Extraterrestrial and Alien beings...your thoughts?

[Litterick]

Since we know of only one planet that supports life, how can we say anything about the possibility of life on other planets?

[palindrome]

Since we know of only one planet that supports life, how can we say anything about the possibility of life on other planets?

Drake equation, for what it's worth.

[John A.]

Christian captured pretty much anything I’d have said. The only thing I might add in explicit response to the OP is that I think (given the, um, astronomical, number of stars and planets in the universe) it’s likely that there are (or were, or will be) other civilizations. But they’ll never get here (nor us there) because the distances can’t be overcome. Relativity’s a bitch.

It’s possible that there’s a civilization within a distance that would allow for communication with latency short enough that human civilization won’t have become extinct by the time an answer gets back to us. But that’s as close as we’ll get to an interstellar jam session, and so far not so good.

[DawgBone]

The argument I always hear is that confirmation of life elsewhere -- especially "intelligent life", and especially "intelligent life" that may have somehow been responsible for our life on this planet -- would throw the world's organized religions into a tizzy, because it would disprove all of their Origin Stories and call into question the whole Made In God's Image thing.

But as I see it, the majority of folks who subscribe to organized religion's Origin Stories and the whole Made In God's Image thing aren't willing to make the intellectual investment into concluding how the confirmation of life elsewhere threatens their own spiritual logic. It's not as simple as "Oh, aliens exist? Therefore god doesn't." And people who are diehard adherents to dogma rarely think things through beyond the most simple (simplistic?) explanations...practically by definition.

So yeah, I think a small portion of Earth's population would find the confirmation of life elsewhere a complete gamechanger, and the vast portion would be like "Huh...well, gotta go mow the lawn."

Have you read your bible in depth? Have you looked into ancient sumerian history? Are you familiar with the multitude of similarities between demonic manifestations and "alien" encounters? What's interesting to me is the non-believer will entertain all sorts of fantastical off the wall theories and speculations on aliens but refuses to believe Christ lived, died, and was resurrected.

[wolflen]

Have you read your bible in depth? Have you looked into ancient sumerian history? Are you familiar with the multitude of similarities between demonic manifestations and "alien" encounters? What's interesting to me is the non-believer will entertain all sorts of fantastical off the wall theories and speculations on aliens but refuses to believe Christ lived, died, and was resurrected.

Dawg...

one of my fave coveralls..Truth is stranger than fiction..

[Bob_Ross]

the non-believer will entertain all sorts of fantastical off the wall theories and speculations on aliens but refuses to believe Christ lived, died, and was resurrected.

That's because many theories and speculations about aliens are plausible...

[Stringswinger]

That's because many theories and speculations about aliens are plausible...

That is just being insulting. I think the stories about Jesus of Nazareth and the stories about aliens are equally plausible. Both stories have witnesses, but lack conclusive scientific evidence.

[DawgBone]

That's because many theories and speculations about aliens are plausible...

"Plausible". Meanwhile one of the big goals of medical research is shutting off the aging gene and allowing man to live forever, outside Christ. If someone makes a youtube alien contact vid people are more willing to buy into it than believing historical and religious record and testimony on Christ. It's a sad world of delusion. The modern era has literally been primed for nonsensical beliefs in "alien" life forms with shows like star trek and star wars. It's all the work of the demons. A quick study of works by Crowley and Strieber, among others, shows this to be accurate.

[pauln]

Since we know of only one planet that supports life, how can we say anything about the possibility of life on other planets?

Finally, the best question!

Begin with a quick review of the life we know about on Earth.
The current thinking is this:

- life began with the first molecules that emerged with the ability to self replicate themselves, and with exposure to environmental selection pressures acting against variations, this was the beginning of an evolutionary mechanism for them to gradually become more sophisticated.

- life began about a half billion years after the formation of the Earth (it took a while to settle down until the conditions were right), and after another three billion years of time the highest form of Earth life was a microscopic multicellular worm. After another only one billion years the highest form was man.

