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60% Of U.S. Believe Life Exists On Other Planets
jangobongo writes "Does intelligent life exist anywhere besides Earth? Are regular churchgoers less likely to believe life has evolved on other planets? Do more Democrats or Republicans believe in extraterrestrials? And if alien life makes contact, what should we do? These questions were asked on a poll released last week that shows that two-thirds of Americans do believe that life exists on other planets, and of that group, 90% say if we receive a message from another planet we should reply. The poll was commissioned by the SETI Institute and the National Geographic Channel."
Q. Do you believe UFOs exist?
A. Yes. (Well duh, anything we see in the sky but can't immediately identify is a UFO. Was I supposed to answer 'No'?)
Q. Do you believe aliens exist?
A. Yes. (With billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars, it's a pretty safe guess that somewhere out there is another planet with life.)
As a result, I'm recorded as just one more nut-job who believes that little green men are abducting our sheep. That particular survey was merely incompetent. Much more entertaining results can be obtained from surveys which are actively rigged.
In this SETI-National Geographic poll they appeared to have asked people if they thought that life exists somewhere out there. They got a 60% yes. It would have been interesting to ask half of those people if they thought that we are the only life in the universe. My guess is that those opposite questions when added up wouldn't even come close to 100%.
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Meanwhile, only a resounding 5% of life on other planets believes that there is intelligent life on Earth.
I guess it must be true then
I certainly hope there is intelligent life somewhere else in space, but we got bollocks down here on Earth.
May I have your liver then?
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100% of the republicans polled believe that all the life on the other planets are christian.
the vast majority of people also believe in Astrology. A large percentage of people believe that earth has already been visited by aliens (in particular to help build the pyramids) and some people believe that aliens are studying earth right now.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So 40% of the people in the US are arrogant enough to think that in an infinite universe they are alone?
Why should be be astonished about finding life elsewhere?
I mean, seriously, why would anyone believe that the only planet in the universe that supports life is this one?
The only reason I can imagine is religiously encouraged ignorance and America has that by the bushel. Metric fuckton. Imperial assload.
Yeah yeah, troll, flamebait, whatever. Its true.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Check out this guy who can summon UFOs on demand. Has a link to a news broadcast where they filmed him doing it. Shocked the hell out of the camera crew.
_ ID=44503
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE
Pretty cool.
-Matt
...did not see Star Wars Episode III yet.
...so I am not necessarily impressed by majority rule.
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
That's only 60% of those that responded.
100% of people from Redmond said they believed, however results were discounted because it was found that they had nothing to compare intellegent to.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
The question is, does sentient life exist on other planets.
"It's life Jim, but not as we know it."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm torn on this question. Belief is a weird thing. Belief in "god". No. Belief in a plausible scientific theory? Yes.
I do not "believe" in god. I do "believe" that there is enough science to show that there MAY be life on other planets. Whether that life be some simple RNA/DNA replicating structure... I don't konw.
Anyway, long story short, the aliens have got a leg up on the god thing with me at this point.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
...what percentage of the US believes in life after death.
What percent of Americans can prove life exists beyond the Earth? Surely, a more interesting statistic.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
10% enjoy anal probes
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Which is better Emacs or Vi?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
That 80% think it would be life like us is mind-boggling. I suppose it is the taint of science-fiction. It's hard to enjoy characters that are hard to fathom.
But really, intelligent I could see. But like us? That just demonstrates a lack of imagination.
If everyone believes 2 + 2 = 5, 2 + 2 does equal 5.
Before you walk a mile in someone's shoes, you should insult them so you know how they are and what they're doing.
Wait, wait a second here... What percentage of Americans are religeous... and dont most of those religeons deny the possibility of Aliens? This doesnt make sense! I sense an overlap here, one that either questions religeous beliefs, or implies gullability... i think this is just people wanting to believe in exotic ideas: fantasy. And, of course, in a society lacking mainstream fantasy entertainment, it makes sense for them to try to scrape fantasy elements off the bottom of the barrel... in a vain attempt at satisfaction. Aliens are boring - I believe in mah shjo!! W00YEAH!
Doesn't anyone believe in Cthulhu anymore?
Vol~
Given the age of the universe, intelligent life on other planets would be thousands or even millions of years more (or less) advanced than on earth.
Less advanced life might be similar to humans (cell based, certain symmetries in cellular organization such as two eyes, etc.) but more advanced life wouldn't even be recognized as intelligent life by most people - for example, patterns of energy experiencing pure happiness.
I'm confused why only 46% of christians believe that aliens exist. Is it because then they might have to consider that a god might have more to think about than their petty affairs, and that the bible might just be pretty limited in galatic terms? I always think an alien visiting earth would just laugh at the primitive beliefs of our so called 'advanced' civilisations. Interested to hear what other religions think about aliens. Would Mohammed, Jesus etc have any relevance to someone from Alpha Centauri?
90% say if we receive a message from another planet we should reply.
I would like to see how that number would compare to the same survey taken after the War of the Worlds movie comes out.
Or again if/when we actually do recieve a message.
"For Great Justice."
There is life in other planets!
Democracy at its finest!
