds game" extending your search to other galaxies, you should see your probability rise to almost 100%.
Why? Because even if we are one of a few, or the only currently existing highly evolved, intelligent AND conscious species in this galaxy, there are roughly 100,000,000,000 more galaxies to go to and play the "odds game" with.

The assumptions are made are speculative, but not baseless (unlike your God-hypothesis), because we already have proof that life exists HERE and NOW.

And to speculate even more (still, not baseless); we saw dominant species come and go and life almost going extinct here, so it is likely, that even if one day we should be able to visit every galaxy and star, we will find MANY cultures of species which reached a certain level of complexity and then died.
And the same could be said about human-like intelligence somewhere, which will visit us some day.......only to find out that some super-flu-virus killed us, because it doesn't care about Shakespear or the SuperBowl.

I don't believe there's intelligent life elsewhere but neither do I believe the opposite. It's like a coin flip to me. All those arguments saying it's likely or even certain based on the number of planets alone aren't convincing imo. Probability theory can't imply that it's likely on its own, it merely tells us the implications of our premises.. and as of now, we don't understand the creation of life well enough to come up with decent premises (like a probability per planet conditional on what the planet is like etc).

This stops you from creating life yourself, but it doesn't stop you from searching for Earth-like planets which show spectral "anomalies" comparable to those found on Earth.
(Carbon-based) plants and animals in an atmosphere similar to ours leave certain "fingerprints" in the spectral field. And we already found such planets.

I agree that arguments of intelligent life existing elsewhere in this universe being a lock because of shear size of the universe are unconvincing. Nevertheless I believe simply on gut intuition. I suppose it is the same with my belief in God.

But if you are going to claim life on earth is evidence for life existing elsewhere in this galaxy then I can claim that the reality of world of warcraft is evidence of other intelligently created realities existing....which may include our own reality.

Way to stay on topic. Even if our reality was artificially created, it wouldn't exist in a Nowhere. Then you got the creators of this virtual reality wondering if their reality is also created......what does that change? "Who gave birth to God" and that whole argument.

And if your "gut feeling" lets you compare the possibility of life existing nowhere else than on Earth, to God existing, well then I guess I rest my case.

This is hard to criticise. (Although perhaps a coin flip suggests an equal probability which isn't right.)


I don't think there's good reason to believe in intelligent life, nor that it is probable or improbable (since one occurrence implies the probability is greater than zero though not how much greater), but many find it hard not to given the astonishing number of opportunities likely to have occurred. I think it's an excellent analogy for the experience of theists like me.

Part of the problem with this question is the use of the present tense. Information takes time to travel, which means that we can never know what is going on RIGHT NOW in other parts of the universe. Further, the chances of any particular society falling within the window of time that would be detectable by another society are low. In other words, if there has been intelligent life in a star system 30,000 light years away, and we assume that they use radio technology that we would be able to detect, that intelligent life would have to using that radio technology 30,000 years ago. If such a civilization was using that technology 30,250 years ago, and destroyed itself with nuclear weapons, we wouldn't be able to detect it, because that information would have reached us in 1760. If such a civilization was using that technology 29,750 years ago, we also can't detect, though we might be able to in the year 2260 assuming our civilization is still around. And note, in astronomical time, that is a tiny window. And we have a different tiny window for each star system where life might be supported.

So if the question really is "are", that's unknowable and perhaps unlikely. If the question is "has ever been", that's entirely possible.

I think it's even worse than that. What's happening "RIGHT NOW" around a distant star, isn't even meaningful.

Sounds like a sound stance to me.

If you replace "alien life" with "CIA agents wanting to kill me" you'll avoid

a) being paranoid when there is no evidence (iow you are not crazy)
b) being killed by CIA agents when there is evidence (iow you are not stupid)

Thumbs up, you finally got it.

Aaaw. You didn't get it.

Except the more you state you have no belief cia agents are waiting to kill you the less people actually believe you have no belief cia agents are waiting to kill you.

Atheists on this forum are here because they reject the existence of God not because they have no belief in God(despite what they say). The rejection of God is so important to them they have this inate need to convey that part of thier paradigm to others.

While I do believe there are atheists who simply have no belief in God(new born babies for instance) you won't find those atheists amoung the regular posters in this forum.

I love when theists read my mind and tell me whats going on in it. Id be lost without them.

I'm not reading your mind but rather commenting that if you really had no belief in God whatsoever, this forum wouldn't interest you.

For whatever reason, I find wishful thinking and human egotism immensely fascinating.

So I like the fact that 2+2 has a forum dedicated to people who have such an inflated sense of themselves that they actually think they get to live forever and that they are immensely important to the creator of the universe.

Whether God exists? I have no idea. But that isn't why I'm here.

This forum was created as a containment forum. People evangelizing wasn't a problem rather the constaint debate on whether or not God exists was the problem.

You certainly reject the common notion of God.

There's more than one "common notion of God".

There is the God of philosophers, which is a conjecture that would answer certain philosophical questions, i.e., "who created the universe", "how did reality come to be", PERHAPS (depending on the philosopher) "are there any ultimate standards of morality", etc.

There is also the God of many ordinary believers. And that God is often expressed as both a savior who will grant the believer eternal life and a personal God who cares about and loves each believer.

That second sense of God is, indeed, a supreme expression of egotism. Only the most obnoxious and self-important person would think that either (1) he or she should get to live forever or (2) that the creator of the vast and amazing universe gives a crap about him or her.

So again, I am here because I like to observe and critique the millions of people who profess belief in this second sense of God. It may not be YOUR sense of Her, but I assure you that it is a common one.