Do You Believe in Higher Lifeforms in the Universe?

[mawk]

explain dinosaur bones? What about them? So there were dinosaurs, yeh.
dinosaurs were created right along with the other creatures.
And if evolution is wrong, what would you propose take it's place? Just out of curiosity.  And I demanded nothing, I was just trying to support my own beliefs.  I just see that there is tons of holes in the evolutionary process, that's all.

As for scientific evidence of six days, I wasn't there, so I couldn't really provide any of that, I go based on what the bible says about it, as you do with Darwin's theory.

You completely and utterly failed to answer any of my questions.

Dinosaurs themselves pose a problem to your reasoning. Earlier, you stated that you believed that the world was created in six days. So the dinosaurs were created with everything else... Did the Bible fail to mention them? Did they all die sometime during that week? Or was there a time where dinosaurs roamed the earth in addition to everything else? Then they all died and everything else lived. A thousand thousand slimy things and all that.

Congratulations, you've confirmed that while you need proof to even accept evolution as a possibly valid theory, your own standpoint requires no proof but the world of a book transcribed by Man, translated and re-translated for thousands of years, and constantly "interpreted" for popularity and the private interests of the priests themselves.

The problem with holy books is that they're all so wildly unreliable. Most texts have some degree of safeguard against editing (for instance, the Qu'ran is pretty special in the way the original Arabic characters are arranged,) but I certainly wouldn't take what one said as the final word on anything unless I could see the sense in it myself (with exceptions -- I don't know why Muslims aren't allowed to eat pork, but I don't see any reason that that would have been edited in, and no harm comes from obeying the rule anyway. Hell, it saves pigs! And those things can be really cute!) People have an endless capacity to ruin good things, I've noted. If you selectively interpret and hold fast to certain portions of a holy book, the end result is something like the way women are treated in Saudi Arabia to this day -- all on the (reinterpreted) word of a book that teaches peace and equality, as do all of them.

Man, this really has gotten off-topic. I can't think of a way to re-rail it, either. I hate it when people bring religion into serious discussion. :\

 

[nohmaan]

Man, this really has gotten off-topic. I can't think of a way to re-rail it, either. I hate it when people bring religion into serious discussion. :\

Technically, but again, I do believe that the basis for life in the universe hinges greatly on whether or not you believe in intelligent design or other evolutionary methods.  Life as we know it does not exist, and if you are religious you shouldn't believe that there is any other life out there either.  But if you can consider evolutionary process, the fact that microbes may be able to live on a 1500 degree methane/water planet with 1.5 times Earth's gravity; then you can possible imagine life on alien worlds.

 

[mawk]

I'm religious, but I don't think that god has to do everything with a corresponding miracle. : P

Like I've said, if this guy set down the rules of physics, he should be able to work within them without any trouble.

The microbes thing sounds hopeful. Of course, more complex organisms would probably have a tougher time in those conditions, but of course there are planets in far better condition out there as well.

 

[Astromech]

I am Christian, but believe that God could have created life on other planets (or engineered evolution to do so). The Bible doesn't say anything on the issue.

 

[Legendary]

Life as we know it does not exist, and if you are religious you shouldn't believe that there is any other life out there either.

Hindu texts actually state that there are innumerable universes populated by the 'Supreme Personality' (Hinduism is sort of monotheistic and polytheistic at the same time, so it's hard to describe. I guess the best analogy is that the Gods of Hinduism are like the Trinity of Christianity, seperate but the same. And this is only ONE interpretation. Hinduism gives me a headache).

The Talmud and the Quran at least suggest the possibility of other worlds, although they are silent as to the question of inhabitants (A later scholar for the Talmud noted that the creatures of the 18,000 other worlds would be no more similar to humanity than sea creatures are to land creatures. An 18th century example of Hard Sci Fi :P).

In short, saying that religious people shouldn't believe in aliens... is really almost offensive, lumping about 80% of the planet into the stereotype that Mean Girls has a one-liner on ("And on the third day, God created the [some sort of rifle] so Man could kill the dinosaurs. And the homosexuals.")

 

[nohmaan]

You're right, there are religions that may encompass the inhabitation of other planets, I was lumping the word religious with the sentence before it talking about 'intelligent design' as the basis of creation of the universe.  I would say though, the reason that the bible and other ancient texts don't cover the topic of alien life forms is that they were all written back in a time where the planet's place in the universe was even less unknown that it is now.  In fact, most people only assume the solar system, perhaps even just the earth, as the universe. (Ptolemy's model)

The basis of the intelligent design is that God would have created mankind to be special, it's own human being, regarded even higher than the angels.  And he created this world we live on, which has just the perfect conditions to support life as we know it.  He also created the sexes which is how we are supposed to reproduce (though no coverage is given on why he would have created sexes).  Intelligent design is the principle that all creatures were created as they are, each one hand picked by God.  The bible is pretty straightforward and doesn't leave room for evolution to be a viable part of the process, since it dates the universe back to only a few thousand years. 

