General Religious discussion

[Renoard]

That would explain why you misunderstood the posts so far.  The other argument from face book obviously has colored you defensive.  The point was about life on other planets, and how that fits in a religious economy.  We were talking about the statistical probability of life on other planets.  And mtlhddoc2 brought up the potential of an infinite universe increasing the probability.  I was simply pointing out that the reverse is true.  The bigger the universe, the bigger the statistical spike formed by life on Earth.

[The Jade Knight]

Hah, that's funny, as we haven't been discussing evolution up to this point (to my knowledge, at least).

So your assertion that this explains how I've misunderstood other points is rather illogical, it would seem.

But I understand what you're saying.  I thought you had meant to start arguing about the feasibility of evolution, which is an entirely different discussion.

[Renoard]

I was talking about the statistical probability that, if it happened once and if that once was chance, that it could have been repeated especially by chance.  And the probability goes down further the closer the Universe gets to infinite, because of the fact that you have a larger sample affected by entropy.  Making the stat spike even more pronounced and in opposition to the trend.

[The Jade Knight]

Right.  Got that.

[mtlhddoc2]

Ren: it is no different from a lottery standpoint. with your argument. The more tickets that are bought, the less likely it is that someone will win. I disagree. The more tickets that are bought, the more likely it is that not just one person will win, but several. But really, the existence of life, and then sentient life, is like hitting the lottery which then wins you another lottyery ticket, and that wins you another ticket, which wins you another ticket, which then wins you the prize. I agree it is unlikely that there is sentient life. But life in general (ameoba like), not unlikely. It is certainly possible, and becomes probable in the event of infinity, the more combinations you have, the more likely a specific combination will come to the fore. It is just chemistry, really.

[Tink]

I really don't know anything about the probability of life on other planets and such, but believing that God created not only this world, but the whole universe (or in some way organized the matter of the universe that may have already existed into a livable world for his children to live on), I believe that if there is life on other planets, He created that life as well. It's not like life will spontaneously begin to exist on other worlds without His knowledge of it. This is of course coming from a religious point of view. If there were no god, then I could see life possibly evolving elsewhere, but since I believe that there is a God, I also believe that all life comes from Him. Therefore, he may have placed some of his children on other planets. I don't know. But if he did, I do not believe that they will ever visit us (as aliens). Of course, this is just a personal belief with no hard evidence.

[Eerongal]

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.

That would only be if we have an infinite amount of space with a finite amout of matter. If both matter AND space are infinite, then every possible thing, no matter how small the chance, is happening an infinite number of times at every possible point in time. An infinite universe with infinite matter ensures we aren't the only life in the universe. An infinite universe with FINITE matter greatly reduces this possibility. However, talking of an infinite universe with finite matter is a moot point, as it's the same (for this discussion) as a finite universe (which, of course, has finite matter).

[Patriotic Kaz]

The troll is right... whatever now to the second part of the question do they fit in to the religons of earth if they do indeed exist.....

[Eerongal]

also, while we're in the general ballpark of the subject, can someone explain something to me? And i mean this seriously, as I've never understood any side of this debate.

I've heard alot of people from both sides of the camps (highly/non-religious) argue that life can/can't exist in the rest of the universe, because it would disprove/prove god.

I've heard highly religious people argue that there CAN'T be other life in the universe because god didn't create other life, and I've heard highly atheist types claim that finding life in the universe would disprove god, and I don't understand how either of these beliefs come off saying either as fact.

If other life were discovered, how does this disprove the existance of god? All this proves is that life probably springs from a natural process. This would mean, most likely, that many precepts of religion are incorrect, such as god creating man in his image, etc. but thi s doesn't god is disproven. Maybe s/he defined the process that creates life (as well as all processes in the universe). All this would do is make us less special insofar as to how religion relates humans to their deity.

I can kinda understand the religious perspective that if no other life exists, then god created all life on earth, since it means we are 100% unique and special, but in and of itself it's not certain proof, at least not to me.

[Patriotic Kaz]

Eerongal it is a question that no logical/ sane person can answer sorry...

[Peter Ahlstrom]

The concept doesn't really make sense to me. Why would God create this huge universe and put life on only one planet? But anyway, LDS believe God has put intelligent life on a bunch of different worlds (and all of that intelligent life is created in God's image).

[darxbane]

That makes perfect sense to me, Ook.  Those who are looking for proof of God's existence; do you even have proof that our current scientific understanding of the universe is accurrate?  Modern physics still can't explain why matter in the universe is held together the way it is.  They have theorized that "dark matter" and "dark energy" exist, but there is no proof of this.  If you want to talk about paradox, let's talk about some flaws in mathematics, which is how most theories of the universe are contrived.  Ever hear the problem that, in order for an arrow to travel from the bow to the target, it must first travel half the distance, and then half that distance, and so on, traveling an ever smaller distance each time, but, mathematically, never actually reaching its destination?  Does that prove that math is unreliable?    110 years ago, powered flight was thought to be impossible by many scientists.  Also many scientests did not believe the sound barrier could be broken by a manned craft.  With some research, you can find as many examples of scientific dogmatism as religious dogmatism.

Discovering life on other planets would only disprove some religious interpretations of Genesis, not the existence of a higher power.   

[Eerongal]

That makes perfect sense to me, Ook.  Those who are looking for proof of God's existence; do you even have proof that our current scientific understanding of the universe is accurrate?  Modern physics still can't explain why matter in the universe is held together the way it is.  They have theorized that "dark matter" and "dark energy" exist, but there is no proof of this.  If you want to talk about paradox, let's talk about some flaws in mathematics, which is how most theories of the universe are contrived.  Ever hear the problem that, in order for an arrow to travel from the bow to the target, it must first travel half the distance, and then half that distance, and so on, traveling an ever smaller distance each time, but, mathematically, never actually reaching its destination?  Does that prove that math is unreliable?    110 years ago, powered flight was thought to be impossible by many scientists.  Also many scientests did not believe the sound barrier could be broken by a manned craft.  With some research, you can find as many examples of scientific dogmatism as religious dogmatism.

Discovering life on other planets would only disprove some religious interpretations of Genesis, not the existence of a higher power.   

uh....Matter is held together by the strong force.
(unless you mean why we are stuck on the planet, in which case it's gravity, though i highly doubt you meant this, because gravity is kinda...undisputed and a common concept)

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Well... Zeno's paradox has been explained mathematically, though possibly not philosophically. (See Wikipedia.)

Eerongal, the question solved by dark matter is a gravitational one: galaxies don't rotate the way the law of gravity would predict, if all the matter in them were what you could see as stars.

[Eerongal]

Well... Zeno's paradox has been explained mathematically, though possibly not philosophically. (See Wikipedia.)

Eerongal, the question solved by dark matter is a gravitational one: galaxies don't rotate the way the law of gravity would predict, if all the matter in them were what you could see as stars.

Well, Zeno's paradox is really kinda invalidated by simple experience. Of course if you take the time dimension out of things, no motion can occur, everything is never changing, but our simple observations tells us that this isn't true, because motion can obviously occur, which makes this really more of a philisophical thing in the first place.

So you're saying that when he says about "matter being held together" he is talking about the Galaxy Rotation problem of the GRC (galaxy rotation curve)? Makes sense, since this isn't fully explained yet. One common belief is in dark matter, and another is that the laws of newtonian physics changes on a large scale, which is also possible, as displayed by MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics), which has a pretty good rate of predicting galaxy rotation.