90% say if we receive a message from another planet we should reply
Isn't there some theory that states that even if we did get a message from an advanced civilization, by the time we could reply they would have already destroyed themselves. In other words, by the time someone gets our messages, we'll have already nuked ourselves.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
I would like to see how that number would compare to the same survey taken after the War of the Worlds movie comes out.
You mean we might invade their homeland to take their natural resources?
C'mon, we wouldn't do something like that to someone else. We're the good guys!
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Seriously though, 8 out of 10 believe that they would be more advanced than us? Yet...only 7 of 10 thought they would be able to communicate across deep space (something we can already do, to an extent). Those figures don't make any sense.
Chances are we're just going to find living martian bacteria in the near future, not just the fossilized remains. I highly doubt we'll find a super-advanced civilization.
We do the first thing we always do: Figure out how to kill it, if necessary.
Then we sign it to a 3-picture deal in Hollywood.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"People who are regular churchgoers are less-likely to believe in life on other planets compared to non-churchgoers, 46% vs. 70%"
Yet they apparently believe in an invisible monster who loves them, but sends them to hell for eternity if they don't play by rules they don't understand.
What is a more likely "Intelligent Designer": a mythical spirit which used to do miracles all the time, before recording could corroborate it, or an alien intelligence, different from us in that it is adapted to live outside the Earth's environment?
When the aliens land, all those churchgoers are going to bow down before the "angels", with their "miraculous" technology. And they're going to hand over the science-believers, who think these aliens are just the competition, for burning as witches. Just as they always have, when their priests have had control, and were threatened by independent thinkers.
--
make install -not war
One Bible teacher I heard tried to argue that in order for aliens to exist on other planets, Jesus would have had to go and die for their sins.
It's okay. Squeeple Gorb III, the green blob lifeform on their own planet, already died for their sins.
Seriously, Jesus would have been an Arabic-looking guy. But go to Europe or the US, and you get a very distinctive Anglo-Saxon brown beard and hair that looks kind of like a non-pudgy Stallman wearing a pure white robe. We've gotten so used to it that we don't notice it.
If you go to Mexico, you'll see pictures of a Mexican Jesus, and to China pictures of a Chinese Jesus. Very unsettling. It really drives home the scamminess of the whole thing.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I know plenty of democrats who go to church every Sunday, or Saturday. I know plentyb of non-democrats who only set foot in a church as the lesser of two evils. Wrath or Wife OR spending a half a day at a wedding.
...
But I guess I don't 'believe' that life on earth is so simply described by
party
kingdom
class
individual
Personally, I think it is extremely likely that intelligent life would be in other parts of the universe, but there are a few qualifications that should be made:
1) The chances of it being near us or even in our galaxy is not so good.
2) The chance of it existing concurrently with our little blip of time is even smaller.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
People believe amazing things all the time without proof. Maybe that's the point...without proof (key in Douglas Adams quote).
For me, I'm soldly in the "Won't be in the slightest bit surprised" camp with a big hunk of "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence".
Is life outside of this solar system likely? Sure. It's probably on a few planets in this solar system, though that's pure uninformed opinion.
More uninformed opinions: Is it smart? I'm less sure. The gap in time between 'smart enough to say hi' and 'smart enough to not say anything at all' is fairly narrow...unless they are hostile. In that case, why attack the boondocks of our out of the way planet when the alien next door already has the stuff they likely want anyway. I doubt they want our women, for example.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
You just have to go to the right museum and see all of the facts for yourself. I mean, if you saw an alien, I'm sure you'd agree that they exist.
90% say if we receive a message from another planet we should reply
What if it was: "If you reply to this message, we will annihilate your planet"?
No shit. And check out this choice quote from TFA: "The nationally representative telephone survey ...". Telephone survey? Okay, so now this "representative" sample is skewed towards those who (a) still have landlines and (b) are willing to talk to some stranger on the phone about aliens. I was the last of my friends to get a cell phone and now not even *I* still have a landline. This is a really skewed sample. It's also not clear to me whether they made a strong differntiation between life and intelligent life in their questions. The article kinda muddles the two.
This is a great example of a terrible and useless survey. It certainly isn't representative of the entire US.
GMD
watch this
just my $.01
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Headline should read:
"60% of people interviewed by National Geographic believe...."
how many people did they survey? how did they choose who to survey? was it a random sample? was it voluntary?
Their claim is far too vague and broad. To me, it looks like a bullshit statistic.
etc. etc. etc.
(could someone with a qualified background in this matter comment on this --- although I've taken statistics classes, I'm by no means a professional)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
If we found intelligent life on another planet, and it had proof of evolution taking place on our planet, or it's planet, and could show exactly how it came to be.
"That proof is wrong, this is how it really happened! God just created all the stuff in 6 days, your proof is flawed in that it doesn't support our beliefs."
I worry that the "good" followers of Mohammed, Jesus, etc would give an alien visiting earth the "convert or die" choice they are famous for giving their fellow humans.
How about we prove there is intelligent life here on earth?
:)
Drake's equation even with very conservative values assigned pretty much guarntees there is intelligent life some where out there in the universe. I just think it a little conceited of anyone thinking that we may represent the only intelligent life in the universe.
