RE: Atheists and Agnostics risk infinite loss for no gain
October 4, 2013 at 11:59 am
(This post was last modified: October 4, 2013 at 12:09 pm by Doubting Thomas.)
(October 3, 2013 at 9:29 pm)Beta Ray Bill Wrote: "While it’s interesting to imagine how far our radio signals have traveled into space, it’s extremely unlikely that an alien will be able to catch the latest episode of ‘I Love Lucy’. This is thanks to the inverse square law. In Layman’s term, it’s a form of signal degradation.
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Another way to think of it, is that the strength of a radio signal will be only 1/4 as great once you are twice the distance from the source. At ten times the distance, the strength of the signal would only be one hundredth as great.
That's what I was going to say. As a radio amateur, I know all too well how signals degrade over great distances, and that's only thousands of miles. Think about a signal traveling in almost all directions (not through the earth) for trillions of miles and how degraded it would be. You'd need an incredibly HUGE antenna (parabolic reflector or many directional yagis) to be able to hear anything, and then you'd have to sort it out from all the background space noise. So when I send out a signal, it's highly unlikely that some alien civilization 5000 years from now will be receiving it.
And of course all this is assuming that alien civilizations have discovered how to use electromagnetic waves for communication anyway. They could be at the cave man stage, or possibly some form of non-sentient life.
(October 3, 2013 at 10:25 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote: "Atheists and Agnostics risk infinite loss for no gain."
[b]You do know I hope, the Hebrews did not believe in hell. Sheol was not hell. What. You never took Bible 101 ?
Jebus and his disciples were good Jews. They wouldn't have either, obviously.
Not only that, but Jesus never spoke of Hell. Christians got their idea of souls burning in Hell for eternity from the Jesus' parable about the wheat and the chaff. The wheat would be harvested (which is why there are so many Christian churches around here that have "harvest" in their names. Last thing I want to think of myself is being harvested for any reason) while the chaff would be burned "in unquenchable fire."
(October 4, 2013 at 8:13 am)Stimbo Wrote: Because what you were asking for was a radio message from some alien ambassadors saying "Peoples of the Universe, please attand carefully. The message that follows is vital to the future of you all. The choice for you all is simple; a continued existence under my guidance or total annihilation." (Bonus points if anyone gets the reference; deducted if you used Google to cheat. I'm a prophet; I'll know.)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Been a while since I've seen that movie, so I can't remember for sure.
Christian apologetics is the art of rolling a dog turd in sugar and selling it as a donut.
