Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stealth on November 22, 2003, 10:55:44 am
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What do you think? Why or why not?
Feel free to use any means of proving your theories, whether Biblical, philosophical, etc.
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I say yes, simply because it'd be boring if we're alone
Hey, what does 5K make me? I Like Volition, wasn't it?
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Yup, for the simple reason that the Universe is so vast. If we almost found signs of possible life on Mars, and thats just within our Solar System, then its just a mathematical probability that there is aliens out there.
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Duh. Krang and Kodos are just waiting for the momemnt humans become smart enough to enslave.
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LOL KT
anyways......one of the jupiters moons...europa or something was suposed to have water [liquid] under its icey surface where life is presumed to be.....dus 2 lifeforms in our solar system X billions of stars in our galaxy X billions of galaxies = a nonexistant chance of no life ;)
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Perhaps not now, but somewhere in the past or in the future. If we ever get FTL travel I think it's most likely that we#ll just find ruins of some sort.
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I don't believe in aliens.
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They have existed and will exist, but I'm not sure that they do.
And as for contacting aliens, taking into account that to find each other we'd need to be in the same place (in all the universe), at the same time (IE, they coulda evolved, explored space and died off before we could even walk upright) and using similar, recognisable technology so we could detect and/or contact them.
So all in all the chances of contact are so miniscule that it's not even worth thinking about......unless life in the universe is waaaaaay easier to come by than we think.
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Mathematically they exist.
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Yes.
Two scenarios:
Non-religious: The universe is so vast, even if our creation was a mathimatical impossibility, in a universe of mathematical infinity there's bound to be more than one instance of the impossible.
Religious: Why would God only make one civilization? Nowhere in the Bible does it mention humanity as being the sole benefactor of the universe. A 50-50 chance?
On analysis of these two posibilities, especially in conjunction, the chances I reason must be well over 50%.
All on red, please. ;7
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........If something is impossible, no matter how infinite the universe is, it still won't happen.
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Originally posted by an0n
........If something is impossible, no matter how infinite the universe is, it still won't happen.
Well then, by that reasoning we can asume that life is not impossible (we exist). Altogether more likely that others do as well.
BTW, I did specify as to mathematical impossibility.
Edit: which is the same principle that applies to codes being found in the Torah text. Some of the words are so closely linked to history within such a small area that the chances are mathematically impossible. You can either believe that:
(1) An example of mathematical impossibilities at work,
or
(2) God at work.
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.........When something mathematically impossible happens, it's because of an error in the variables, not because mathematical and real-world probability are different.
And I wasn't refering to life, I was just saying. All an infinite universe does is multiply any possibility by infinity. But if the probability is 0 to start with; 0 x Inf = 0.
As for the Bible-codes, why must it be God? Couldn't it just be a really clever man? I mean, Da Vinci was making helicopters hundreds of years ago. Some Greek goon coulda done the Bible-codes easy.
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I place you randomly on the moon, blindfolded. Hand you a gun. Your goal is to shoot a particular space on earth, say a football field. Can you do it?
Yes, theoretically you could, but the chances are slim as to...
be a mathematical impossibility.
That is all I meant.
Originally posted by an0n
As for the Bible-codes, why must it be God? Couldn't it just be a really clever man? I mean, Da Vinci was making helicopters hundreds of years ago. Some Greek goon coulda done the Bible-codes easy.
No offense, but you obviously don't know what is specified in the so-called Bible codes.
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No, the mathematical probability of a normal human-being being able to do it tend towards 0, but they're not 0 therefore it is not a mathematical impossibility.
No offense, but you obviously don't know what is specified in the so-called Bible codes.
Eat at Joes?
Enlighten me.
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yes and michel jackson is my proof.
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I'm sorry, perhaps it is my rhetoric that throws you off. A mathematical impossibility is different than a true impossibility. The chance of 1 in 10^50 is a mathematical impossibility, and different than a mechanical impossibility (the ability for an unaided human to--lets say--fly like birds). Obviously we know that life is not a mechanical impossibility, for we exist. However, it has been shown to be a mathematical impossibility. It is so improbable that it becomes increasingly unlikely.
As for the Bible codes, certain groups of words predict such things as the "Wright Brothers", "Airplane", and "at Kittyhawk". A clever man never would have been able to predict this, for it is a, how do you say, "mathematical impossibility". To add this in conjucnction with many other predictions of the future such as the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, these codes truley become a mathematical impossibility. They are obviously possible (they exist!) but mathematically they should not.
So you can see why a man such as "da Vinci" (Which really means "from the town of Vinci", not the man) could never had predicted of formulated such happenings.