Obviously those that think that failed to understand basic math and the concept of really large numbers.
I always think an alien visiting earth would just laugh at the primitive beliefs of our so called 'advanced' civilisations
Many of us do that already so it wouldn't suprise me aliens would.
Would Mohammed, Jesus etc have any relevance to someone from Alpha Centauri?
That is something to wonder about, but I guarantee many humans would start worshiping Alpha Centaurians right after they are found.
Is there life on other planets?
Probably.
Is there intelligent life on other planets?
Probably.
Are any of those planets close enough so we can ever make contact?
Most certainly not.
The Galaxy Song © by Monty Python Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour, It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned, the sun that is the source of all our power. The Sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, are moving at a million miles a day, In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour, of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way. Our Galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars, it's 100,000 light-years side-to-side, It bulges in the middle, 16 000 light-years thick, but out by us it's just 3 000 light-years wide. We're 30,000 light-years from galactic central point, we go round every 200 million years, And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions in this amazing and expanding universe. The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, in all of the directions it can whizz, As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know, twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birth, Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, because there's bugger all down here on Earth.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
--Calvin, to Hobbes
I worry that the alien visiting Earth will give us the "convert or die" choice we are so famous for giving our fellow humans.
The chances of no life is pretty slim.
However, the fact we are pretty late in the 'cosmic timeline' would lead one to think that most intelligent life has long since died out.
But space is vast.. and anything is possible if you use large enough numbers..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
we'll start singing "Good Morning Starshine!" with Agent Scully and Chewbacca
... believe their is no life in Canada either.
The company I work for collapsed, my air conditioner self-destructed and neighbors have installed a billion watt car stereo. Unless little (insert your color) men have quick solutions, I couldn't care less.
dull-eyed footstool-temporary octopus
I suspect the poll has something to do with a new science (fiction) television series coming soon on the Discovery channel, showing alien life forms we encountered after conquering space...
We know for a fact that long term, life on Earth is doomed. If 40% believe that Earth is the sole repository of life in the universe, then it's absolutely irresponsible of them to not fully support manned space exploration with a heavy emphasis on planetary and interstellar colonization.
This should be especially true of people who believe that life was put here and the universe was created by God. I mean, we're put here, plopped in the middle of a limitless universe, and given intelligence to understand the universe and build our own means to explore it; if that's not a mandate, I don't know what is. Why would they believe that "go forth and multiply" stops at the atmosphere?
50% of U.S. believes that Europe and Asia are other planets.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
- 1/2 Americans believe in ghosts
-
1/2 Americans voted for George Bush
etc etc etc...When you ask if people believe in "life on other planets", you'll get two camps (usually): 1.) The religious nutters who believe God created man once, and broke the mold, and 2.) Abductee nutters who believe aliens are living among us already.
All kidding aside... life exists elsewhere, its how WE came to exist HERE, in this time. It may not be bipedal, humanoid life, but its certainly life. Single-cellular organisms living at -400F on some distant planet is still life. Just because it isn't hovering around in a little saucer causing traffic jams in Mexico doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Also.. even if there was intelligent, bipedal humanoid life elsewhere, why would they be interested in us?
Maybe they're just as prehistoric in their space travels as us. Maybe they're so far ahead of us that they see us like we see an anthill in Africa. Who knows..
We also seem to keep trying to find life in places "similar" to our own. Why is it impossible to believe that a planet billions of light years away from the Sun could house intelligent life? Maybe they don't seek us out, because "Nothing that close to the Sun could survive...", just like we don't believe life could exist so far out in the blackness away from the Sun.
Imagine what a society of cells, left to evolve undisturbed for 2 million years (WITHOUT any Ice Age to reboot the process), would evolve to... Imagine what our society could do in the next 2 million years (if we don't blow ourselves up first)
Carl Sagan, a brilliant astronomer, was also a devoutly religious person. He believed in life on other planets. There's even a great mathematical equation (Drake's Equation) that sums it up really well.
Lastly, for those who haven't READ it, grab a copy of "Contact: A Novel" by Sagan. Its quite different from the movie... and well worth the read for how in-depth it goes into the interesting paradox about Religion, Science, Extraterrestrial Life and many other issues. Its worth the few dollars to read, if you're interested in debating this topic from any angle.
In short, life DOES exist elsewhere... but are we prepared to find it? Are we prepared for it to find us?
Does the existence of extra-terrestrial lifeforms necessarily mean that they evolved? Couldn't God have created them as well?
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Do you really believe that the average person even hows that UFO is an acronym and tell you what it stands for? Most people probably believe that UFO means alien aircraft, not anything else. As for whether "aliens exist", again, your question is pretty specific. Unless the poll was asking the scientific community, the average person doesn't consider the odds of life existing based on the large number of planets, but rather they exist or not, period.
A November 2004 poll shows only 51% percent of the people in the US think there's intelligent life in the White House.
I tend to believe that any intelligent alien life would likely be similar to us. There is a reason man evolved the way they did. 2 eyes and ears to see and hear in stereo. Hands to manipulate tools. Legs to move around. I believe there was a show on Discovery channel a long time ago where well known scientists explain why aliens would likely have a humanoid form.