And with all the creation that happen from God, they only mention vaguely what people believe to cover the cosmos as the heavens and Earth.  It doesn't make any sense under the religious views of Christianity to assume there is other life forms, unless perhaps there are other Gods governing other planets of the universe as their chosen planet.  In which case, you aren't following your religion of monotheism.  You could of course, assume that God himself is an alien, but omnipotence is hardly lumped into a category of 'life' that we can describe.

 

[Astromech]

The Bible never says there isn't any life in the universe, so I think we should not rule out the possibility. Anything false, is plainly stated in the Bible. I think it is wrong to assume that because the Bible does not mention something, it cannot be. The Bible doesn't mention computers anywhere, but here we are!  :smile:  Maybe a better analogy would be how America is never mentioned in the Bible.

I don't see why God couldn't create other races on other planets, also in His image.

 

[Me(tm)]

The Bible never says there isn't any life in the universe, so I think we should not rule out the possibility. Anything false, is plainly stated in the Bible. I think it is wrong to assume that because the Bible does not mention something, it cannot be. The Bible doesn't mention computers anywhere, but here we are!  :smile:  Maybe a better analogy would be how America is never mentioned in the Bible.

I don't see why God couldn't create other races on other planets, also in His image.

One solution could be that the Bible is fake - sorry but that's just the other way around - and I'm not saying that it is fake, but that would clearly solve all your questions.

I don't know if there is, but I think so. If there was a chance of 1 on million that a planet with the same enviroment would be created and there is a chance of 1 on a million that there is a sun in perfect range and their is a chance of 1 on a million that lifeforms exist and their is a chance of 1 on a million that these lifeforms evolve....

...then we are certainly not alone!

 

[Astromech]

Well yes, but the Bible doesn't rule out the possibility of life on other planets. That's what I was trying to say.

 

[WildCard]

I am Christian, but believe that God could have created life on other planets (or engineered evolution to do so). The Bible doesn't say anything on the issue

You can't believe christianity and evolution at the same time, there is no room for that process in the bible. It indicates that as already stated, that man was supposedly created special, and there was no death before his creation, and death apparently started when the first man sinned. So you can have millions of years of evolution there, because it requires the dying off of species.

As for the dinosaur questions, there is mention of them, the hebrew or greek (I forgot which) word for dragon is used several times throughout the bible,  two examples are when Leviathan is mentioned, or the behemoth.  

 

[Astromech]

Well, I believe you can, if you don't believe in a strict interpretation of Genesis. Me? I'm undecided.

Edit: Clarified.

 

[mawk]

You can't believe christianity and evolution at the same time, there is no room for that process in the bible.

That's a narrow-minded view, and a false one at that. Things look slated against evolution if you look at the Bible in a purely literal sense, but that's a bad idea -- people've died that way. Remember the Witch Trials? That was the result of a strict and literal interpretation of a line that was really telling people "don't be a witch."

In the original Hebrew (Jewish faith, sorry, I'm mixing my religions,) the Behemoth, Leviathan, and Ziz were primordial and undefeatable beasts of land, sea, and sky, respectively. That sounds like dinosaurs, and I can see where you're coming from, with the description of some massive creature with strong bones and a tail like a cedar. The fact that they all died within the week sort of throws a sabot into the "undefeatable" niche, though.

 

[___]

Guys, creationism, intelligent design, evolution, and the specifics of holy texts in regard to them are not really on-topic here as which you believe in has little bearing on the call of the question.  There are plenty of good posts here so I'm not going to delete them, but steer this one back on topic and/or start a new thread.
(end official statement) -N

 

[nohmaan]

Guys, creationism, intelligent design, evolution, and the specifics of holy texts in regard to them are not really on-topic here as which you believe in has little bearing on the call of the question.  There are plenty of good posts here so I'm not going to delete them, but steer this one back on topic and/or start a new thread.
(end official statement) -N

Well I do honestly believe that the two topics of life in the universe and evolutionary process are directly related, but you are right it's turning into a deeper look at the creation of our selves and how the creation of other life may have happened.  So then for the sake of this particular discussion that creationism and evolution of species are both valid methods of establishing life on a planet.

