What is the difference between believing in Aliens and believing in God?

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Belief in God is nice because it's nice to think we can live forever.

Belief in Aliens is nice because it reduces the guilt we all unconsciously feel about the otherwise really sad fact of our also unconscious desire we are hell bent on fulfilling, to destroy ourselves. This unconscious wish, though many would deny its existence, is clearly expressed via projection in all religious end time scenarios.

We must die to come alive, but we chose real death over psychic death of the ego because we fear the latter more. It is this vicarious need for death that will kill us.

Only knowledge can save us and knowledge is the last thing we want.

You will now rationalize away the fact that you were told and dismiss this information as utter tripe. It will be as if it never existed.

Though I think most people may not realize it, this was an excellent post. While most every other response here addressed the fantasy that we believe is reality, Moonie addressed the reality that we believe is fantasy.
Very nice.

My response is that not everyone perceives their gods the same way. That we all have gods though, is fact.

 

[sharkeeper]

>>WTF Are we seeing message board spam now?

Roofles, actually I just saw the bot's sig. Spam galore! <<

Roofles on you!

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Belief in God is nice because it's nice to think we can live forever.

Belief in Aliens is nice because it reduces the guilt we all unconsciously feel about the otherwise really sad fact of our also unconscious desire we are hell bent on fulfilling, to destroy ourselves. This unconscious wish, though many would deny its existence, is clearly expressed via projection in all religious end time scenarios.

We must die to come alive, but we chose real death over psychic death of the ego because we fear the latter more. It is this vicarious need for death that will kill us.

Only knowledge can save us and knowledge is the last thing we want.

You will now rationalize away the fact that you were told and dismiss this information as utter tripe. It will be as if it never existed.

Though I think most people may not realize it, this was an excellent post. While most every other response here addressed the fantasy that we believe is reality, Moonie addressed the reality that we believe is fantasy.
Very nice.

My response is that not everyone perceives their gods the same way. That we all have gods though, is fact.

Perhaps I don't understand what moonbeam is trying to say, but my observation is that, for most people at least, the closer you get to death, the more you want to live.

 

[cKGunslinger]

I believe in both and have no further input to this thread.

 

[drewshin]

dont know if this has been mentioned, but i think a belief in god or a creator is on a whole different level of belief than that of aliens.

belief in aliens means you believe that there is other life in the universe besides us.

belief in god means you believe that something greater than us created us and everything in the universe, which also means that god also created the aliens (if you believe in both). that is a much stronger and different type of belief to me than just believing that other types of life exist in the universe.

of course, it could be that aliens themselves are the ones that created us and the universe
:Q

 

[DragonMasterAlex]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex
In any case, the existence of LIFE is a proven fact, the existence of GOD is not. Infer what you will from that.

This is actually the crux of the entire debate. It comes down to which mechanism of life's origins you prescribe to - abiogenesis or creation. Neither of these have been directly observed, thus believing in either is simply faith in one theory instead of the other. However, it is possible to believe in both.

It has NOTHING to do with whether you believe life began through evolution or creation. NOTHING. It has to do with the FACT--demonstrable, observable, self-evident--that LIFE EXISTS ON EARTH. It does, pure and simple, and it's a fact that you cannot deny.

The fact that life exists on earth is reason--however small is irrelevant--to suppose that life MAY (not "Must", and there's a huge difference!) exist on other worlds. How that life came to be DOES NOT MATTER.

Jason

 

[DragonMasterAlex]

Originally posted by: Promethply
It probably takes less imagination to belief in god

It takes less WORK. Belief in God is the easy way out.

Q: Why is the sky blue?

A: Because God said so!

See, you avoid all the hard work of studying the properties of light and physics and learning that the sky is blue as a result of the preferential scattering of blue wavelengths.

Faith=the easy way out.

Jason

 

[GreatBarracuda]

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex
Faith=the easy way out.
Jason

Easy way out of what?

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: GreatBarracuda

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex
Faith=the easy way out.
Jason

Easy way out of what?

Surely the easy way our of the hard way out.

 

[Zebo]

lOl

 

[OFFascist]

There is no difference because they both exist.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: sao123

Originally posted by: Brazen
It's interesting the people who say you can not prove God's existence, but you can prove aliens exist, and then use some form of Drake's (ie. using probability as proof) to backup their claim.

When if anything, Drake's and the current state of abiogenesis (which Drake's hinges on) research points more towards the existence of God. To put it simply, if abiogenesis is possible, then aliens are possible but not probable and God is still possible; however, if abiogenesis does not exist then God is not only possible but NECESSARY.

Given a 50/50 chance for abiogenesis even being possible, the odds are better off believing in God over aliens (using the alien-believers reasoning), however, so far all data has pointed towards abiogenesis as NOT being possible.

Best post ive read so far.

Finally, after 500 posts I've said something usefull...

thanks :beer:

 

[Brazen]

Settled, once and for all...

 

[imported_Reck]

God is merely an abstract non physical concept that has no real proof of existing.