Suicide is killing yourself. A lot of smokers have underlying mental problems, and smoking is a form of "self-medication". Google for smoking mental illness self-medication.
here is just one result
... it makes sense - you have to be nuts to smoke.100% of Slashdot moderators automatically mod up pedantic Christianity-related jokes.
and repeat the poll BEFORE the Roswell incident... AND the crop circles... AND the "abducted by aliens" books?
Thank you.
I don't think that faster than light travel is possible. Additionally I do not think that intelligent life is the inevitable result of evolution. I would predict that life is fairly common, but that intelligent life would be rare in the extreme. Intelligence is not necessary to be a "success" at evolving.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Women are twice as likely as men to feel "nervous and afraid" if we learn life exists -- 27% vs. 13%
I think this could be said about just about anything.
Women are twice as likely as men to feel "nervous and afraid" if there are no almond M&Ms left in the vending machine.
Women are twice as likely as men to feel "nervous and afraid" if their favorite sitcom is cancelled.
Women are twice as likely as men to feel "nervous and afraid" if they have to pee when they're away from home.
Women are twice as likely as men to feel "nervous and afraid" if there is no beer left in the fridge.
Well, that last one doesn't quite work. But that's about the only situation I can think of where the tables are turned.
Are regular churchgoers less likely to believe life has evolved on other planets?
Bit of a two-pronged question there, don't you think?
I'd be interested in whether regular churchgoers are less likely to believe that life exists at all on other planets, regardless of its origins.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Oh yeah who cares what US beleives, I stopped giving a damn after they questioned evolution. PS: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS IMAGE SHIT. I CAN NOT READ THIS SHIT
Doesn't it go against thier whole earth is the creation of god and christians are the chosen ones that god looks out for.
Throwing aliens into the picture throws more doubt into the picture.
Didn't they harass Galelio just for presenting evidence that Copernicus was correct, that the earth was not the center of the universe.
Its now time that every good Christian let their leaders know that we must build great space ships to take the Lords message out to the Universe. Its time to convert the sinning aliens to understand God's will so they can be born again and then they too can enter Heaven and stop being heathens.
My friend, I find your faith in the ability of an intelligent being to apply that intelligence in equal helpings to all areas of knowledge and belief touching, but mistaken. People apply different standards of proof to different fields of knowledge, depending upon the emotional hold they have on them. I have few doubts that there will be religions among those who might visit Earth (or those whose planets we might visit), and am not entirely sure that some of those religions will not have violent sects.
It's more likely our leaders will give the "convert or die" to them, heat-rays notwithstanding.
"Just ask any stupid smoker why they're suicidal."
- Car drivers are suicidal.
- Alcohol drinkers are suicidal.
- Police officers are suicidal.
- Sky divers are suicidal.
- Chocolate eaters are suicidal.
Oh wait.. I mixed up 'suicidal' with 'health risk'.
"Derp de derp."
I think they need to qualify that with "aliens who make it into space".
There is absolutely no reason why intelligent LIFE would resemble a human. We already know that dolphins are somewhat intelligent.
The big difference is whether you're looking at the gravity bound 2 dimensional world of the land or the 3 dimensional world of an ocean.
Which brings me to another point, how can WE tell if THEY are intelligent unless they're doing things we already associate with "intelligence".
And to do those things, they'd pretty much have to look like us (except they'd have ridges on their heads).
Really, suppose there's a water planet out there with super-intelligent squids who have developed mathematics far in advance of our's, but don't build houses or space ships. How would WE be able to tell they were intelligent?
Say what you will, but small towels suck. I love our American "Bath Sheets", being able to wrap yourself in dry towel is a wonderful thing.
The other 40% of Americans don't believe that intelligent life exists outside the USA.
Carpe post meridian
"Carl Sagan, a brilliant astronomer, was also a devoutly religious person."
Are you nuts? Or just like making stuff up? Devoutly religious?? It is extremely clear that he was a non theist.
"In a March 1996 profile by Jim Dawson in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Sagan talked about his then-new book The Demon Haunted World and was asked about his personal spiritual views: "My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it," he said. "An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic.""
of how many planets there are in the universe, even though the conditions for life are probably quite rare, there's almost certainly other life out there somewhere.
This is rather unimportant though because the odds of said life being anywhere near us, close enough that we could communicate or even notice eachother's existance, is virtually zero. That's assuming they were even capable of communication with us in the first place, and were eccentric enough to make an attempt to begin with.
So we shall have to be content in accepting that while there probably are "little green men" out there somewhere right now, we almost certainly will never get to see them, or even know of their existance.
I would count earth incredibly fortunate to ever discover evidence of life not originating from earth. And if it ever happens, it'll probably be of a culture that disappeared eons ago, that we very likely will be so far away from as to make it impossible to take a trip there to investigate.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Actually, only if you are a good little boy. If you are a good little girl who marries a good little boy, you can be a goddess in his universe, but you'll never have one of your own.
If they're including images with their transmission then they'll already know we're a valid planet...
