How can someone possibly NOT believe in Aliens? it doesn't make sense

There are about 300 sextillion stars in the universe (300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). That is 3 followed by 23 zeros [1]. Yes, this is just stars, it's not even counting all of the planets going around each and every one of them. Among all of those stars there are billions of planets which are able to be lived on [2]. By livable, yes, I do mean Earth-like planets... Also, remember there is evolution which allows a species to adapt to a new environment. So what are the chances that there is absolutely NO life in the universe but us? How can anyone possibly think this?

reply to post by arpgme


I think most people would agree with you! (I know I do)......but are these "aliens" visiting earth?....now that is another question, and one that a lot of people (myself included) struggle with.

For some of us, there is no question about it.
For some of us, the truth is stranger than fiction.

Because religion tells them that God only created them. However the Vatican has the lead scientists in the world and are revising the Bible to match the times. This is the same thing they did to Copernicus too:

Classical astronomy followed principles established by Aristotle. Aristotle accepted the idea that there were four physical elements — earth, water, air, and fire. He put the earth in the center of the universe and contended that these elements were below the moon, which was the closest celestial body. There were seven planets, or wandering stars, because they had a course through the zodiac in addition to traveling around the earth: the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter. Beyond that were the fixed stars. The physical elements, according to Aristotle moved vertically, depending on their ‘heaviness’ or ‘gravity’; the celestial bodies were not physical but a ‘fifth element’ or ‘quintessence’ whose nature was to move in perfect circles around the earth, making a daily rotation. Aristotle envisioned the earth as the true center of all the circles or ‘orbs’ carrying the heavenly bodies around it and all motion as ‘uniform,’ that is, unchanging.

But observers realized that the heavenly bodies did not move as Aristotle postulated. The earth was not the true center of the orbits and the motion was not uniform. The most obvious problem was that the outer planets seemed to stop, move backwards in ‘retrograde’ motion for a while, and then continue forwards. By the second century, when Ptolemy compiled his Almagest (this common name of Ptolemy's Syntaxis was derived from its Arabic title), astronomers had developed the concept that the orbit moves in ‘epicycles’ around a ‘deferrent,’ that is, they move like a flat heliacal coil around a circle around the earth. The earth was also off-center, on an ‘eccentric,’ as the heavenly bodies moved around a central point. Ptolemy added a point on a straight line opposite the eccentric, which is called the ‘equalizing point’ or the ‘equant,’ and around this point the heavenly bodies moved uniformly. Moreover, unlike the Aristotelian model, Ptolemy's Almagest did not describe a unified universe. The ancient astronomers who followed Ptolemy, however, were not concerned if his system did not describe the ‘true’ motions of the heavenly bodies; their concern was to ‘save the phenomena,’ that is, give a close approximation of where the heavenly bodies would be at a given point in time. And in an age without professional astronomers, let alone the telescope, Ptolemy did a good job plotting the courses of the heavenly bodies.

Source:plato.stanford.edu...

Everyone will believe soon, the scientific community doesn't want to hold it back anymore-they need funding and deserve it too. I will spend my tax money on a space program no problem.

Everything on our planet is completely covered in bacteria and life-yet all the other planets have 0? C'mon...

I've never heard of anyone rejecting the idea of the potential for life on other worlds. The big question is where and in what form? The vast majority of people believe in extraterrestrial beings of some sort, whether in the form of little green men or angels, neither are of this world.

reply to post by arpgme


I ask the same question all the time! Basically it all usually amounts to the fact that their religion says that God created everything, and they think because it only mentions humans God only created humans. The bible however, never says God only created one "Earth."

Originally posted by arpgme
There are about 300 sextillion stars in the universe (300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). That is 3 followed by 23 zeros [1]. Yes, this is just stars, it's not even counting all of the planets going around each and every one of them. Among all of those stars there are billions of planets which are able to be lived on [2]. By livable, yes, I do mean Earth-like planets... Also, remember there is evolution which allows a species to adapt to a new environment. So what are the chances that there is absolutely NO life in the universe but us? How can anyone possibly think this?

How do you know there are that many stars - did you count them - just kidding

It is only relatively recent that we in fact realized our Sun is a star - give it a few hundred years more and everyone will have no doubt that other beings exist in other star systems.
As for Aliens visiting Earth - I personally have no doubt they do and are here - yet I am yet to be convinced that UFOs are alien even though I have witnessed two. Is it possible for an alien civilization to have the technology to span light years of travel and visit - I think Yes without doubt but there are other ways to travel like an alien being incarnating into Human form.