Whereas ufos have been documented thousands and thousands of times and captured in both photographs and video. "Aliens" operate the actual physical world and we have proof of it. Which makes more sense to believe in then? I'm sure that point has probably already been made in the thread lol.

 

[Infohawk]

Originally posted by: yllus
Why try to educate someone thick-headed enough to say, "You don't have to prove god doesn't exist to say god doesn't exist, only show that there is no evidence that god exists"? You definitely have more patience for the slow-witted than I do.

Mwoaw.. couldn't handle all da' negatives in that one yllus?

Anyway, at least vic answers the attacks on his ideas... I'll give him that.

You on the other hand, still haven't answered the query:

Is it logically indefensible to say that there is no pink armada of attack cell phones hiding behind Pluto?

Your answer should be "yes" unless you want to explain the inconsistency with your prior statement.

 

[SuperStrokey]

I would say the difference between teh 2 is that the building blocks for life are every where in the universe. As for the building blocks of god, well needless to say the only thing that i can think of that makes him up is faith (no to imply god is not real but rather that i dont know what would make him up). I beleive in both for sure, just a little differently than most people i think.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: SuperStrokey
I would say the difference between teh 2 is that the building blocks for life are every where in the universe. As for the building blocks of god, well needless to say the only thing that i can think of that makes him up is faith (no to imply god is not real but rather that i dont know what would make him up). I beleive in both for sure, just a little differently than most people i think.

Of course the building blocks are there, but they are also everywhere here on Earth. Where is the spontaneous generation of life here? Scientists have been trying to observe it or reproduce it themselves for decades with no success to this point.

 

[SuperStrokey]

and the universe has been around for billions of years longer than we have been here, could have just been trial and error(so to speak) and got lucky one time. I wasnt there and neither were you so no one can really say. Just because scientists havnt been able to do it in the last few decades doesnt mean that the universe may have done it a million times in its 15 billion year exisitance.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: SuperStrokey
and the universe has been around for billions of years longer than we have been here, could have just been trial and error(so to speak) and got lucky one time. I wasnt there and neither were you so no one can really say. Just because scientists havnt been able to do it in the last few decades doesnt mean that the universe may have done it a million times in its 15 billion year exisitance.

This is exactly my point. We have no evidence of life spontaneously forming any more than we do of a divine creation. Thus, belief in either theory is based on faith.

 

[supersloth]

Originally posted by: SlitheryDee

Originally posted by: supersloth
how can you say there's no evidence in God, this world is enought evidence for me, life just doesn't create itself and here's my crazy logic behind that.

the probabilty of me randomly picking my fake first and last name, "turd ferguson" out of a hat of 26 letters is 1 out of 95428956661682176. (pm me if you want me to show you the math)

so, if i can't even pick my freaking name out of a hat in my life time, then how in the world did this Universe create itself. nuf said

supersloth

Because your lifetime and mine and the lifetime of the oldest person in the bible multiplied by 1000 is not even a drop in the bucket compared to the age of the universe. Given enough time and energy all sorts of neat stuff can happen.

there are some things worth believing in this world whether they are true or not... because they bring hope and purpose. Without faith, this life is meaningless because without faith purpose can't exist. for you to have a purpose, you couldn't have randomly been created. i'd like to think all of us are brought upon this Earth for a reason. if we weren't, then i don't think i'd really care to be alive.

supersloth

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: SuperStrokey
and the universe has been around for billions of years longer than we have been here, could have just been trial and error(so to speak) and got lucky one time. I wasnt there and neither were you so no one can really say. Just because scientists havnt been able to do it in the last few decades doesnt mean that the universe may have done it a million times in its 15 billion year exisitance.

This is exactly my point. We have no evidence of life spontaneously forming any more than we do of a divine creation. Thus, belief in either theory is based on faith.

Why would that be?

Life is just a complex arrangement of common elements we see all over the universe. We see evolution form the simple to the complex so it seems reasonable, from a scientifically speculative point of view, to hypothesize that the simple elements of our planet required for life found some natural way to achieve the complexity to form rudimentary life. This is less a matter of faith and more an extension of deductive reasoning. It is a scientifically oriented idea that theoretically could be tested.

The notion that God is required to assemble chemicals only occurs to people who have a prior faith and begs the question of how God was assembled. These kinds of ideas are more the product of wish fulfillment and magical thinking. No natural process can be imagined and tested that would create God. Such notions are truly the product of faith in the way the word was intended.

There is, of course, a scientific way to understand what God really is, but such a God is not what most people imagine God to be.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Why would that be?

Life is just a complex arrangement of common elements we see all over the universe. We see evolution form the simple to the complex so it seems reasonable, from a scientifically speculative point of view, to hypothesize that the simple elements of our planet required for life found some natural way to achieve the complexity to form rudimentary life. This is less a matter of faith and more an extension of deductive reasoning. It is a scientifically oriented idea that theoretically could be tested.

It WOULD seem reasonable from a scientific perspective IF we had ever observed it. We obviously have all the right things for life to occur if abiogenesis is correct, so why has it never been observed? You're right - it could theoretically be tested, and many labs are trying to create life from 'scratch' as we speak - more than 100 worldwide. None have yet succeeded. Again, you can hypothesize anything you want, but until you have at least one data point to verify your hypothesis, it remains only a hypothesis.

