Humans could contact aliens within 12 years

[thomastmc]

But with all the above we have direct observational evidence, You are overreaching we have no theory of the origin of life and to make things worse a sample size of 1.

No one has ever really seen an atom. Humans like to see something before they believe in it. I am sure there are some people who object to that since there have been claims that electron microscopes have imaged atoms. I believe that illuminating an object with electrons, capturing those electrons and recreating an image is also indirect evidence.

Now I said no one has seen an atom, but we have seen so much evidence of their existence that most of us believe in them. Most of the experiments, like those here at Jefferson Lab, work by bouncing something off an atom, like an electron, and watching where the electron goes after it bounces out of the atom.

http://education.jlab.org/qa/history_03.html

In the field of quantum mechanics there is no certainty that anything you've witnessed actually occurred, only the probability that what you've measured was the actual result.

The Earth's inner core is most likely made of iron and nickel. That wasn't determined because someone's been there, or we sent a probe. There is no direct measurement of the composition of the inner core of the Earth, yet science is pretty confident that they know the material of the Earth's inner core without directly sampling it and never being anywhere close to it's proximity.

Likewise, no one has been to the core of a star or sent a probe. All science has is an educated guess that the evidence they have shows what actually happens at the core of a star, but scientists are fairly confident that they have a good idea.

[TPreston]

In the field of quantum mechanics there is no certainty that anything you've witnessed actually occurred, only the probability that what you've measured was the actual result.

The Earth's inner core is most likely made of iron and nickel. That wasn't determined because someone's been there, or we sent a probe. There is no direct measurement of the composition of the inner core of the Earth, yet science is pretty confident that they know the material of the Earth's inner core without directly sampling it and never being anywhere close to it's proximity.

Likewise, no one has been to the core of a star or sent a probe. All science has is an educated guess that the evidence they have shows what actually happens at the core of a star, but scientists are fairly confident that they have a good idea.

And now you are bastardising geology and cosmology for your ufo apologetics

http://library.think...sk/athompd.html

You cant do the above with aliens.

[123456789A]

I can't wait until the reapers come visit Earth.

[thomastmc]

And now you are bastardising geology and cosmology for your ufo apologetics

http://library.think...sk/athompd.html

You cant do the above with aliens.

I've never said anything about UFOs, and as for intelligent alien life there is far less convincing evidence than for alien life in general.

Explain exactly how and why you believe that I'm bastardizing those fields of science? And, why did you leave out nuclear science and quantum mechanics?

[TPreston]

I've never said anything about UFOs, and as for intelligent alien life there is far less convincing evidence than for alien life in general.

Explain exactly how and why you believe that I'm bastardizing those fields of science? And, why did you leave out nuclear science and quantum mechanics?

Because your trying to do the same dam thing the creationists and christian apoligists do. Oh you cant see an atom therefore im justified in claiming that godidit.

All the above is discovered through experiment and observational evidence which is != seeing with the naked eye.

There is no experiment you can do to show alien life.

[thomastmc]

Because your trying to do the same dam thing the creationists and christian apoligists do. Oh you cant see an atom therefore im justified in claiming that godidit.

All the above is discovered through experiment and observational evidence which is != seeing with the naked eye.

I can't think of any scientific experiments that were done with the intent and outcome of showing that it is possible that God exists. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but at least I'm confident that the quantity and quality of such experiments didn't match those done with the intent and outcome of showing that alien life is possible.

There is no experiment you can do to show alien life.

Actually, those experiments are being done right now by NASA on Mars.

The discovery was made by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, NPR reported today (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab, and it's capable of identifying organic compounds ? the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, kicking off a two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.

http://www.space.com...ry-mystery.html

With their eye on doing something similar on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.

But NASA is also thinking about ways to investigate the possible habitability of Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon. One concept that may be gaining traction is a so-called "clipper" probe that would make multiple flybys of the moon, studying its icy shell and suspected subsurface ocean as it zooms past.

