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Life On Other Planets


Andy_T

Life  

67 members have voted

  1. 1. Life on other parts of the big ole' Cosmos?

    • Very, very likely.
      61
    • I'm open-minded, but not convinced one way or the other
      5
    • Unlikely
      1
    • Definitely not. It is completely unscriptural.
      0


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What do people think?

Astrophysicists believe that habitable planets (exoplanets) exist throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, and throughout the universe. For an introduction to such notions, see the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL), Univ. of Puerto Rico at Arecibo (Observatory), online at http://phl.upr.edu and http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog/references .

See, for example, "Many Billions of Rocky Planets in Habitable Zones Around Red Dwarfs in Milky Way," ScienceDaily, Mar 28, 2012, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120328090937.htm .

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I could never get into any of the Star Trek TV series. But the movie is fantastic.

As much as I am pro-life-on-other-planets, I couldn't get into Star Trek in any form. Nor do I like anything portraying time travel (except Back to the Future ;) ).

GG

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As much as I am pro-life-on-other-planets, I couldn't get into Star Trek in any form. Nor do I like anything portraying time travel (except Back to the Future ;) ).

GG

GG.I enjoy aliens in theory. From Star Trek to Cowboys and Aliens. Good fun.

But to be real: I am Catholic and the Father is incorporeal in our creed but I don't even believe in non-human rational beings anywhere in any habitable place. Is that what you all are believing in here? Like at a rate of 100% if it weren't for the non-Mormon? You guys who think God the Father has a body are believing in space aliens that might be non-human? I must be misunderstanding something here?

The problem I have with time travel is that people in the present always think that they will be the first to do it, when if it is real, somebody else has already done it...some time in the future.

From the guy who voted "unlikely",

3DOP

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I think it's very very likely. But if you've read Isaac Asimov, particularly the Robot and Foundation series, then the notion that super intelligent robots changed the universe to make it safer for humans by eliminating the possibility of other intelligent beings ought to give one pause. The same thing might have been done to our universe in reality and to reach other intelligent life, we may have to bridge to other universes. I hope not. I'll take the danger.

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GG.I enjoy aliens in theory. From Star Trek to Cowboys and Aliens. Good fun.

But to be real: I am Catholic and the Father is incorporeal in our creed but I don't even believe in non-human rational beings anywhere in any habitable place. Is that what you all are believing in here? Like at a rate of 100% if it weren't for the non-Mormon? You guys who think God the Father has a body are believing in space aliens that might be non-human? I must be misunderstanding something here?

From the guy who voted "unlikely", (HA! I should have known :acute: )

3DOP

Hello 3DOP...

You mean to tell me that when you look up on a clear, black night at a sky full of stars that you can't imagine that there might be life on another planet? That we are the only ones in all this vast space with its billions and billions of lights??

Now when I say "life," I don't mean the "space alien" type... I mean like, or at least very similar, to us, i.e. human or human-like... with a plan of life like or similar to ours... after all, the scriptures speak of worlds (plural) being created... and the inhabitants thereof... IMO this is all part of the creation, and we are all God's children... the God who created all things by Jesus Christ (Eph 3:9; Heb1:2; 11:3)

How far does space go, i.e., where does it "end"... or does it. And so, not one other human or humanoid???, living life in various stages of progression?

I don't get caught up in the Star Trek/Star Wars type of space aliens... but I'm very comfortable with other worlds inhabited such as this one...

Hope all is well... GG

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GG:

So far we've discovered about 3000 planets outside our solar system. The vast majority of those are an educated estimate. About 700 of those are established as real, but the vast majority of the those are too big, too close to their sun, or too far away for their sun, for life as we know it to exist.

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That wouldn't be too hard since they tended to be just variations on the "nose of the week" aliens.

Now Star Wars...they tried to go for a much more varied look.

I am being too harsh about Star Trek....let's not forget they tended to throw in a forehead prosthetic and fancy ear from time to time.

Calmoriah is correct. I love Star Trek almost as much as Duncan and Nehor and I remember the crew constantly traveling across the galaxy and exploring distant planets only to discover they looked just like us except their ears were pointy or they had a nose ridge. I guess the special effects budget for Star Trek was nonexistent.

