(November 2, 2014 at 3:03 pm)dimaniac Wrote:(November 2, 2014 at 2:58 pm)Beccs Wrote: There's more hope in atheism that there is in 2000 year old fairy tales.There are trillions of planets where abiogenesis happened, millions of planets where sentient life arose. Where are all aliens?
Two reasons we may not have found aliens.
1) Time. There may have been life on another planet that went extinct a million or so years ago. But since it's extinct now, we won't know about it until, at very least, we can get to that planet and examine it close enough to find evidence of it. And that's even assuming we're able to find the planet, anyway, because if it got engulfed by its star enlarging or sucked up by a black hole, it wouldn't exist anymore. On the other hand, if life forms on another planet a million years after humans go extinct, we'll never know about it and they'll never know about us, either.
2) Placement. Not only would we need a planet a certain distance from the sun to support life, we would also need to be in the right place in the galaxy. There are a lot of astronomical phenomenon that could be very dangerous to life and even prevent life from existing. We're at a perfect place where none of those nasty things can kill us.
3) Distance. If the universe actually is infinite, yes, there is intelligent life out there. But it may very well be so far away that we'll never reach it. And vice versa; we're so far away from them, they'll never reach us.
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"If you cling to something as the absolute truth and you are caught in it, when the truth comes in person to knock on your door you will refuse to let it in." ~ Siddhartha Gautama
"If you cling to something as the absolute truth and you are caught in it, when the truth comes in person to knock on your door you will refuse to let it in." ~ Siddhartha Gautama