Task Mangler
And, to bring this back on-topic, I think any alien species would consider us to be incredibly dumb because, rather than seeing smoking for the self-destructive stupidity that it is, we've created whole industries around it, with people PAYING for the "privilege" of being addicted to something that will kill them.
How about a poll to ascertain the truth of the Reimann Hypothesis? Or a poll to determine the score of the 2006 World Series?
My point is that voting may be the best way to elect politicians, but I think this poll about life on other planets is a complete waste of time. The only information it can uncover is about the people polled, not about the little green men. People hear stories about UFOs, etc. and people see a lot of fiction where little green men exist. These fictions color people's expectations. For instance, Orson Wells' prank presumed the existence of Martians. Now we know Mars appears to be a dead world, so all stories about ETs involve extrasolar beings and I presume the 60% of poll respondents assume little green men are extrasolar in origin.
Others have spoken of the coarseness of polls. Usually, when folks ask about life on other planets, the presumption is we're talking about intelligent life.
I said that Mars appears to be a dead world. We don't see canals thereon, but perhaps some microbe lurks under some rock awaiting a warm day and some liquid water to enable its growth. Given the recent evidence of liquid water on Mars, the likelihood of such microbial action is greatly increased. Focus on those microbes and it's easy to put yourself into that 60%.
Your answer depends upon what you're thinking about the pollster asks. If you're thinking of microbes you may say one thing, and if you're thinking of Marvin the Martian, you may say another thing. Your response will be skewed by the way the question is asked.
That's something a poll will tell you: what folks are thinking about when polled. I think most polls are often mere editorials, they say the most about the pollster.
The fact that "churchgoers" were identified in the sample says something about the pollster. Why'd they ask about "churchgoers"? Do churches send probes to other planets?
No, the pollster wants to say something about churchgoers. OK, say something about churchgoers, don't make a pretense of some poll.
Muahahahaha ... erm ... nevermind (whistles with eyes going side to side).
The "reason" that I've heard most often is "if there were extraterrestrials, the Bible would have mentioned them." If it isn't mentioned in the Good Book, then it isn't there to be mentioned, save possibly as a demonic plot.
Nevermind that it says nothing about nuclear fission, radio, or the correct number of male ribs, but those all seem to exist.
("But that's different!" "No, it's not.")
-PS
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
The poll appears to fail to distinguish between life and intelligent life.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The submitter unfortunately does us a huge disservice by misquoting the press release being submitted. Submitter says:
But of course those questions were not asked on the poll. TFA says:
You might think that for every 'answered' there must be an 'asked', and in fact, that's true, but only in an indirect way.
I'm reminded of some people on Usenet who couldn't remember whether the bookish girl in Scooby-Doo was named Velma or Thelma, and someone suggested it be put to a vote. It would be totally frivolous to ask someone "Are regular churchgoers less likely to believe life has evolved on other planets" if your goal is to know the truth of that question.
Consider a presidential election where everybody knows it's likely to be an 65-35 victory for Able over Cain. Now suppose we conduct a poll:
- Who do you think will win, Able or Cain?
- Who would you prefer to win, Able or Cain?
- Who are you going to vote for, Able or Cain?
People may realize that even if they prefer Cain, Able is likely to win, and answer question #1 appropriately. Add a third-party candidate who people don't want to waste a vote on, and you'll start seeing a split between #2 and #3.If your question is "who is going to win the election", the question you want to ask is #3.
I realize this is a total semantic nitpick about the submission, but in the case of talking about poll questions, since it's crucial to know what questions were actually asked, a summary like this is just bizarre. (Compare this kind of nitpick to a nitpick about the use of "on" in "on a poll" in the submission, and hopefully you'll see why this is a more significant nitpick.)
Also polling theory is a lot more interesting than this stupid poll.
This quote you have certainly didn't come from Sagan, he would never call Secular Humanism a religion.
Looks like you cut'n'pasted. Care to show the original link?
Before the beginning, there was less than nothing, not even existance existed for there to be anything to exist in. And it was that way for an eternity of eternities of even beyond eternities.
But then something happened smaller than you can know, even smaller than that.
The void became aware of itself and at that very same moment, the void split into the potential for all things. Existance and the observation, awareness of the potential. The essence of physics and nature. Existance and what can be done within it, experienced.
Suddenly existance was, and so was consciousness, the split of less than nothing.
What to do next? Survive! It's certainly better than less than nothing. It is More!
That ment expanding, creating stuff in existance.....it started out very very slow, taking almost an eternity to make the first interaction happen, time was a very difficult thing to create, but in time the momentem would built up to increase the creation of what all is existing in existance.
Of course this too goes on for what seems to be now at least a measureable eternity.
Eventually, the odds of cycling thru all possibilities on what existed in existance a spark of life would be found, and the awareness became aware of another perspective, one within existance. A very small and limited awareness that was, at that moment, understood to be a way to forever increase the experience ability of what all exist in existance... to forever increase the rate and complexity of creation and experience.
And forever beyond eternity the expansion happens, and at all moments, the all of existance, what is in it and it's awareness, is fully aware of itself. Realizing there is nothing at all, not even existance, outside of itself. So to survive, to exist, it forever expands and has been doing this for a long long time. etc.....