There is one exception, and this would be the famous Gorn. Sit back and watch probably the best special effects and fight scene between William Shatner and Gorn. They just don't make scenes like this anymore:

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Hello 3DOP...

You mean to tell me that when you look up on a clear, black night at a sky full of stars that you can't imagine that there might be life on another planet? That we are the only ones in all this vast space with its billions and billions of lights??

Now when I say "life," I don't mean the "space alien" type... I mean like, or at least very similar, to us, i.e. human or human-like... with a plan of life like or similar to ours... after all, the scriptures speak of worlds (plural) being created... and the inhabitants thereof... IMO this is all part of the creation, and we are all God's children... the God who created all things by Jesus Christ (Eph 3:9; Heb1:2; 11:3)

How far does space go, i.e., where does it "end"... or does it. And so, not one other human or humanoid???, living life in various stages of progression?

I don't get caught up in the Star Trek/Star Wars type of space aliens... but I'm very comfortable with other worlds inhabited such as this one...

Hope all is well... GG

Regardless how they(other life in the universe) looks, We can agree that the essence of God is intelligence. And Being intelligence species, No matter what, they will have some traits of God within them regardless how normal looking or freaky looking they are.

Edited by DarkScythe
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GG:

So far we've discovered about 3000 planets outside our solar system. The vast majority of those are an educated estimate. About 700 of those are established as real, but the vast majority of the those are too big, too close to their sun, or too far away for their sun, for life as we know it to exist.

But... TSS... :) ... we've discovered things based only on our strongest telescopes, which have improved through the years, providing more and more knowledge. But who's to say what is beyond their lens capability? Or what we have gleaned from space probes. There's just no reason to have such a vast, vast universe without "life" somewhere, even life as we know it or close to it. I really do accept as probable truth the story of Barney and Betty Hill... "The Interrupted Journey." And I can and do dismiss 99% of the other stories. But in my art studies I've been amazed at some of the images found on caves, drawn by earliest or primitive "man," depicting what can easily be seen as spacecraft and some form of "man."

I'm at least open minded without being weird about it.... ;)

GG

Edited by Garden Girl
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GG:

So far we've discovered about 3000 planets outside our solar system. The vast majority of those are an educated estimate. About 700 of those are established as real, but the vast majority of the those are too big, too close to their sun, or too far away for their sun, for life as we know it to exist.

Statistical analysis of those exoplanets which have been discovered, as a proportion of the actual 100 billion stars (in each of 100 billion galaxies), indicates that there must be billions of habitable planets, i.e., Goldilocks planets within fine-tuned systems. That is why confirmed atheists such as the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan sent out human messages into the cosmos on our various NASA spacecraft (one of the best Star Trek movies even used that message on a Voyager spacecraft as central to a plot in which it is returned to Earth at the behest of an alien civilization).

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blackstrap:

There are times when I'm convinced there is no intelligent life on this planet.

In the vast stretches of the cosmos life even intelligent life is there. We just have to find it.

I sometimes wonder if the spectrum of intelligence on earth is circular not linear.

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Hello 3DOP...

You mean to tell me that when you look up on a clear, black night at a sky full of stars that you can't imagine that there might be life on another planet? That we are the only ones in all this vast space with its billions and billions of lights??

Now when I say "life," I don't mean the "space alien" type... I mean like, or at least very similar, to us, i.e. human or human-like... with a plan of life like or similar to ours... after all, the scriptures speak of worlds (plural) being created... and the inhabitants thereof... IMO this is all part of the creation, and we are all God's children... the God who created all things by Jesus Christ (Eph 3:9; Heb1:2; 11:3)

How far does space go, i.e., where does it "end"... or does it. And so, not one other human or humanoid???, living life in various stages of progression?

I don't get caught up in the Star Trek/Star Wars type of space aliens... but I'm very comfortable with other worlds inhabited such as this one...

Hope all is well... GG

Thanks for the well wishes Garden Girl. Things are good.

Now that you mention it, besides doubting that there is intelligent life on other planets. I doubt that there is animal or plant life too. The leap from mineral to vegetative life seems to me like a miracle that billions of years wouldn't change. In the last two hundred years religious beliefs have been affected by theories about how life can occur randomly. I haven't been convinced. If I believed in vegetative life occurring without any miracle, I would believe that other places had life. And if minerals can become vegetables at random, I could make the leap to irrational animals and then to rational animals. For me it all starts with rocks. There was an interesting Star Trek episode about a life form based on silicon instead of carbon, or something like that. So if I believe billions of years can make life come out of minerals in worlds like ours, I would even further tend to wonder if billions of years might make life come out of minerals in environments that we would consider hostile.