Astrobiologists regard Europa, which is about 1,900 miles (3,100 kilometers) wide, as one of the best bets in our solar system to host life beyond Earth.

The moon is believed to harbor a large ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell. Further, this ocean is likely in direct contact with Europa's rocky mantle, raising the possibility of all sorts of interesting chemical reactions, (David Senske, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,) said.

http://www.space.com...oon-europa.html

[TPreston]

I can't think of any scientific experiments that were done with the intent and outcome of showing that it is possible that God exists. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but at least I'm confident that the quantity and quality of such experiments didn't match those done with the intent and outcome of showing that alien life is possible.

Anything is possible, possible possible possible tells you possibly nothing! Its possible that we are brains in a vat or our entire universe is a simulation.

There is no experiment you can do to show alien life.

Actually, those experiments are being done right now by NASA on Mars. With their eye on doing something similar on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.

!= An experiment you can do to show alien life.

Notice in one case there is evidence and in the other there isn't.

[thomastmc]

Anything is possible, possible possible possible tells you possibly nothing! Its possible that we are brains in a vat or our entire universe is a simulation.

There is no experiment you can do to show alien life.

!= An experiment you can do to show alien life.

Notice in one case there is evidence and in the other there isn't.

So, if we thought we found alien microbes on Mars or Europa and shot it back to Earth in a capsule and it did prove to be alien life, that wouldn't show alien life?

If we send a probe that digs through Europa's ice and if it found alien algae and sent back a picture or video with data samples of it's compositional measurements, would that show alien life?

[TPreston]

So, if we thought we found alien microbes on Mars or Europa and shot it back to Earth in a capsule and it did prove to be alien life, that wouldn't show alien life?

If we send a probe that digs through Europa's ice and if it found alien algae and sent back a picture or video with data samples of it's compositional measurements, would that show alien life?

So now we are on to presupposition apologetics, If we find alien life would that prove alien life.

The same stupid arguments over and over again,

Presuppose a god exists > a god exists

Presuppose alien life exists > alien life exists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

[thomastmc]

So now we are on to presupposition apologetics, If we find alien life would that prove alien life.

The same stupid arguments over and over again,

Presuppose a god exists > a god exists

Presuppose alien life exists > alien life exists

http://en.wikipedia....ng_the_question

Explain the way in which you're using the term "apologist" and/or "apologetics". It's not familiar to me or I'm just not grasping the context.

[TPreston]

Explain the way in which you're using the term "apologist" and/or "apologetics". It's not familiar to me or I'm just not grasping the context.

Because these are exactly the same kind of fallacious arguments creationists use all the time. Your argument for alien life existing presupposes that alien life exists which has yet to be proven.

[redfish]

Whether it is an outrageous claim is debatable. The idea that man could go to the moon seemed pretty outrageous in 1961. Many comments are not focused on the voracity of the claim, but rather mock the idea of the existence of aliens all together.

I generally see more people mocking people's belief that there aren't aliens.

There are good arguments for alien life existing, and there are also good arguments against it. Basically, people underestimating how narrow the conditions are that allow life to form, or coming to an answer to every kind of objection -- pointing to all the extremophilic life on Earth. Ultimately it doesn't even come down to a belief in the statistics and the numbers, if you look at it, but a belief that we aren't special. If we happened to be special, that would be a weird idea, just on the face of it, ignoring the statistics.

And that makes belief like a faith, which is fine since its not an outrageous thing to have an intuition in favor of. My intuition, personally, tends to be with the argument that life is less likely than people think it is. It may not be 0.001% of planets with life, but 0.00000001%.

[thomastmc]

Because these are exactly the same kind of fallacious arguments creationists use all the time. Your argument for alien life existing presupposes that alien life exists which has yet to be proven.

Ok, I could see why you'd think that's apt from your stated positions.