But what of us, mankind? What's our part?
Well besides the obvious being that we are like sensors, cameras, recorders, communication senders, witnesses of the experience of what existance presents us, we are also intended to assist in the expansion of existance and what exist in it.
A matter of survival, you understand. However, we were not given a full set of the perceptions of all things, for we are within what exist in existance, and therefore inherently limited in our perception. But being given the ability to create, we are given the ability to overcome these limitations. And we are not alone, far from it.
To follow the rest, requires a break, a look back at our history, mans history, our evolution, our creation, and realize how far we have come, while projecting where we will go in our future based upon the path of our past.
At some point in the future, maybe not so distant, we will come to understand physics and nature so well that we can travel to the edge of existance or go out into our back yard and cause a big bang to happen out of nothing more than less than nothing. Perhaps take a gravity unit and collaspe it in a non-balanced manner and cause a boom before you know it, causing the all of existance to expand.
Now lets say we don't do it in our back yard, that we have the knowledge to do it on the borders of existance...boom...we create a new and unique galaxy or galaxies. And we know that it will prove fruitful, that some place in all of it we will be able to help iniate the evolution of life again. And we know that just as our history has shown us, we can help that life become conscious so to also contribute to the expansion of existance and what exist in it.
When is existance big enough? The answer is not what you might think. For that's not the real question to explain the expanding result. For the answer is, expansion is the indicator of growth, life, assurance of continuation. As soon as expansion stops or reverses, you get the indication of stagnation, enthropy, shrinkage, death. It's not a matter of what is, but a matter of which direction you are going.
There was a time in mans ev
That won't happen because beings that are capable of visiting Earth obviously know a helluva lot more than us, enough to abolish religion on their home planet (since religion is obviously filler material to fill in the void left by insufficient knowledge about the universe)
You're cute. Have the aliens told you they abolished religion on their planet? Maybe their religion is simple... maybe you will worship them as god or die, because religion is obviously a powerful controlling mechanism that can use to easily subjegate the unwashed masses.
I believe intelligent life exists beyond Earth.
The real debate is whether intelligent life exists ON Earth.
I guarantee many humans would start worshiping Alpha Centaurians right after they are found.
I'm sure they already have.
Is it because then they might have to consider that a god might have more to think about than their petty affairs, and that the bible might just be pretty limited in galatic terms?
I could say the same thing for you (assuming you're not Christian, which you don't seem to be). Why do you not believe in Jesus Christ? Is it because you might have to consider that God cares about you and your problems (and those of your fellow man) more than anything else, and that the rest of the galaxy is pretty insignificant in comparison?
Note: I am not a Christian. I am not really trying to evangelize. Just saying that you seem to be calling people closed-minded just because they don't believe the same things that you do, and I don't think you'd appreciate it if they did the same thing.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
anyone remember the good old drake equation?
They found bacteria on Mars. There IS life on other planets. Intellegent life? That's still unproven but that wasn't the question.
Of course, so does everyone else. Just that non-smokers have a better quality of life (I don't think somokers can claim its fun to cough up a lung first thing in the morning, look 20 years older than their non-smoking siblings, stinking, or for women to get thickened, node-encrusted vocal chords so they sound like old men, etc).
Then there's the proven link of smoking behaviour and underlying mental illness.
150 years ago, a doctor would probably never see a single case of lung cancer in his or her career. 40 years ago, the tobacco industry was promoting smoking on TV as a way for women to stay thin, and having doctors smoke on TV shows. What a fuck-up.
Beleifs are never grounded in facts. If they were, they'd be facts. Ask a non-idiot about what he/she believes in. Nobody, "tolerant" or not thinks that beliefs are based on facts. What cannot currently be explained by fact is explained by belief.
Theories of the origin of our universe range in supporting evidence. None of the theories are bulletproof, or "grounded in facts". Nothing in science is grounded in facts, much less quasi-science.
Science as textbooks define it starts with a hypothesis... a random idea. As a scientist you look around for supporting evidence. If you're really well respected and a few people agree with you, this theory (with supporting evidence) will be raised to a "law".
You can see the failure of this scientific method with a simple real-life example. Hypothesis: there are nine marbles in Sack A. Evidence: compare weight of sack with weight of one individual marble. Theory: There are ten marbles in Sack A. Now think outside the box: There is no foundational principle that says all marbles must weigh something.
Even in a very simple scientific observation many assumptions are made.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
The reason more individuals take pot shots at Christians is because they are by FAR the majority in this country; almost every single elected representative in Congress is Christian.
No one is threatening the rights of Christian Americans by summarily imprisioning them; the same can't be said for those of the Muslim faith in America. Don't give me the crap about the new rise of secularists in America; take a good hard look at the US Senate/House (Hint: what state is the Senate majority leader from?) and who has more sway there before you start spouting random rebuttals about prayer in schools/pledge of allegiance. After that, think hard about those new evolution stickers.
Besides, there's no need to make fun of Muslims when there's already deep-seated hatred in this country of people from the Middle East who aren't Israeli. In short, it's very different to make fun of a persecuted minority vs. a dominant majority with powerful lobbysts.