The important thing to notice is the rate and quality of advancement;

- three billion years from replicating molecule to micro multicellular worm
- one billion years from micro multicellular worm to man

This is a profound rate of change!

The Earth itself as a rocky planet was possible as part of the formation of the Sun because the material had high metallicity, as the astronomers would say - they call all material "metal" that has more protons than hydrogen and helium.

The first stars of the universe had no "metals", but metals were produced when some of them explosively died. This allowed subsequent generations of stars to increase in metallicity and increase the possibility of forming accompanying rocky planets.

Astronomers have looked for the earliest stars of sufficient high metallicity to form rocky planets by examining the light of further and further distant galaxies. The current earliest galaxies indicating high metallicity stars are 11.2 billion years old; the current thinking that the universe is 13.2 billion years old and its model for formation sees this as a bit too early for this level of observed galactic formation with stellar metallicity, so the cold dark matter lamda model (?CDM) may have a problem...

So, if we use what we think we know about the history of life on Earth and assume that the same process happened far away 11.2 billion years ago, and if you take a conservative figure (assuming the distant galaxy is showing us just the beginning of the rocky planet's formation) we can do this:

- assume the same rate of development
- compare the starting times

If life started there like it did here, "they" are about 6 billion years ahead of us. Since worm to man was only one billion years, if these entities are still around they might be over six billion years more advanced than us... there isn't much we can know about them or what they might be able to do.

There is a way to think about them by using a schematic hierarchy of life levels and see if any consistent asymmetrical relationships between the levels in the "down" direction suggest extrapolated relationships from the next up level in the "down" direction from there. It works like this:

Level 0 - this is non life; schematically earth, water, air, light. These things have no agency and no sense of each other.

Level 1 - plants; these do have some degree of agency as they seek water in the earth and light in the air. They are in, around, and among the elements of level 0 which "know nothing of level 1" yet level 0 elements are lived in, and consumed for the purposes of level 1 plants.

Level 2 - animals: these have agency, know about the level 1 plants and the level 0 elements. They are in, around, and among the plants without the plants "knowing", yet the animals live in them, use them, and consume them for their own purposes.

We notice that each level "knows" the levels below it but not the ones above it. We notice each level that is alive consumes and is around and within the lower levels all the time.

If we notice these asymmetrical relationships among the levels we might extrapolate "up" that a level 3 entity would be absolutely unknowable to us (we are functionally level 2), yet may be all around us, within us, among us, using and consuming us for their own purposes.

The earliest life in the universe with an over 6 billion year head start might be well past level three. As far as limitations of "travel" distance, time, energy, etc., I kind of think that with an extra 6 billion years to work on the problems, there may not be any problems that can't be resolved or overcome...

The impact of disclosure on religions depends on the advancement of the visitors. I see really two levels of impact:

- many have a simple view of the world, in some ways the same as the past. There are people and places that have never thought about these things and they will be shocked, but their faith very well may not be destroyed.

- some have a view based on "man" as the apple of God's eye. Depending on the advancement of the visitors, they may feel demoted to the relative position of the micro multicellular worm to man. A lot of foundations of belief have fallen throughout history, but highly enough advanced visitors might be a true collapse as our place falls toward unimportant.

To be clear, the mechanism for this fall is the idea of man in God's image. The other side of that coin is God in man's image from our limitations as being human beings. If dolphins had religion one might imagine their oral squeaky traditions passed from one generation to the next as including squeaky verses with phrases like, "...floating at the right flipper of God..." and the like.

The advanced visitors would demote us from our current sense of man in the image of God as the visitors would upgrade the highest position of beings in the image of God... we being pushed back toward the relative position of the worm.

[Mick-7]

It's all the work of the demons. A quick study of works by Crowley and Strieber, among others, shows this to be accurate.

Actually, Aleister Crowley defined magic as a method to contact higher forms of intelligence (interdimensional beings), but if you're unbalanced and/or inept you may contact lower ones too, a.k.a., your "demons." His autobiography, the Confessions of Aleister Crowley, is fascinating.