The notion that God is required to assemble chemicals only occurs to people who have a prior faith and begs the question of how God was assembled. These kinds of ideas are more the product of wish fulfillment and magical thinking. No natural process can be imagined and tested that would create God. Such notions are truly the product of faith in the way the word was intended.

No offense, but I'm slightly more familiar with how chemicals are assembled than yourself. I therefore realize the completely ridiculous complexity of even a single-celled organism. I see that the only way scientists can create proteins is by cloning existing proteins, and a protein is orders of magnitude less complex than a single cell, as a cell is made up of many proteins. That, and one must consider the obvious question: what did the first living thing eat? There were no other living things for it to eat. Was it already so advanced as to live off of solar power? This is impossible, as it would require mass input as well. I'm admittedly short on biochemistry, but from my limited background there, I cannot put all the pieces together as to how this could ever be possible, particularly by simple random chance, even given billions of years.

You also assume that God must be assembled. As I mentioned previously, there is reason to suspect that, if a God does exist, he does so outside the dimensions of space and time. Current physics theory supports this possibility, as all of the Grand Unifying Theories of physics currently require additional dimensions. What if God represents the cosmological constant that Einstein was forced to tack on his comsology equations?

There is, of course, a scientific way to understand what God really is, but such a God is not what most people imagine God to be.

And that is?

 

[Tommunist]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

No offense, but I'm slightly more familiar with how chemicals are assembled than yourself. I therefore realize the completely ridiculous complexity of even a single-celled organism. I see that the only way scientists can create proteins is by cloning existing proteins, and a protein is orders of magnitude less complex than a single cell, as a cell is made up of many proteins. That, and one must consider the obvious question: what did the first living thing eat? There were no other living things for it to eat. Was it already so advanced as to live off of solar power? This is impossible, as it would require mass input as well. I'm admittedly short on biochemistry, but from my limited background there, I cannot put all the pieces together as to how this could ever be possible, particularly by simple random chance, even given billions of years.

Well I'm glad we have an expert here! Regardless of how complex single (or for that matter multi-cell) organisms are doesn't really matter. If we assume that time is a series of random events and that at each "event decision" there is a split there should be a few branches of the total possibilities down the line that have some form of life in them. So to ask, "well how could everything be so complex and work out just right?" or in other words "how did we end up on this particular branch of reality" is pretty silly because if it wasn't that way we wouldn't be here to wonder

If I was God this is how I would have set things up to work: I could just start things up and let the multiple Universes play out and I could sit back and have drinks with little umbrellas in them while I basked in the infinite Universes I had created. I wouldn't have to ever intervene b/c every possible outcome would come to pass.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Tommunist
Well I'm glad we have an expert here! Regardless of how complex single (or for that matter multi-cell) organisms are doesn't really matter. If we assume that time is a series of random events and that at each "event decision" there is a split there should be a few branches of the total possibilities down the line that have some form of life in them. So to ask, "well how could everything be so complex and work out just right?" or in other words "how did we end up on this particular branch of reality" is pretty silly because if it wasn't that way we wouldn't be here to wonder

So your argument is that we can hypothesize how this could happen, so it must have happened and it's stupid to think otherwise? I think it's possible that life on Earth stems from fecal matter jettisoned from a passing alien vessel. After all, with all the aliens flying around, there's a decent chance one of their vessels passed Earth at some point, right?

Of course this is stupid, but it shows that many hypotheses can be put forth that have a plausible (even if it is silly) explanation. Without observing any of these phenomena, we have no way of distinguishing between these hypotheses.

 

[Tommunist]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: Tommunist
Well I'm glad we have an expert here! Regardless of how complex single (or for that matter multi-cell) organisms are doesn't really matter. If we assume that time is a series of random events and that at each "event decision" there is a split there should be a few branches of the total possibilities down the line that have some form of life in them. So to ask, "well how could everything be so complex and work out just right?" or in other words "how did we end up on this particular branch of reality" is pretty silly because if it wasn't that way we wouldn't be here to wonder

So your argument is that we can hypothesize how this could happen, so it must have happened and it's stupid to think otherwise? I think it's possible that life on Earth stems from fecal matter jettisoned from a passing alien vessel. After all, with all the aliens flying around, there's a decent chance one of their vessels passed Earth at some point, right?

Of course this is stupid, but it shows that many hypotheses can be put forth that have a plausible (even if it is silly) explanation. Without observing any of these phenomena, we have no way of distinguishing between these hypotheses.

That's a possible theory although I find certain other theories to have more evidence to back them up. I was simply trying to make the point that just b/c we are here doesn't mean that divine intervention is necessary regardless of how complex living systems appear to be. But back to the OT:

I'm I see a big difference between suspecting there are aliens and believing there is a God. Some other forms of life - given the vastness of the Universe seem possible if not probable. Believing in God can't really be measured up to believing there are some aliens out there. The comparison isn't even to the level of apples to oranges as at least both of those are fruit - God and aliens don't even compare.