~Beowulf
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Originally posted by Beowulf
As for the Bible codes, certain groups of words predict such things as the "Wright Brothers", "Airplane", and "at Kittyhawk". A clever man never would have been able to predict this, for it is a, how do you say, "mathematical impossibility". To add this in conjucnction with many other predictions of the future such as the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, these codes truley become a mathematical impossibility. They are obviously possible (they exist!) but mathematically they should not.
:wtf: I missed that part.
Now where in the bible would that be?
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
:wtf: I missed that part.
Now where in the bible would that be?
They are in Hebrew and encoded within an array.
http://www.thebiblecodes.com/feature/codes/Truthaboutbc.htm
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Riiight...
I won't even go into how stupid that is.
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Yes. See diamondgeezer's post. Gotta believe in SOMETHING, right?
;)
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I think as we further understand our solar system and explore others, we'll find a universe full of life. Most of it will probably be bacteria (which BTW on Earth can be found in every form of environment including in magma and at in the radiation rich cores of nuclear reactors). Nasa is looking to expand the so called 'life zone' of solar systems because their previous data has been invalidated by many forms of life discovered more recently.
So with the possibility that life is potentially growing in places we thought were impossible, it makes it all the more likely that there are places where more complex life has, might, and does exist. I'd further surmise that for every place in the universe where species exist that can manipulate tools and have sufficient capacity to communicate (verbally or otherwise) you'll find civilizations springing up.
I hardly think that human intelligence is a galatic accident or anomaly. Its bound to happen again...
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:wtf:I missed that part.
Now where in the bible would that be?
yeah there's a book i bought and read about 6 years ago called "The Bible Code"... it's basically all the original text, when placed out, there's lines that spell out stuff, like "Prime Minister Assasinated" and then if you keep going it gives a date and stuff... and so far everything's come true.
although i think that, if you look close enough, you can find a 'prophecy' on practically anything. I don't think the "Bible Code" is accurate, because it's an attempt by man to get 'hidden messages' out of the Bible...
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Now you're getting into the theory of time travel, and thats a whole other subject from the existance of aliens. Without actually knowing any of them, I think that most of those predictions are vague enough to be interpreted as the reader sees fit.
Does the de-coding of the codes use a consistant set of rules, or do they vary? If its the latter, than I think that its just people looking too hard to find non-existant messages.
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I read that page and found it quite interesting. Not that my views are much changed by it, but it was an interesting read.:D
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Redheads are proof that God can't decide if he hates us or loves us.
What does that have to do with aliens? Not sure.
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the bible codes are sort of interesting in a mathmatical sence that if you get enough text put into a certan arangement you can get all sorts of interesting combiations of words, they have found similar 'predictions' (odd that all of these predictions are found only after the events ocur) in many other books, like 'War and Peace' and 'Moby Dick'
it is a very interesting phenominon
oh, and aliens do exsist
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yes, becuase they anal probed me .... or was that my dad? :ick:
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Aliens exist. Near us? Doubtful.
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so... aliens are like extraterrestrial life, right?
so someone define life for me.
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i think aliens exist very far a way but dunno
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Firstly: If some guy was smart enough to crack the code, some guy woulds been able to make the code.
Originally posted by Bobboau
the bible codes are sort of interesting in a mathmatical sence that if you get enough text put into a certan arangement you can get all sorts of interesting combiations of words, they have found similar 'predictions' (odd that all of these predictions are found only after the events ocur) in many other books, like 'War and Peace' and 'Moby Dick'
it is a very interesting phenominon
oh, and aliens do exsist
Secondly: Precisely. It's like when you're doing a word-search and come across 'gimp' or 'puff'. If you jumble enough crap together you'll get something out of it.
Like if you took every element on Earth and jumbled them all together and heated them and boiled them and split them and combined them, eventually you'd get a chunk of diamond in there somewhere.
And even if they were done by God, what would be the point? "Wow! Look, God predicted the first human flight", so? And? Therefore?
Also, I'm presuming that these miraculous words that appear are in Aramaic, otherwise this whole argument dissolves.
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a) the decifering of te codes was only through use of some computer program, I don't think anyone has done it all by hand, and
b) I don't care how smart you are if you don't know what's going to happen you can't encode it, so the guy who made the codes would have not only had to have had access to a computer but also a time machine
actualy there suposedly in hebrew
though somehow they predicted the columbia crash and many other modern things, and I don't know how the anchent hewbrew would have a word for space shuttle
the way the whole thing works I beleve is basicly you use a program torearange the words/letters in the bible into what looks like a word find puzzle and the way it predicts things is you will find words that are assosiated with some important word about a major world event in close proximity to it, of corse you are looking only for words wich have relevence so it makes sence that you would find them
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It was probably something like "The big car that flies in the sky and is named after a country will crash".
