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What is the difference between believing in Aliens and believing in God?
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OS
Lifer
Wow, that's a big ass crackpipe you're sucking on.
It's a good thing einstein didn't follow that definition.
definition of science
Science, systematic study of anything that can be examined, tested, and verified.
Existence of alien life can examined, tested and verified. Existence of god, "and his mysterious ways", cannot be, just like me claiming I have pink elephant friends in my room that only I can see.
Thats the problem with this argument. Finding out whether aliens exist or not is based on science, but there is no way to definately prove god exists or not. They are two opposite cases and we must look at them differently.
Religion, or belief in a higher being cannot be fused with science and vice versa. Billions of people in the world have no hard evidence of a god, but yet they worship him or them each day. Many devote their entire lives to religion. Why?
Because it's about your faith. Some people have it and others don't. There is no instrument or any other device that you could measure god with. It's about your conscience. Therefore there is no way you could prove that god doesn't exist. And many people don't believe in the same god, some believe in the sun, some believe in the moon and others believe in the earth or soil.
It is much easier to prove or disprove the existence of aliens than it is to prove or disprove the existence of god. It's impossible to prove or disprove the existence of god. Like I said before, billions of people have faith and a deep belief system which allows them to worship a god, that they don't have hard evidence that it exists.
yllus
Elite Member & Lifer
It's rather apparent that you can't grasp the fundamental error in your statement. I'm going to try one more time.
Where is your examinable, testable, and verifiable evidence that life on Mars is provable? It's waiting there on Mars, right? You don't see the error in a recursive proof?
That is just as bad as someone who says, "God exists and the Bible proves it." You ask, "How do you know the Bible isn't wrong?" He retorts, "Because the Bible was written by God." To reject that logic is to reject your own.
Einstein observed several phenomena in the real world that led him to form a hypothesis. His hypothesis was testable, reproducible, examined by his peers. It was accepted as science.
Existence of alien life can be examined, tested and verified? Why? Nobody has done it yet. Maybe the faintest traces of life will be confirmed by placing a lab on Mars. Maybe not.
Maybe the faintest traces of life are on a planet 10e^10^10 miles away from Earth with evidence-collecting instruments we do not currently possess. Until we get there, set up shop and invent those instruments, we cannot conclude that such life exists. We equally cannot conclude that such life does not exist.
Until then, you are assuming such a thing can be done. You have faith in the hypothesis that we can prove the existence of alien life. Now, join me in my blissful state of unknowing and uncaring. 😀
I'm afraid you are wrong. If he had said 'life exists on Mars', we just need to get there to prove it, you would be correct. He instead has said there may be life on Mars, and when we go test it we will know for sure. Very different concepts. Once we rule in or rule out Mars as having life, we'll go test the next rock.
Bill
yllus
Elite Member & Lifer
No, he did say it:
In any case, I'm just demonstrating that you can't positively claim that alien life exists because someday we'll find it. Equally, you can't claim that alien life does not exist because someday we'll exhaust ourselves by searching every speck of the galaxy.
Fair enough. I read it in context of his original point in the thread, you could determine if microdal life exists on Mars if you sent a lab. I think he poorly paraphrased that here, I don't believe he (nor I) am saying that if life exists or doesn't exist on Mars it settles the debate for the rest of the universe. But it is an interesting data point to have (if the life is actually unique and not just some cross polination)
Bill
yllus
Elite Member & Lifer
By God, the lot of you people need lessons in basic logic.
In the year 1500, proving life may exist on Mars was impossible. In the year 2005, that may no longer be true.
In the year 2005, proving that God may exist was impossible. In the year 20000000005, that may no longer be true.
Because something is not possible today does not mean it is not possible.
Unless one of you possesses a Scroll Of All-Knowing and can prove definitively otherwise, please, grasp this rather simple concept.
OS
Lifer
That's sad that you have to resort to stuffing words in my mouth to prove a point.
To clarify; I don't know that in fact there is life on Mars. But it is testable and therefore is a form of science. The existence of god and "his all knowing ways" is not testable no matter how you try to pervert your rhetoric.
Vic
Elite Member
Mars is not a good example of proving alien life exists, as its proximity to earth would raise the possibility that any life found there did not evolve separately from life on earth, thus it would not be alien.
But... supposing we did put all the equipment there, and we found no life. Should we move from planet to planet throughout the universe to prove that the existence of alien life is provable? Quite the conundrum, if you ask me. You're basically saying that it's provable, when we prove it. Not a very good exercise of logic there.
But... supposing we did put all the equipment there, and we found no life. Should we move from planet to planet throughout the universe to prove that the existence of alien life is provable? Quite the conundrum, if you ask me. You're basically saying that it's provable, when we prove it. Not a very good exercise of logic there.
CycloWizard
Lifer
What you are suggesting is the correct methodology. My only point was to demonstrate that your hypothesis is accepted based on faith, not science. That was the entire point of this thread.
For myself, I suspect aliens probably do exist for the same reasons others here have argued.
This is simply not true. "Best evidence," as you described it, is nothing but 'best guess.' You can postulate whatever you like in this manner, but you need data to prove it. For example, I can say that the best evidence is that we have not found life anywhere else, so there's no reason to expect we ever will. This is purely conjecture, as is your argument.
If aliens don't exist, you cannot verify that they do exist! You are begging the question by assuming that your hypothesis is correct. Science is simply the evaluation of hypotheses through experimentation. Replication allows verification of the models developed. This does not mean that the initial hypothesis is always correct.
Yes, except that belief is much more likely ([i[to some people[/i]) and contrary to your view, is not based on pure guesswork, but circumstantial, if incomplete, evidence (such as water on mars, the discovery of earth-like planets, bacteria's ability to live in harsh conditions etc).
yllus
Elite Member & Lifer
EXACTLY. We have not proven or disproven God's existence, so it's not entered as science or fact. Likewise, we have not proven or disproven alien life's existence, so it's not entered as science or fact.
You cannot speculate or say one word further on the issue of either and still stand on firm ground. What about this is so difficult? 😕
I'm taking your words literally. My mistake for misinterpreting your badly worded sentence.
I'm not even a religious person. In fact, I despise 99% of organized religions and scoff at the remaining 1%. All I'm trying to do is make you understand that you're making an incorrect claim out of the blue. You can't claim something is or isn't possible without evidence, all you can do is form a hypothesis and wait for the experiment to be carried out. You have no logical basis for claiming that alien life exists, or that a being we might percieve as God may not. Good luck.
Vic
Elite Member
Heh. Clearly I have exposed faith where its faithful purported that none existed, and will shortly be condemned of heresy. Thank you, gentlemen, you have proved my point. I would hope that you would learn from this experience, but my own personal experience, both on this board and with people of blind faith, tells me that will be very unlikely.
Spencer278
Diamond Member
But your statment would be wrong because if you count the moon then we have looked 2 places the earth and the moon. And because we haven't determined anything special about earth there is no reason to assume it is specail. It is not faith.
You didn't answer the question.
Where would one start to prove that a god exists?
In the year 1500, scientists would have said send men there via some massive catapault or something and look around for life on Mars.
In year 200,000,005, how would you test for the existence of god? Where would you start? Send out radio signals requesting an interview? Smoke some new drug and meet up with him/her/it on some ethereal plane and ask questions?
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