I don't know if there is, but I think so. If there was a chance of 1 on million that a planet with the same enviroment would be created and there is a chance of 1 on a million that there is a sun in perfect range and their is a chance of 1 on a million that lifeforms exist and their is a chance of 1 on a million that these lifeforms evolve....

...then we are certainly not alone!

I'd say its more like one in ten trillion that there is a possibility of a planet that has the tilt that our planet does, the same distance from a same sized baby star(sun), and the same size and gravitational effect as our planet.  Not to mention our same chemical composition of an oxygen rich atmosphere.  But assuming that life on a planet can exist based of adaptation to it's environment, then it's safe to say that the reason why we 'lucked out' with a planet perfect for supporting life is that our origins grew into that environment.

That's why I'd say it's entirely possible for other life forms we couldn't even begin to identify come to life on other worlds in extreme conditions and form new types of life/cells/microbial structures that can grow and further adapt to places that may have 100 times Earth's gravitational pull and have a surface of raining, boiling sulfuric acid.  In fact some of the planets that we've identified their elemental composition could be wrong and actually be composed of elements unknown to our home world.

At any rate, it is highly unlikely that the human race will ever know the answer during the course of it's existence in the universe.

 

[___]

Almost all the spots on the periodic table have already been filled by discovered elements, so while it's likely that any given planet could have higher concentrations of some materials less common here (extremely rare materials are going to be pretty rare just about everywhere though), it's highly unlikely that any new elements will be found on them as the only place to go in terms of atomic number now is up, and there doesn't exist a place in nature where most of the extremely big atoms get made in the first place - the biggest ones are made in colliders and last infinitesimal fractions of seconds before they decay.

 

[shiroun]

Almost all the spots on the periodic table have already been filled by discovered elements, so while it's likely that any given planet could have higher concentrations of some materials less common here (extremely rare materials are going to be pretty rare just about everywhere though), it's highly unlikely that any new elements will be found on them as the only place to go in terms of atomic number now is up, and there doesn't exist a place in nature where most of the extremely big atoms get made in the first place - the biggest ones are made in colliders and last infinitesimal fractions of seconds before they decay.

Ugh, here we go with half-lives.

No offence, but the decay rate of an atom is based on Earth's gravity, mass, chemical make up, elevation, etc.

Now then, the composure of most atom here goes about 2:1:1 (Protons, neutrons, electrons (?)), but it is easily possible that it could go 1:20:5, which, although giving a high positive value that could kill humans, may be the basis and necessity for life on other planets, which would give it a decay rate atleast quadruple or quintouple^ 5000 the normal for our planet.

Then again, organisms may not be made up of aminic acids. That raises a whole new point.

Go read Andromeda Strain, you may find it interesting.

 

[nohmaan]

True, there is a high possibility of new elements being found inside some of the most massive and hot stars in our universe.  It's possible that the thermodynamics of the universe change and these elements can more readily exist.  Theoretically, the first gases in the universe after it's immediate formation were hydrogen and helium exclusively.  The heavier elements had to be made within the first stars that formed, and then scatted back into the universe to form the new stars and planets as it expanded as distributed by black holes.  It is entirely possible too, that some new elements or gases we've never heard of have been distributed through solar winds and form into nebulae or floating chunks of elemental material.  I suppose, anyways.

I think this is a tough question to properly examine without diverting into the structure and dynamics of the known universe, and again back to how the formation of life on Earth can relate to the formation of life on other worlds.  I think a good sub topic to touch on would be universal structure and possible places/times/objects (hypothetical or proven) that could support new elements and/or life forms unknown to us- as long as the moderators would allow us to go into that subtopic. (Let's keep it scientific to avoid going back into the topic of creationism).

 

[___]

Almost all the spots on the periodic table have already been filled by discovered elements, so while it's likely that any given planet could have higher concentrations of some materials less common here (extremely rare materials are going to be pretty rare just about everywhere though), it's highly unlikely that any new elements will be found on them as the only place to go in terms of atomic number now is up, and there doesn't exist a place in nature where most of the extremely big atoms get made in the first place - the biggest ones are made in colliders and last infinitesimal fractions of seconds before they decay.

Ugh, here we go with half-lives.

No offence, but the decay rate of an atom is based on Earth's gravity, mass, chemical make up, elevation, etc.

Now then, the composure of most atom here goes about 2:1:1 (Protons, neutrons, electrons (?)), but it is easily possible that it could go 1:20:5, which, although giving a high positive value that could kill humans, may be the basis and necessity for life on other planets, which would give it a decay rate atleast quadruple or quintouple^ 5000 the normal for our planet.