Show me where it says "A guy called Hitler will try to conquer the world and kill the Jews" and then I'll believe.
Hell, even Nostradamoususdmsasous managed that much.
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they had a word for car
well it has like hitler, and death and a whole bunch of other words related to him, the holocost and WW2 around his name,
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Aliens existed, Aliens exist and Aliens will exist unless we annihilate them all.
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Depends what you would call alien. If "alien" means "bacteria growing under ice on Jupiter's 3rd moon" or whatever, then sure, there's aliens. However, if "alien" means "technologically advanced civilizaiton that will invade and destroy us someday", then no, they do not exist. Any civilization for that matter. IMHO, God didn't create aliens simply because He never refers to them and they are never referred to by anybody in the Bible. I suppose I could be wrong, so I'll have to ask him later. This is my opinion, in no way am I trying to "force my beliefs" on anyone. ;)
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I dont believe in aliens because, for example, a planet similar to ours capable of sustaining basic life must exist other than ours. But ours is such that if the Earth were any larger and the moon at any different location than it is now or a different size, this planet would not be capable of sustaining life due to tectonic instabilities, gravity problems etc.
As for a species evoling from bacteria on mars or Jupiter is bogus... the universe is constantly decaying, example the sun slowly burning out, the earths magnetic field reducing significantly every thousand years, so how could something already in decay and decline, magically transform it from a static lifeform to a self-aware lifeform? And dont give me this we evoled so they must have evolved bull****... evolution is a theory... a far fetched theory at that, but still a theory, nothing more.
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Roswell?
www.despair.com/ambition.html
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Originally posted by DeepSpace9er
And dont give me this we evoled so they must have evolved bull****... evolution is a theory... a far fetched theory at that, but still a theory, nothing more.
Bold, considerring creation is even more far fetched...
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Yes.
Another question though:
What do Aliens look like?
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Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
Bold, considerring creation is even more far fetched...
:wtf: I think all he was saying was that evolution as a theory is farfetched and a theory--correct on both accounts. How is this bold? It is merely stating the obvious. Why must we accept the only *scientific* theory offered to us?
Ever here of comsmologists talk of dark matter? If there is ANYTHING that smells of snake-oil, it is "darkmatter". The whole problem of *Newtonian* physics applied to galactic distances can be solved with a revision of Newtonian physics, called MONDO, a simple solution.
Why must we accept evolution? There is no proof of Macro-evolution at all. None. Only theories and skeletons which resemble one another. If there was proof it wouldn't be a theory.
~Beo
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Saying it is a theory is true. Saying that it is a far-fetched theory, on the other hand, isn't. It's been a mainstay of life-sciences for over 100 years, so that fact alone has to tell you it's plausable and a lot more likely than anything else that has been suggested. Everything from those bone structures you are talking about to DNA analysis, everything that has come out of the study of biology supports some form of evolution theory. It may not fit Darwinian theory, sure, but that's not the gold standard of evolutionary theory by any means. There are literally mountains of solid evidence that support evolution.
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Dark matter has been detected, you know.
MACHOs are one - MAssive Compact Halo Ojects. Brown dwarves that form a halo around our galaxy.
Other forms of dark matter include intergalactic hydrogen clouds, rogue black holes, etc. Possibly exotic matter but there's no known way to detect that yet so the existence or not of exotic matter is still a theory.
Don't give 'Dark Matter' mystical properties, like one pound of it being as heavy as ten thousand pounds of normal matter.
What do you suggest instead of evolution then?
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Originally posted by Deepblue
Yes.
Another question though:
What do Aliens look like?
hey don't get too ahead of yourself,
we haven't even finished arguing about whether they exist yet :D :D
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Originally posted by Bobboau
they had a word for car
well it has like hitler, and death and a whole bunch of other words related to him, the holocost and WW2 around his name,
but remember, as an0n said, if you have enough information to search through, you're going to find something interesting... it's like he said, when you're looking through a small 'wordsearch' and you find words that are just coincidentally thrown in.
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Originally posted by Shrike
Dark matter has been detected, you know.
MACHOs are one - MAssive Compact Halo Ojects. Brown dwarves that form a halo around our galaxy.
Other forms of dark matter include intergalactic hydrogen clouds, rogue black holes, etc. Possibly exotic matter but there's no known way to detect that yet so the existence or not of exotic matter is still a theory.