Originally posted by Argyll
reply to post by arpgme

 

I think most people would agree with you! (I know I do)......but are these "aliens" visiting earth?....now that is another question, and one that a lot of people (myself included) struggle with.

That's where I stand.. I think it's quite improbable that aliens wouldn't exist.. but also quite improbable that they've visited..

Biology is another thing about alien life that interests me.. Usually scientists are talking about carbon based life and the requirement of liquid water for life to exist.. but that's based on our biology and how we evolved.. I think if energy exists, life has a chance to evolve in some very exotic ways we probably couldn't even fathom.

Why do people even bother to say this? That's what makes no sense. I don't know anyone who does not believe in aliens. I have never heard anyone express the idea that aliens do not exist. Yet someone feels compelled to express this sentiment on a weekly basis, that someone might not believe in aliens. The Drake Equation, for example, was established in 1960, over half a century ago. That's when the argument ought to have ended. Try to keep up.

The issue that usually arises vis-a-vis UFOs is that we do not know for certain that they represent aliens, i.e.: Even though there must be aliens, that does not mean there are aliens HERE. UFO =/ alien spacecraft. Of course, if you insist that you are on a first name basis with them and do lunch with them weekly, then perhaps your reality is a bit different. Still, until you can introduce your special friend to the rest of us, it remains an open question.

Originally posted by arpgme
So what are the chances that there is absolutely NO life in the universe but us? How can anyone possibly think this?

Well, for one, there is absolutely no indication SO FAR that there is life anywhere else in the universe. That's why they call it a belief, and not a fact. Belief is something you accept without proof of it being true. And at the moment, we have zero proof of life anywhere else in the universe.

First, we have NO IDEA how life either came to Earth or started here. We have some vague studies that show if you electrify primoridal gasses you get amino acids, and there have been some amino acids found in meteorites. But amino acids are a LONG WAY from a little creature that eats and poops and has a rudimentary consciousness. It's like saying, "Well, we have a bit of metal here that's like a strand of wire, which is the same as a functioning computer." NO.

Now imagine you have a box with a marble in it. And just like we have no idea how life started on/came to Earth, we have no idea how the marble got in the box. Not a clue. So imagine there's another box. What are the odds there's a marble in it? Hint: It's not 50/50. Remember, we don't know how the first marble got there. The only way we can tell if there's another marble in the box is to look. Okay, now imagine 1,000 boxes. What are the odds that there is another marble in any of them? You can't say. They could all have marbles, or none of them could. Now the question is, "How many boxes do you need to have before there just HAS to be another marble in at least one of them?" A billion? A trillion? A billion trillion?

The thing is, you can't say. Unless you know how the marble got in the first box, you can't say if there will be any others anywhere, and increasing the number of boxes doesn't improve the odds. It just might be an incredible fluke. You can suspect there's another marble. You can believe there's another marble. But until you FIND another marble, it's all just faith and fantasy.

There are singular things, you know. Some things only happen once. There is only one Moon. There is only one you. Try to figure out what the odds are that you managed to exist out of the untold billions of chemical and environmental factors and reactions in the entire universe. Now try to imagine that maybe life happening is just the same kind of incredibly rare fluke in the universe that it only happened once, too, on Earth.

I would like to think there is alien life out there but theres no evidence so far.

The argument about there MUST be just because of the sheer number of star in the universe doesnt really prove anything. Remember no 2 snow flakes are exactly the same. Just think how many snow flakes that must have fallen since this planet has been created..

Snowflakes are just simple frozen water. Planets and solar systems are infinitely more complex. So if you cant get 2 tiny frozen bits of water the same then what makes you think we can have 2 places with exactly the same conditions for life?

From a statistical probability perspective, yes, it's near absolute certainty there is other technologically advanced life in the universe.

There is in fact quite enough room for Billions of alien cultures.

Still, with ~500 Billion galaxies each with roughly 300-700Billion stars in each galaxy, the chances of any life finding any other life through the utter vastness of space, not to mention time, is quite the opposite where chances are so statistically small that even if there were 10 - 100 technologically advanced space faring cultures tooling around in each galaxy, odds would still be quite small of anyone ever bumping into or detecting anyone else.