If life only occurs because God makes it so, then we begin to have to consider purpose in the universe. Given my worldview, I can see purpose in a vast Cosmos without a need for any form of life elsewhere. C.S. Lewis offers a speculation about races of intelligent corporeal life that never sinned. I could believe in that as a Christian if it is ever revealed. The problem that I think Christianity has with a bunch of intelligent life all over the place is the belief that Jesus is God's "only begotten Son". This Son became a man like us when He was born on this planet. If the universe is teeming with intelligent life like unto us, it is either sinless and not needing a Saviour, or it is out of luck because we are the ones who have the Son made like us. Christianity, in my opinion, is too audacious of a faith to permit the idea that planet Earth is just one among many very similar planets in the universe. Maybe Mormonism offers some ideas on how there might be future "begotten Sons" for those planets. Even so...we got the first Son, when He was an only Son! Whether or not the universe revolves around our planet physically, Christianity makes it the true center of the universe, in my opinion.

3DOP

Edited by 3DOP
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Now that you mention it, besides doubting that there is intelligent life on other planets. I doubt that there is animal or plant life too. The leap from mineral to vegetative life seems to me like a miracle that billions of years wouldn't change. In the last two hundred years religious beliefs have been affected by theories about how life can occur randomly. I haven't been convinced. If I believed in vegetative life occurring without any miracle, I would believe that other places had life. And if minerals can become vegetables at random, I could make the leap to irrational animals and then to rational animals. For me it all starts with rocks. There was an interesting Star Trek episode about a life form based on silicon instead of carbon, or something like that. So if I believe billions of years can make life come out of minerals in worlds like ours, I would even further tend to wonder if billions of years might make life come out of minerals in environments that we would consider hostile.

You are on firm ground in your skepticism about random, spontaneous transition from rocks to life, and from the irrational to the rational. Even if we grant most of the claims of evolutionary biology, that is a major crevasse across which science has not been able to leap. Of course, given that most astrophysicists correctly judge that a universe such as ours must certainly have advanced civilizations here and there -- lots of them -- one could opt for the theory of intelligent design of life.

If life only occurs because God makes it so, then we begin to have to consider purpose in the universe. Given my worldview, I can see purpose in a vast Cosmos without a need for any form of life elsewhere. C.S. Lewis offers a speculation about races of intelligent corporeal life that never sinned. I could believe in that as a Christian if it is ever revealed. The problem that I think Christianity has with a bunch of intelligent life all over the place is the belief that Jesus is God's "only begotten Son". This Son became a man like us when He was born on this planet. If the universe is teeming with intelligent life like unto us, it is either sinless and not needing a Saviour, or it is out of luck because we are the ones who have the Son made like us. Christianity, in my opinion, is too audacious of a faith to permit the idea that planet Earth is just one among many very similar planets in the universe. Maybe Mormonism offers some ideas on how there might be future "begotten Sons" for those planets. Even so...we got the first Son, when He was an only Son! Whether or not the universe revolves around our planet physically, Christianity makes it the true center of the universe, in my opinion.

3DOP

Mormon theology takes the "heretical" view that there was no beginning and there shall be no end, that life did not begin on Earth, although this world is our current home and that we are spirit children of our Father in Heaven, whose only begotten Son sacrificed himself for all of us, so that we could one day return to our Father. Our theology maintains that this pattern continues throughout eternity, and that it has been and will be repeated on other worlds into infinity, and that we ourselves can directly participate in that grand, eternal project, a project in which it is God's and our purpose to bring eternal life to all who accept His saving grace.

We see humans as godlings, doing the will of the Father, and at the last day sitting down with great joy at the right hand of the Father and of the Son, and always having that same relationship with our Father, even as we organize our own worlds and people them with our own spirit children, ad infinitum.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I take it as an article of faith that there is life on other planets, but I have no science to back that up.

Same here. But as was stated in one of my favorite movies, Contact, if there were no other planet that had life, it would be a terrible waste of space!

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