Presuppose Atoms exist > atoms exist

References to the concept of atoms date back to ancient Greece and India. In India, the ?j?vika, Jain, and C?rv?ka schools of atomism may date back to the 6th century BCE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom

[thomastmc]

I generally see more people mocking people's belief that there aren't aliens.

There are good arguments for alien life existing, and there are also good arguments against it. Basically, people underestimating how narrow the conditions are that allow life to form, or coming to an answer to every kind of objection -- pointing to all the extremophilic life on Earth. Ultimately it doesn't even come down to a belief in the statistics and the numbers, if you look at it, but a belief that we aren't special. If we happened to be special, that would be a weird idea, just on the face of it, ignoring the statistics.

And that makes belief like a faith, which is fine since its not an outrageous thing to have an intuition in favor of. My intuition, personally, tends to be with the argument that life is less likely than people think it is. It may not be 0.001% of planets with life, but 0.00000001%.

Intuition is quite faulty. It's intuitive that the Sun goes around the Earth. Some very smart people thought that was true for a very long time, until there was evidence, and only evidence, that showed that it was probably not true.

It's also intuitive, if you've ever sat in a dark room with a lit pool or hot tub and noticed the reflections around you, that the reason the sky is blue is because the sun reflects off the ocean. That the sky appears black at night is evidence of this. That the Earth is mostly water is evidence of this. It's totally false though.

[Order_66]

If aliens ever found us they would probably want to wipe us out anyway once they see how truly selfish, depraved and arrogant we really are.

[redfish]

Intuition is quite faulty. It's intuitive that the Sun goes around the Earth. Some very smart people thought that was true for a very long time, until there was evidence, and only evidence, that showed that it was probably true.

It's also intuitive, if you've ever sat in a dark room with a lit pool or hot tub and noticed the reflections around you, that the reason the sky is blue is because the sun reflects off the ocean. That the sky appears black at night is evidence of this. That the Earth is mostly water is evidence of this. It's totally false though.

Well, I'm not sure what your point is, since I'm saying the argument that aliens are out there rests on intuition, not evidence.

It wasn't necessarily more intuitive that the Sun goes around the Earth, though, even though it was the prevailing theory for a while. Its intuitive, after all, that if the Sun is a larger body, that the smaller body orbits the larger body, and there's plenty of intuition to support the idea that the Sun is a larger body (based on the heat and light it provides without overwhelming the Earth, and also based on the idea that heat and light create life -- ie many religions identified the Sun with the divine). Heliocentrism started gaining more support scientifically when it was mathematically proven that the Sun was larger than the Earth, but prejudices still ruled against it.

Intuition is largely shaped by arguments you have in mind when thinking about the situation and sometimes you have stronger or weaker arguments.

[thomastmc]

Well, I'm not sure what your point is, since I'm saying the argument that aliens are out there rests on intuition, not evidence.

It wasn't necessarily more intuitive that the Sun goes around the Earth, though, even though it was the prevailing theory for a while. Its intuitive, after all, that if the Sun is a larger body, that the smaller body orbits the larger body, and there's plenty of intuition to support the idea that the Sun is a larger body (based on the heat and light it provides without overwhelming the Earth, and also based on the idea that heat and light create life -- ie many religions identified the Sun with the divine). Heliocentrism started gaining more support scientifically when it was mathematically proven that the Sun was larger than the Earth, but prejudices still ruled against it.

Intuition is largely shaped by arguments you have in mind when thinking about the situation and sometimes you have stronger or weaker arguments.

Mathematical evidence that the Earth orbits the Sun is not direct evidence. Just as the mathematical calculation of the Earth's weight using the gravitational constant, your mass, and your distance to the center of the Earth is not direct evidence. That the Sun orbits the Earth wasn't directly unproven, but the odds that all of the accumulated evidence pointed to something else happening were highly improbable.

Many ancient philosophers and astronomers assumed that the Sun was the same size or smaller than Earth. They had no way to guess it's distance.