Thus, sure, there could be intelligent advanced life in every single galaxy giving us hundreds of billions of alien cultures, but, since chances of meeting any one of them, on accident, or even or purpose due the vastness of space and time, is so small, it's a fun thought experiment, but, if anything it goes to support the chances of any aliens visiting us as being near impossible.

Just think, even if you could transport anywhere in zero time at all, and you could explore any place anywhere in the universe under the limitation that it would take you 1 earth year to explore any star system you pick, in one galaxy alone with ~300 - 700 Billion stars, the age of the universe being 14.5 Billion years old, by the time you've only explored a mere 5% of any galaxy, you'd have beeen at it longer than the entire age of the universe before you started.

I don't believe IN Aliens, but I do believe they exist.

Believing them sounds too much like a religion.

Originally posted by samlf3rd
Everything on our planet is completely covered in bacteria and life-yet all the other planets have 0? C'mon...

Such a common logical fallacy. Yeah, Earth is covered, literally crawling, with life. But that's because it's already here!

How did your hypothetical life get on the other planets? The same way it got here o Earth, right? Well, how was that? It sprang up here magically from a batch of chemicals and lightning. Just POOF! And there it was. Or maybe it fell out of the sky on a meteorite? But where did it come from before that? We're back to a bunch of dead chemicals somehow either RANDOMLY or MAGICALLY forming itself into a living thing? And we're back to the odds thing again. How likely do you think that is? If you take complete strands of DNA molecules -- give yourself a head start, after all -- and put them in a beaker and shake them, how long will it take to form a single, living procreating bacteria? If you took a bunch of transistors and wires and screws and sheets of metal and shook them in a bag, how long would it take for all those pieces to fall together into a complete, working computer?

Sure life is common on Earth. Anyplace else? It's not stupid or ridiculous to acknowledge that at this point we have NO INDICATION that there is life anywhere else, or that there should be life anywhere else. If you believe otherwise, it's just a belief. Like believing in God or Jesus or Nirvana or leprechauns.

There are limits so to speak.

Time is one, and it is suggested that planets were starting to form about 9 billion years ago, and earth took 4.5 billion to get us, so time creates a finite number.

In our galaxy it is estimated that there may be 2 million earth type planets, all with some kind of life, but as you add qualifiers we start to see smaller numbers... To say life we can say 2 mil, but to say advance life that number get smaller, then advance intelligent life, advance intelligent life that can build...so on and so on. ...you get the point

As one person said it's a big place, so some say there are endless possibilities, but they do not also add with that there are endless distances too.

Lastly for the last 6000 years we went from eye witnesses and drawings on walls to eye witnesses and pictures in cameras.... At some point we actually need something alien.

With all that said, yes there is life throughout the universe, but is there any aliens anywhere near earth...I truly doubt it.

It comes down to all the propaganda the population was exposed to. Its fictional story's. People tend to stay in their own space. Not caring about any thing that does not effect them. So they never look into things, usely they got their information off of TV shows books and newspapers. Not because they wear looking for the information because they just happen to run into it. Now days we have the internet and amazing telescopes. Their are videos on youtube witch put earths size into perspective. These video's get shared and more people start to wonder. The people that do not believe in aliens have never looked into it. They stay in their own world and fallow what ever propaganda they are told because its easier to except then to research.


We have come so far, in 10 years every one will believe. Information technology is spreading like crazy. Its only a matter of time till a popular viral Alien/UFO documentary is made witch will show the majority of the population that they do exist. Its 2012. Look at where we wear in the 50's and then look at where we wear in 2000. Amazing things can happen with in a small period of time.

Originally posted by disfugured
I don't believe IN Aliens, but I do believe they exist.

Believing them sounds too much like a religion.

Ye with little faith....

Thought I needed to say that.

Originally posted by Blue Shift
We're back to a bunch of dead chemicals somehow either RANDOMLY or MAGICALLY forming itself into a living thing? And we're back to the odds thing again. How likely do you think that is? If you take complete strands of DNA molecules -- give yourself a head start, after all -- and put them in a beaker and shake them, how long will it take to form a single, living procreating bacteria? If you took a bunch of transistors and wires and screws and sheets of metal and shook them in a bag, how long would it take for all those pieces to fall together into a complete, working computer?

You must of read the same book I did about DNA in a beaker and shake it up....good book but this is not really correct....it is not random, DNA, chemicals etc follow set rules too...its not like your computer anology.

Because it's too scary for them...