Don't give 'Dark Matter' mystical properties, like one pound of it being as heavy as ten thousand pounds of normal matter.
What do you suggest instead of evolution then?
When has it been detected? It has been theorized to exist--the whole prinicple behind dark matter is that it can't be detected. Science uses dark matter as a scapegoat, blaming all inconsistancies on it.
I do believe that evolution is possible, however I am careful to doubt it. All of our knowledge of the physical world points to the decay of systems, not the synthesis of systems. While I believe micro (an organism as an already complex system may adapt) I am slow to believe macro as currently theorized.
Originally posted by StratComm
Saying it is a theory is true. Saying that it is a far-fetched theory, on the other hand, isn't. It's been a mainstay of life-sciences for over 100 years, so that fact alone has to tell you it's plausable and a lot more likely than anything else that has been suggested. Everything from those bone structures you are talking about to DNA analysis, everything that has come out of the study of biology supports some form of evolution theory. It may not fit Darwinian theory, sure, but that's not the gold standard of evolutionary theory by any means. There are literally mountains of solid evidence that support evolution.
Could you point me to any evidence that supports macro-evolution?
The problem with macro-evolution is that it does not explain species-to-species development, its intended goal. The root of this issue rests in the transistion between a single-celled organism to a many-celled organism. How do the cells know how to specialize? Since not one specialized cell can exist on it own, how would it not be killed off by other cells as it transforms into something useless? Surely any mutation would not yield an immediate result of success. How does the eye develop in conjunction with the brain, the brain with the heart, the heart with the tissue of the artery and blood itself? This kind of synthesis of system from within a system is completely unheard of in the natural world.
The whole fallacy of evolution as a understanding of the creation of life (the cell--not the evolution of it) is the idea of decay. The cell itself is a living thing, in truth the basis of all biological theory. However, biology claims that all life comes from cells, and can only come from the cell. A creature is not alive unless it consists of the smallest instance of life--the cell. How then, does one create a cell? How do chemicals come together instantaneously to create a stable system that can act on its own volition? THIS is the problem of evolution, something many refuse to touch.
To solve this we must solve this question: what is life? How is it defined? What gives man the ability to think and recognize his existance? The cell is no different. In a small measure, however small, it recoginzes its own existance. It responds to its enviroment for its own betterment. How do chemicals reach this stage?
Evidence of this I would love to see.
MHO.
~Beowulf
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Originally posted by Beowulf
When has it been detected? It has been theorized to exist--the whole prinicple behind dark matter is that it can't be detected. Science uses dark matter as a scapegoat, blaming all inconsistancies on it.
[/b]http://wwwmacho.mcmaster.ca/
[q]The MACHO Project is a collaboration between scientists at the Mt. Stromlo & Siding Spring Observatories, the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the Santa Barbara, San Diego, & Berkeley campuses of the University of California, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Our primary aim is to test the hypothesis that a significant fraction of the dark matter in the halo of the Milky Way is made up of objects like brown dwarfs or planets: these objects have come to be known as MACHOs, for MAssive Compact Halo Objects. The signature of these objects is the occasional amplification of the light from extragalactic stars by the gravitational lens effect. The amplification can be large, but events are extremely rare: it is necessary to monitor photometrically several million stars for a period of years in order to obtain a useful detection rate. For this purpose we have built a two channel system that employs eight 2048*2048 CCDs, mounted on the 50 inch telescope at Mt. Stromlo. The high data rate (several GBytes per night) is accommodated by custom electronics and on-line data reduction.
We have taken ~27,000 images with this system since June 1992. Analysis of a subset of these data has yielded databases containing light curves in two colors for 8 million stars in the LMC and 10 million in the bulge of the Milky Way. A search for microlensing has turned up four candidates toward the Large Magellanic Cloud and 45 toward the Galactic Bulge. Papers describing these results can be found in the Publications section of the MACHO Web page. [/q]Furthermore, dark matter is not indetectible - it is merely matter that does not shine of its own accord but can be detected gravitationally. Thus the Earth is, technically speaking, dark matter.
Oh, and on the note of systems always decay, that is not true. There is no thermodynamic law that prohibits the formation of life and other complex systems, so long as the total entropy of the universe increases.
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micro evolution
hehehehahahahhAHAHAAAA
if hehehmm...
if I were to give you some inconrivertable evedence of macro evolution you would just give it a diferent lable and say it isn't a valid example
"no that isn't macro evolution, thats... pink... evolution, and therefor invalid, yes"
if it changes something by passing paretal traits through heredity its evolution, no prefix.
