How can there not be life on other planets

[Ninjahedge]

God is still faith based. There is no solid incontrovertable proof. There is no real disproof either, as his existance is defined by him not being able to be easily seen or proven to exist. Nice little safety, eh?

I am not disproving the existance of a supreme being, although I do have to admit I doubt VERY seriously "he" just happens to be male, a father figure, and the race of whatever civilization founded the religion at the time. If a middle-eastern Jew named "Jesus" is claimed to be white, how can I put anything behind the testamonies of others picturing him as a big grandfatherly guy with a beard? I think "He", if "he" exists, is something that is beyond our comprehension, and as such, we put him in whatever bottle our own little minds can comprehend without exploding.

Now, as for life out there? that is VERY hard to say. We have only been around in less than an eyeblink in this universe, and our ability to communicate through things like radio transmission has been here even shorter. What is to say that there HASN'T been life somewhere already? That they haven't exhausted their resources, blown each otehr up, or been swallowed in a supernova?

What if there is no such thing as portals, hyperspace, or light speed drives? How will we ever see a civilization 10,000 light years away? Battlestar Galactica style by taking a whole bunch of self sustaining ships (with infinite fuel) and setting off on a journey only to find, to our dismay, that we do not find humanoid females with two navels but silicon based protazoans and/or beings that are so far advanced we are not even aware of their presence.

Who knows, thinking rocks? (Rocks whose own life patterns take millenia to be defined rather than our own short century?)

The main problem with the probabilistic analysis of life in the universe is that it only says "yes" or "no". It does not state whether or not we will ever get to see it, or any sign of it. It does not say whether it is around NOW. It takes a wild stab in the dark and says: "Definitely maybe".

[Exitus Acta Probat]

Originally Posted by bluepacific

It's interesting, but I still liked Stephen Hawkings explanation that I have always used with regard UFO sightings and abduction claims. That is, Why if these beings are so intelligent and far superior to us (which would be obvious since they had the technolgy to get here in the first place), why do they always contact some dufuss or buffoon named Billy-Bob by landed their craft in his swamp ??? Why not contact and communicate with the more brilliant of the population ???

Philip Plait wrote an entire chapter about fallacious alien encounters in his book 'Bad Astronomy'. In summary it was something along those same lines. Plait also mentions that of the 100,000 professional and backyard astronomers on earth, they're never the ones to see any extraterrestrial spacecraft although they spend more time than anybody else studying the sky.

[Tek_Freek]

I swear there are aliens at the mall every weekend...

[glass_of_merlot]

Originally Posted by Tek_Freek

I swear there are aliens at the mall every weekend...

Yea, from Mexico......just joking.....

[Libohove90]

Within the Solar System, I would suspect Mars and Europa (Jupiter's moon) to have some evidence that support life.

[glass_of_merlot]

Originally Posted by Libohove90

Within the Solar System, I would suspect Mars and Europa (Jupiter's moon) to have some evidence that support life.

What exactly do they consider life? Anything that lives like bacteria?

[K-Luv]

Originally Posted by glass_of_merlot

What exactly do they consider life? Anything that lives like bacteria?

From a biology viewpoint, yes.