Believed they were kidnapped by said aliens.
I post a direct quote from the man himself, who describes himself as a agnostic, believing only in what there is evidence for. You say this is out of context.
Then you post a quote and links to creatists trying to paint "Scientism" as a religion presumable then they can get rid of that pesky science thing that is taught in school if it is really religion.
From your link:
"Why is it then that so many public schools in our country manage to get away with teaching the religions of Scientism and Secular Humanism even in the face of widespread efforts to erect a "wall of separation" between church and state? Where is the indignation and litigation of the American Civil Liberties Union who seem to fancy themselves as the "watch dog" against the inroads of religion in our public schools? Has the ACLU decided that there are acceptable and unacceptable religions for our public schools?"
I have read Contact, Pale Blue Dot, and Demon Haunted World. Read numerous interviews, interviews with his wife. In every word and deed Carl was completely non religious. He was following the evidence. Opening our minds while simultaneously grounding us in reality.
I will greatly miss his Candle in the Darkness...
I'm getting more and more convinced that polls can not be used as an accurate representation of a population's feelings towards something. And typically, I do my best to ignore them.
First, because I don't believe the very small sample sizes can really fully show an accurate picture of the entire population's feelings. 1,000 out of 250+ million with only a ~3% margin of error? I'm sorry, but no. (I should note that my failure to trust in the accuracy of small sample sizes, no matter how much math you throw at it, made statistics a difficult course for me).
Second, because I think polls are often constructed in such a way where questions manage to get worded so they don't really get after the original intent. I had the opportunity to work as an outside consultant a few years back for an IT build out imitative for a large public university system. As we were developing the guidelines for the build out, the powers that be brought in an polling firm. It turned out developing the questions for the survey became the most difficult and frustrating portion of the entire project. It also became very clear that the polling firm was "modifying" the intent of the questions to fit the agenda of the administration.
For example, the subject came up about putting new computers in computer labs, and the age old debate of "should we buy PCs or Macs" started up (these were non-CS labs, and it was decided by everyone against something like Linux for a number of reasons I don't want to get into).. "Aha, we'll find that out in the poll" says the administration. The question submitted to the polling company was "While in campus computer labs, would you prefer to work on a PC or a Macintosh?" By the time it went through the administration, the question became "While on campus, do you normally use a PC or a Macintosh?" A subtle difference, but important.
When the poll was finally administered, it turns out that the answer to that question reflected the percentage of PCs to Macintoshes currently on the school campuses (about 70% PC, 30% Mac). This is despite the fact that most students I spoke with would much prefer to use the PCs, but often just went to the Macs because the lines were always shorter in the Mac labs. Had the question been asked as it was written, most of us involved with the project expected we'd see more around an 85%-15%.
When I hear about polls that make statements like "60% of Americans believe there is life on other planets", I always wonder what, exactly the question they asked was. Most polls don't say this, but thankfully this one had a link where you could see what the questions actually are. The first question, the big one read:
Do you believe that there is life on other planets in the universe besides earth?
With possible answers of "Yes, No, and I don't know".
Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, not really. If I had been asked that question, I'd probably end up in the "I don't know" category. To me, the word "believe" implies certainty. I would say that it's highly likely that there is extraterrestrial life, but I really don't know for sure. Had there been an option of "Probably", or if the question was "Do you think it's likely that there is life on other planets in the universe besides Earth", I would have no problem saying yes, and I think the results would be different.
I mean, if someone asked me "Do you believe the 101 Freeway will be congested tomorrow morning during rush hour?" and only give "Yes", "No" and "I don't know" as options, I'd answer I don't know, despite the fact that unless something very major was going on that I didn't know about I'm pretty much sure that the 101 is going to have heavy traffic.
What gets me is I've been polled a few times by telephone, and ended up frustrating the pollsters because they often asked for "yes" or "no" answers to questions that needed better qualification. One I remember well was from a large alcohol company that made rum. After asking me about the fre
The Internet is generally stupid
Oh and I forgot the one we all hope for which is a coming breakthrough in instant communications, warp drive, or ability to see phenomena that are now invisible, etc. i.e. there is more to physics than we know yet.
Hello, just thought I'd answer 2 questions and help clarify some bits..
"I'm confused why only 46% of christians believe that aliens exist. Is it because then they might have to consider that a god might have more to think about than their petty affairs, and that the bible might just be pretty limited in galatic terms?"
- Mr. Bendy, above
The bible never claimed to be, or was claimed by bible-readers to be a know-it-all book. You cannot find the proof or counter-proof to evolution in it. You cannot find the laws or gravity or electro-magnetism in it. BTW, the bible is *not* against evolution. (But that's another huge story.)
What the bible claims to be however, is that it is complete and sufficient for our salvation. All we need to know to be right with God is in it. Seen in this context, it can be said the bible contains the truth.
The whole of the Old Testament is a story about creation, the fall of man, the flood, the history of Israel (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and how they got to Egypt), escape from Egypt with Moses, etc. One has to bear in mind when reading the OT that it is not a scientific account of the history of the world. You won't find anti-evolution in it.