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where the hell is woolie when you need him
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what the **** did i just say :nervous:
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Originally posted by PhReAk
where the hell is woolie when you need him
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what the **** did i just say :nervous:
No, that makes perfect sense. He's a perfectly valid example of evolution gone horribly wrong.
EDIT: I hate when that happens.
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Life could form because the heat of the sun decreased entropy on earth(while the entropy of the sun increases).
But by looking at the background radiation the sun should not have formed at all- the real question is why the background radiation is so uniform, while the universe is just the opposite (some fluctuations have been detected, but evidently not enough, someone correct me if I'm wrong). The cosmic string (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dp76st.html) theory is one explaination.
Beowulf: Proteins can form microspheres that resemble cell membranes. Adenine has been created by electrical discharges in a lab (similar to say, lightning from volcanic clouds of early earth). The conditions of earth would have produced ever more complex molecules. The first life was probably just molecules that produced copies of themselves when reacting.
As for multicellular life, there are protists and single-celled fungi that live in groups (colonies is the name). Only a short mutation from there to specialized cells.
As long as you account for the creation of galaxies life is inevitable.
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Originally posted by Mr. Vega
"You who speak languages, you are such liars."-The Hive Queen
A bit OT but is that from the Enders Game?
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It's from Xenocide, 3rd book in the series.
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Great books.
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Originally posted by Deepblue
Great books.
:yes:
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Originally posted by Shrike
Redheads are proof that God can't decide if he hates us or loves us.
Go deeper - this is proof that God loves us:
[q]Genesis 2:18,22:
'And the LORD God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him." ... Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.'[/q]
:D
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wow that was a truly efeshent means of killing this thread
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Thank you, thank you - I'm here 'till Thursday! ;)
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Believe in what you want for everything shall end for you in old age (70). ~Gospels of NeoHermes; Chapter 1, page 1
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Which effectively means that all Christians trying to convert others are wasting their time. Also, it means "God" couldn't care less if people worshiped him or not.
Bring on the napalm / Bible quotes ;)
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
Which effectively means that all Christians trying to convert others are wasting their time. Also, it means "God" couldn't care less if people worshiped him or not.
Bring on the napalm / Bible quotes ;)
* is confused *
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Whoops - that'll teach me to read the whole post - I mistook what neo_hermes said for an actual Bible quote as opposed to his own dogma :)
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
Whoops - that'll teach me....
And just in case it didn't.... *lecture lecture lecture*
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
Which effectively means that all Christians trying to convert others are wasting their time.
are you a telepath?
edit: oh yeah i'm king
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What is the point of this thread? We take a poll, and if the majority votes that aliens exist, then that somehow makes it true? Belief or lack theirof in extraterrestrial existence is significant in any way, even given that we have no way to prove or disprove such and it has utterly no bearing on anything we will ever do unless we encounter such life?
Or is this just another "post your forgettable personal opinion so that people may form into ideological camps and throw inaccuracies at each other until we're all bored and forget about it entirely" thread? Unless there's some truly bizarre ulterior motive at work in the creation of this thread, it's just idle post-whoring.
That said, sure, aliens exist. I shoot at them with lasers all the time. They come to rape cattle and abduct hillbillies for joyrides, because the outer rim of the Galaxy is really just one big Alabama.
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I think the poll was just the guy was curius as to the percentages,
and beond that I think your discription of it's nature is fairly acurate, so it's just like all discusion threads on HLP or 98% of all other internet forums
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Originally posted by Bobboau
the bible codes are sort of interesting in a mathmatical sence that if you get enough text put into a certan arangement you can get all sorts of interesting combiations of words, they have found similar 'predictions' (odd that all of these predictions are found only after the events ocur) in many other books, like 'War and Peace' and 'Moby Dick'
it is a very interesting phenominon
Interesting choice you mentioned there. I saw a program about the bible codes last week which pretty much debunked them.
The assasination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is often used as proof of the codes but in fact they prove nothing. All the codes turned up where his name and the phrase "Assassin wil assassinate".
When the same method was used for Princess Diana it turned up her name, a similar prediction of death (something about jaws of terror IIRC), the name Henri Paul (the driver of the car) and the name Dodi twice. However this wasn't from the bible but from Moby Dick! Does Moby Dick also have the ability to predict the future in retrospect?
In addition to all of that the guy who did the whole Bible codes things predicted that by 2003 the world would have suffered global economic collapse. On the program he claimed we had so his predictions were correct. I really felt like picking him up, shaking him and saying WHEN! Nothing has happened in the last 5 years that hasn't happened in a worse way before.
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of course aliens exist
as shivans :D