Then again, organisms may not be made up of aminic acids. That raises a whole new point.

Go read Andromeda Strain, you may find it interesting.

I have read Andromeda Strain actually and I'm well aware of what a half-life is.  I didn't want to bust out a link to a periodic table, but here you go:

http://www.webelements.com/

Now if you look at the table, you'll see that there's a couple sections set out in the bottom.  The one of relevance here is the Actinoids section; these are rare-earth materials, rare because there have been relatively few stars that have achieved the conditions necessary for their production.  Everything above them (103 and up) are synthetics - they have only been produced in laboratory situations and not in observable quantities.  This is achieved by colliding two smaller elements, mostly; they're highly unstable and decay very rapidly - some in fractions of seconds.  Even the most stable among them rarely last more than a few hours and none of them l last I knew of had been produced in any kind of useful quantities.  It's probably true that some more stable arrangements can be found in extremely massive stars somewhere in space; I don't know, that's really above my level of interest or understanding atm, but it's not really relevant to a discussion of life since it still doesn't fix any of the essential problems faced in order to get non-carbon based chemical life going.  That's what I was referring to; you can click on them yourself if you want to know more.

Changing the number of protons in an atom's makeup creates an isotope, and has almost no effect on its behavior because most of an element's behavior is dictated by its arrangement of electrons.  The most notable effect is that isotopes with high numbers of protons tend to engage in chemical reactions slower and less readily than lighter versions of the same element; this is basically the opposite of what you want to achieve organic chemistry and thus life, if you're talking about a hypothetical world full of heavy isotopes. 

Changing the ratio of protons to electrons creates an ion which does have some interesting chemical properties; ions aren't really all that interesting to discuss either, especially highly positively charged ions, when you're talking about organic chemistry.  In a hypothetical world where you have a lot of highly positive ions you have by definition an extreme shortage of electrons available and thus less of what you need to foster complex and interesting chemical interactions.  Anyways I'm not going to go into this any more, it's not that interesting, don't lecture me on chemistry if you don't have a grasp of it that reaches beyond what a cursory bit of web research and/or a high school education could teach you  

The point is that there are no new elements to be discovered that are going to be both readily available in nature and have the chemical properties necessary to be conducive to any kind of chemical life; I think I already covered the whole issue of promiscuity earlier in the thread.  Undiscovered elements or isotopes is a dead-end path for theorizing about extra-terrestrial life.  If anyone wants to bring an argument against that at least have something interesting and relevant to say about it, please :/

 

[shiroun]

Almost all the spots on the periodic table have already been filled by discovered elements, so while it's likely that any given planet could have higher concentrations of some materials less common here (extremely rare materials are going to be pretty rare just about everywhere though), it's highly unlikely that any new elements will be found on them as the only place to go in terms of atomic number now is up, and there doesn't exist a place in nature where most of the extremely big atoms get made in the first place - the biggest ones are made in colliders and last infinitesimal fractions of seconds before they decay.

Ugh, here we go with half-lives.

No offence, but the decay rate of an atom is based on Earth's gravity, mass, chemical make up, elevation, etc.

Now then, the composure of most atom here goes about 2:1:1 (Protons, neutrons, electrons (?)), but it is easily possible that it could go 1:20:5, which, although giving a high positive value that could kill humans, may be the basis and necessity for life on other planets, which would give it a decay rate atleast quadruple or quintouple^ 5000 the normal for our planet.

Then again, organisms may not be made up of aminic acids. That raises a whole new point.

Go read Andromeda Strain, you may find it interesting.

I have read Andromeda Strain actually and I'm well aware of what a half-life is.  I didn't want to bust out a link to a periodic table, but here you go:

http://www.webelements.com/

Now if you look at the table, you'll see that there's a couple sections set out in the bottom.  The one of relevance here is the Actinoids section; these are rare-earth materials, rare because there have been relatively few stars that have achieved the conditions necessary for their production.  Everything above them (103 and up) are synthetics - they have only been produced in laboratory situations and not in observable quantities.  This is achieved by colliding two smaller elements, mostly; they're highly unstable and decay very rapidly - some in fractions of seconds.  Even the most stable among them rarely last more than a few hours and none of them l last I knew of had been produced in any kind of useful quantities.  It's probably true that some more stable arrangements can be found in extremely massive stars somewhere in space; I don't know, that's really above my level of interest or understanding atm, but it's not really relevant to a discussion of life since it still doesn't fix any of the essential problems faced in order to get non-carbon based chemical life going.  That's what I was referring to; you can click on them yourself if you want to know more.

