(July 30, 2015 at 10:50 pm)ktrap Wrote: First Atheist I found to be consistent. Either it exists or it doesn't (1 or 0). Therefore the probability of Alien Life is not any better than the probability for God if you are an atheist. For me as a theist God exists and Alien Life can exist even if no evidence of it is at hand. I have more respect for an Atheist who draws conclusions consistently even though I may disagree with them.
No, and this is where you are going wrong. It is not the probability of existence, as this is meaningless. It is the probability GIVEN the evidence we have.
So to compare Gods vs alien life:
For both we have stories of people claiming interacting with them. We have numerous books full of claims. We have peoples testimonies.
However for alien life, we have at least one example of life existing. So we know it can exist. With God we don't even have that.
For sentient life, we only know of one method that produces it - evolution. This process is far from certain to produce sentient life on a planet that has life.
If we had a God sitting here that we could measure, study and understand then, the probability of finding another would start to increase.
This is incredibly basic stuff. Lets take it back to underwater life.
Claim 1: There is an undiscovered type of plant deep under the sea that is undiscovered.
Claim 2: There are mermaids under the sea.
Which do you think has a higher probability of existing, given what we know about life? They aren't the same. (You'll note that there are far more testimonies about mermaids than there are this plant)