[redfish]

Mathematical evidence that the Earth orbits the Sun is not direct evidence. Just as the mathematical calculation of the Earth's weight using the gravitational constant, your mass, and your distance to the center of the Earth is not direct evidence. That the Sun orbits the Earth wasn't directly unproven, but the odds that all of the accumulated evidence pointed to something else happening were highly improbable.

Evidence doesn't have to be empirical, it can be logical evidence ; whereby going against the evidence you're going against logic.

Empirical evidence also has logical standards; if we sent a probe to Europa and it came back with life, we'd have to have logical tests to prove that the life didn't originate from earth and piggyback on the probe.

[thomastmc]

Evidence doesn't have to be empirical, it can be logical evidence ; whereby going against the evidence you're going against logic.

Empirical evidence also has logical standards; if we sent a probe to Europa and it came back with life, we'd have to have logical tests to prove that the life didn't originate from earth and piggyback on the probe.

I don't disagree.

[mudslag]

I don't disagree.

aside from the topic happy birthday

[thomastmc]

aside from the topic happy birthday

:) It's not really my birthday, just the year is right, but the sentiment is appreciated none the less.

I was going to send you a pm, but if there was one thing I could take back from our discussion it would be not showing you and the conversation more respect after you showed that you were willing to do the same. Also, reading back some things I wrote could have easily been taken more harshly than they were intended. Some of that was due to jotting and not realizing what it looked like in writing, but as I said I should have comported myself with more dignity.

I respect your intelligence and your decorum. Happy New Year.

(Note that this is no way retracts from any argument I made though :D )

[mudslag]

:) It's not really my birthday, just the year is right, but the sentiment is appreciated none the less.

I was going to send you a pm, but if there was one thing I could take back from our discussion it would be to show you and the conversation more respect after you showed that you were willing to do the same. Also, reading back some things could have easily been taken more harshly than they were intended. Some of that was due to jotting and not realizing what it looked like in writing, but as I said I should have comported myself with more dignity.

I respect your intelligence and your decorum. Happy New Year.

I appreciate that, and I appreciate your view and the work you put into your expressing your views. I know I can come off aggressive and stubborn more then Id like. I specially get that way late into the night when Im working with little reward, I tend to take my frustration out on who ever I can at such late hours. It's definitely not personal. Any way have a great new years.

[TPreston]

Ok, I could see why you'd think that's apt from your stated positions.

Presuppose Atoms exist > atoms exist

Incorrect for atoms we have direct observational evidence.

[thomastmc]

Incorrect for atoms we have direct observational evidence.

Just as if you've never seen a car, but only tracks left in the snow, you have observational evidence of cars due to the effect they have on their surroundings. Even that wasn't available for much of the history of the concept of atoms. Before the invention of sophisticated experiments and scientific equipment it was presupposed, and eventually proven true.

Einstein believed that quantum mechanics did not exist, famously saying "God doesn't play dice with the Universe". There was not enough sufficiently convincing evidence for him to believe that it was probable, even though many of his colleagues had accepted it's existence. Einstein was wrong, it happens to all of us, even the best of us.

[TPreston]

Just as if you've never seen a car, but only tracks left in the snow, you have observational evidence of cars due to the effect they have on their surroundings. Even that wasn't available for much of the history of the concept of atoms. Before the invention of sophisticated experiments and scientific equipment it was presupposed, and eventually proven true.

Well nice try but it wasn't proven true! Because you can split the atom and the atom is made up of other particles like the proton neutron and electron.

So again you have no evidence that alien life exists and your claim that such life exists is overreaching.

Einstein believed that quantum mechanics did not exist, famously saying "God doesn't play dice with the Universe". There was not enough sufficiently convincing evidence for him to believe that it was probable, even though many of his colleagues had accepted it's existence. Einstein was wrong, it happens to all of us, even the best of us.

Which is why we don't go presuming things like alien life exists without evidence;