Changing the number of protons in an atom's makeup creates an isotope, and has almost no effect on its behavior because most of an element's behavior is dictated by its arrangement of electrons.  The most notable effect is that isotopes with high numbers of protons tend to engage in chemical reactions slower and less readily than lighter versions of the same element; this is basically the opposite of what you want to achieve organic chemistry and thus life, if you're talking about a hypothetical world full of heavy isotopes. 

Changing the ratio of protons to electrons creates an ion which does have some interesting chemical properties; ions aren't really all that interesting to discuss either, especially highly positively charged ions, when you're talking about organic chemistry.  In a hypothetical world where you have a lot of highly positive ions you have by definition an extreme shortage of electrons available and thus less of what you need to foster complex and interesting chemical interactions.  Anyways I'm not going to go into this any more, it's not that interesting, don't lecture me on chemistry if you don't have a grasp of it that reaches beyond what a cursory bit of web research and/or a high school education could teach you  

The point is that there are no new elements to be discovered that are going to be both readily available in nature and have the chemical properties necessary to be conducive to any kind of chemical life; I think I already covered the whole issue of promiscuity earlier in the thread.  Undiscovered elements or isotopes is a dead-end path for theorizing about extra-terrestrial life.  If anyone wants to bring an argument against that at least have something interesting and relevant to say about it, please :/

I like you ._. You make me think.

Anyway, on ions, there is also the possibility of ionic based organisms. Which raises a further point of inability to coexist with them... Ofcourse a massive discharge of electrons & protons would result in a possibly dangerous explosion.

Imagine an ionic life form... how intriguing, no need for air... carbon, or any anemic acids, that would be so cool.

Then again, Andromeda Strain is another good example of organisms. To raise the point that hasn't come up,

                                          The Messenger Theory
I forget who raised the point in the book, I believe Hall raised the point of it. Anyway, if an organism were having a form of 'coming out party' to other organisms in the world, how would they send it?

Radio - Hardly, signal is hardly readable 100 miles away. The cost could be exponential too.
Solar - Even this would be pointless. A light can shine bright at 10 feet away, you can see it at 100 feet away, but by the time you hit a mile, you hardly see it. Even if you can blow up an entire star, what's the point? After a few million -- if you're lucky billion -- miles, it will start to fade. Besides, the costs are so high it wouldn't be worth it.

However, what about organic? You could create trillions of organisms for a few bucks, that would travel to planets, and would evolve into an organism that could talk to the organisms of a planet, and tell them how to make contact. The only thing that was unusual about the Andromeda Strain that I didn't get, was why the organism killed humans. I believe it may have been part of the way it grows, or that the hemoragging was just a side effect due to the organisms that were supposed to delivering the message having a different biochemical composure. That could be problematic, due to the carbon/oxygen in our blood being usable by The Andromeda Strain.

Anyway, that was a mouthful. I am excited to see your rebuttle.

 

[___]

Well I'm not sure I can (or want to) rebutt that exactly, except on the point of ionic life and only to say I don't know enough about the subject except that you're talking about something extremely, incredibly unlikely.

As for the coming out thing, I should hope a civilization advanced enough to accomplish something like that wouldn't be reckless enough to try it.  Maybe after spending a couple thousand years as a spacefaring culture you'll have the the experience to know what to expect out there in terms of how other chemical-based life functions but I argue that you wouldn't get to that point if you had the type of mentality that said "let's just cook up some parasitic greeting cards and hope we don't kill too many people."

It is an interesting idea though in a perfect situation.  What I might do rather than try to make it communicate in a direct sense is to have it somehow build structures on a microscopic level that would serve as a distinct calling card to any civilization advanced enough to figure out the message; still you're talking about potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of years of travel.  The obvious problem is how you're going to make an organism that can propagate itself well enough to spread through inconceivable amounts of empty space and potentially touch another intelligent creature.  The more subtle problem is how much will this critter evolve in that space of time, and to what extent can you control it to make sure the message arrives intact.

Maybe there's a simpler solution than that even, and we're just not advanced enough to have thought of it yet.  Maybe someday we'll discover some new medium that allows fast communication on a universal scale, and find out there's all kinds of conversations already going on in it.  I think it'd actually be depressing if we didn't, and to a lesser extent if there weren't a whole lot of others out there to talk to   It might be a bit like the internet experience where you can talk with all kinds of people even though realistically traveling to their doorstep and hanging out in their living room will probably never happen.