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The implications of life.
#1
The implications of life.
How do you think the discovery of life on such worlds as Mars, Europa, Titan etc. would impact upon the religious community?
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#2
RE: The implications of life.
I don't think it affects them at all unless you're talking about intelligent life, they will simply say much the same as they say with light from stars that is billions of years old (ie God placing it there).
Atheism as a Religion
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A man also or woman that hath a Macintosh, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with used and abandoned Windows 3.1 floppy disks: their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:27
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#3
RE: The implications of life.
My cousin is studying to become a pastor currently and my dad once asked him the same question - what would you do if one day there is life discovered outside of our planet?

His answer was, "Well, i'd have to re-think my whole life.."
I liked though that my cousin had a humble response, rather than a typical psycho christian response such as "well that would never happen" or something equally as close minded.


But, i agree with Jason. Unless we're invaded by clever aliens that are lightyears ahead of us like from some kind of sci-fi movie, they would always have some kind of irrational reasoning against it.
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#4
RE: The implications of life.
The most daunting tasks in our efforts to find life on other planets are distance and technology. If we find any sort of life in our own Solar System it will more than likely be microscopic and unable to evolve beyond that state due to very extreme conditions.

The search for life, let alone intelligent life, beyond our Solar System is, at present, so far from any comprehensible possibility that nothing will be achieved in our lifetimes, unless we receive a visit!

Let's not forget that basic animal and plant life existed on Earth for several hundreds of millions of years before perhaps some freak accident, or unaccountable event caused man to evolve from a lesser being. From there we slowly developed meaningful communications both oral and written, as well as other skills and capabilites that eventually set us apart from wild animals.
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#5
RE: The implications of life.
I honestly don't know and I did say I would reserve my judgement.

However I would suspect they'd either deny it or try to incorperate it in the Bible.
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#6
RE: The implications of life.
(August 25, 2008 at 5:47 pm)Darwinian Wrote: How do you think the discovery of life on such worlds as Mars, Europa, Titan etc. would impact upon the religious community?

They would probably make a few tweaks to their beliefs like they did with the dinosours. First they denied it then they slowly started to accept it.

They may do the same thing with life on other planets. I wouldn't be supprised if they do.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - Carl Sagan

Mankind's intelligence walks hand in hand with it's stupidity.

Being an atheist says nothing about your overall intelligence, it just means you don't believe in god. Atheists can be as bright as any scientist and as stupid as any creationist.

You never really know just how stupid someone is, until you've argued with them.
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#7
RE: The implications of life.
When I was a christian, I used to dismiss UFO stuff because if it were true, it would have shaken my faith to the core. I believed humanity was unique and special in the Universe.

"Lesser" life, microbes, bacteria etc would have still worried me as it would have made Terra with its lost Eden less central in creation.

Now, I still dismiss UFO stuff because, skeptically viewed, the evidence is a bit sparce. I struggle with the notion of advanced, faster than light travel beings who are forced to communicate through cryptic patterns in wheat in the county of Wiltshire in summertime only. I wonder why the craft only appear in dodgy grainy photos and why the 10000's of amateur astronomers with their telescopes never see them. I wonder why, now that everyone in the free world has a mobile phone with video capabilities we haven't any decent vids of them.

The search for "Lesser" life in our solar system is fascinating. If and when they find it I'll be doing the clenched fist "YES!" thing
'How can you say, "We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD," when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? Jer 8:8
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. Groucho Marx
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#8
RE: The implications of life.
I think that there is definitely intelligent life out there. The universe is large enough to accommodate trillions of life forms.
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#9
RE: The implications of life.
Also we're forgetting that life on this planet took billions of years to evolve, so if we find bacteria on other planets in our life-time we should be extremely happy because a few billion years later they most likely will evolve into 'intelligent' life. I suppose we are still prone to think in human years, a few centuries at a time.
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#10
RE: The implications of life.
I have no doubt that there is life on other orbiting bodies. We can't be the only one.

If we do find life, I hope it is intelligent. I guess if they were like us, You know dark ages and such and they saw us and our star crafts I guess they would look at us as gods wouldn't they. Sure would be interesting.

If we did find alien life, Religion I think would take a blow. Since they would have to bring up all those excuses.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - Carl Sagan

Mankind's intelligence walks hand in hand with it's stupidity.

Being an atheist says nothing about your overall intelligence, it just means you don't believe in god. Atheists can be as bright as any scientist and as stupid as any creationist.

You never really know just how stupid someone is, until you've argued with them.
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