General Religious discussion

[The Jade Knight]

Totally depends on your religious perspective.

So, what's yours?

[Reaves]

Here's a question are we an ant farm or does god really care...and if he cares where do other sentient beings (aliens and the like) fit in to the big picture?

I think I see where this is going...
Anyway, short answer: God cared enough to send his own Son to die for us. He cares deeply for each of us. We are not numbers to him but real people that he knew before time began. I'll leave the long answer for Jade...

[Comfortable Madness]

Good answer Reaves. Kaz just seems to enjoy throwing darts against religion, Christianity mostly, just to see what sticks.

Other sentient beings??? Name me some of the more prominently KNOWN sentient beings please. "Aliens and such" really isn't a valid descripiton for anything that is PROVEN to exist.

[Renoard]

Aliens like Dragons(serifim) and Chimera(cherubim)?

[Patriotic Kaz]

No but if you look at how large the universe, i mean there are billions of gallaxies and many solar systems in each one, the odds of other intelligent life is more than a possiblity it is probability... I'm not attacking any religon and defiantely not christianity. I in someways envy those with faith but the concept of that trust based on an absensce of fact i find hard to handle. Religion gives hope and those with hope do better in life so i acctually encourage religion even if i do not partake in it....

[Comfortable Madness]

You're still taking a big leap there. You say it's probable that other intelligent life exists based solely on the size of the universe.  Dr. Hugh Ross used  probability, of various life sustaining factors, to conclude that the chance of life elsewhere is at about 1 in 10^289. It seems that you are placing a sizable amount of faith in absolute randomness.

[Reaves]

No but if you look at how large the universe, i mean there are billions of gallaxies and many solar systems in each one, the odds of other intelligent life is more than a possiblity it is probability... I'm not attacking any religon and defiantely not christianity. I in someways envy those with faith but the concept of that trust based on an absensce of fact i find hard to handle.

I don't think the idea of intelligent life existing outside of our solar system is an attack on Christianity. I think you would be hard-pressed to make a case from the Bible that intelligent extra-terrestrial life exists for a certainty, but I don't think the Bible denies it. However I have not made this subject an area of study.

[mtlhddoc2]

I believe in the slight possibility that LIFE exists elsewhere, but SENTIENT is a whole nother matter. Unless the universe, is in fact, endless.

[benvolio3]

And the whole endless, infinite unverse thingy was disproven by Albert Einstein... so that is a different matter.

[Renoard]

on the other hand a globe has a finite surface but you can travel infinite distance orbiting it.

I don't see how infinite dimensions in sapce would lead to life on other planets.  Infinite numbers of the same stuff is still the same stuff.

[benvolio3]

Renoard: your first line reminds me of superman when he travels around the world a bunch of times to turn back time...

your second line reminds me of the game portal when you make a portal right above and below you so that you fall infinitely. lol

[Eerongal]

And the whole endless, infinite unverse thingy was disproven by Albert Einstein... so that is a different matter.

Uhhh....no it wasn't. It's still very much a possibility. The current OBSERVABLE universe is over 93 Billion light years, and outside of that we don't know how far it reaches.

for example, if this were all ready proven, the following quote, which is less than 5 years old by State of montana University astrophysicist Neil Cornish wouldn't exist:
"no sign that the universe is finite, but that doesn't prove that it is infinite"
(quote taken from space.com from an article detailing an interview with the above expert. The article is talking about the currently measured size of the universe. It is located here: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html)

[mtlhddoc2]

beno: thats just a theory, Einstien proved nothing of the sort.

Ren: it makes a difference in the same way millions of people buy lottery tickets. The more you have, the better the chances of hitting the lottery. In this case it would be the Universal lottery, and calculating the odds of sentient life would in fact, take a supercomputer years to do. But, lets say the odds are 1 in a trillion. If you only have a trillion planets, pretty slim. But if you have trillions of solar systems with trillions of planets, the odds improve dramatically. Some would even say, it becomes likely. Now, will we, as a race, ever discover life in the universe, much less sentient life, doubtful, highly improbable. Maybe in 50 generations we will discover a way to traverse the universe at speeds which do not take several lifetimes, but this is also improbable. Needless to say, WE will never see it.

[Renoard]

Life requires organization and complexity.  Assuming spontaneous macro-evolution to be true, than evolution of life on Earth would be a measurable statistical spike in opposition of the trend toward entropy.  Entropy causes matter to become less organized, more dispersed and orderly, whereas organized systems like a biosphere are highly organized, concentrated and chaotic on the macro scale.

The more space there is the higher the odds in favor of entropy and the less probably life becomes.

[The Jade Knight]

If you want to argue Evolution, put it in a new thread.

But don't get belligerent.

(I was recently in a Facebook thread discussing evolution.  It was hundreds of posts long, and involved the contributions of a Physicist and a Biology Masters student, among other things.  Needless to say, the Physicist and the Biology grad student couldn't come to an agreement.)