The OT is written in a "poetic" form which contains many allegories. So creation in 6 days may or may not be 6 actual days as we know it. The main point is that God formed the world out of nothingness and lots of water.
Therefore, the bible says nothing about the presence of aliens. This question is best left to scientists who have the expertise and equipment to answer. The existence of aliens does not change anything about the bible, God, our relationship with God or make me any less sinful. Either I believe Jesus, repent and by God's grace obtain eternal life; or continue to rule my own sinful life and have eternal punishment.
"What is a more likely "Intelligent Designer": a mythical spirit which used to do miracles all the time, before recording could corroborate it, or an alien intelligence, different from us in that it is adapted to live outside the Earth's environment?"
-Doc Ruby, above
The miracles performed by Jesus were and indeed recorded in the New Testament by people who followed Jesus during his ministry on Earth. The ancient Jews treated their scriptures (The OT) with such reverence it was taken very well care of and preserved to a good degree.
You may say that was 2000 years ago, but Julius Caesar existed slightly before Jesus yet we take Julius as a given, as simple truth? What about Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Scipio Africanus etc? These guys were from the time before Jesus came. We know of these people via recordings made long ago. Therefore it is not true to say that there is a lack of corroborating evidence.
In fact, if you would check the numbers yourself, there are many more manuscripts about Jesus (numbering thousands) than there are about the generals of old (probably tens). Also, the first manuscripts on Jesus were written just a few years after his death, leaving less time for "legend" to kick in, compared to maybe a hundred years for the said generals.
You may say that the New Testament synoptic (meaning same time and by vision i.e. witness) gospels are lies. All but one of the apostles were martyred, i.e. killed for their faith. It is very unlikely that anyone would die for something they know to be not true, if you think about it. This is also another big issue which can't be covered in detail here, but can easily be resolved by books and the like.
Thanks for taking the time to read through this relatively long post; I hope it helped.
...there's GOT to be.
The geek shall inherit the earth.
I'm probally missing something here but...
* More men than women believe life exists on other planets, 69% vs. 51%
120%?
Check out this guy who can summon UFOs on demand. Has a link to a news broadcast where they filmed him doing it. Shocked the hell out of the camera crew
Looks a whole lot like an iridium flare to me. Iridium flares are reflections of the sun off of satellites. Some flares can reach magnitude -8 or so, which is actually bright enough to be visible during the daytime.
It would be nice if the news crew had reported the date and time of the "sighting" so it could be cross-referenced with the predicted flares at heavens-above.com. Check out the site to catch a glimpse of flares visible in your area.
Any message we send into space should have the return address set to: earthlings(at)planet-earthNOSPAMPLEASE.net
That would be damn cool, but some of the biggest events might have been ignored at the time.
Jesus pops to mind. Christianity didn't really take off until he was dead. Any outside observers simply wouldn't have been paying him much attention.
Or who knows - maybe the aliens were rooting for the aboriginal peoples of the Americas and concentrated all of their attention there, ignoring the rabble over in Europe.
aaaannndd...I just realized how stupid I sound throwing a fly into this most unlikely of ointments. Ah well - Submit!
Last post!
Sir Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."
Bernard Woolley: "Is that really what they do?"
Sir Humphrey: "Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result."
Bernard Woolley: "How?"
Sir Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample."
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I can't wait till NASA launches the Terrestrial Planet Finder system to look for Earth-sized planets circling around nearby stars. If TPF does find these planets--and discovers that the atmosphere of discovered planet has a strong oxygen/ozone/water vapor presence--then the chances of life existing on that planet will be very high indeed.
Right now, the big mission that will determine if there is life on other planets is the Mars Science Laboratory lander/rover that will arrive at that planet early in 2010. Equipped with very sophisticated instrumentation to find lifeforms on Mars, if MSL determines that life exist on Mars now, then the chances for life existing on Earth-sized (or somewhere close in size) planets orbiting other stars increase dramatically.
otherwise, we're not interested.
--10scjed IANAL,AFAIK
On the other hand, they could go "Hah hah, we got them to trade their entire methane supply for a few kilotons of crystallized carbon and that useless metal Element 79. Morons. Quick, lets go back to the homework and get another batch so we can barter for their amusingly rustic art, like Master of Orion 3 and Gigli."
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
...or at least we should. If "over 400 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret" isn't good enough, then dismiss all of these as swamp gas while you are at it.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
I mean, seriously, how can you not believe in UFOs when they are so prevalent that the Illuminati can't keep them out of Google maps?
This isn't exactly news. Nor is it really news that Iran is ordering its military to shoot them down.
"respond to this message if you wish to be destroyed"
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
90% say if we receive a message from another planet we should reply.
So when the aliens attack, only 10% of us will be wearing our aluminum foil helmets?! I need to go warn somebody fast!
yeah, manuscripts... too bad you didn't bring up the Shroud of Turin...because that was proven to be a fake...made by a brilliant artist who had a sense of humor and a pair of balls.
and the apostles? please, this world is full of weak-minded people who will follow just about anyone.. like Osama bin Laden. He promised them eternal life and added a bunch of virgins as a bonus.
I guess religion and more importantly the belief that if they are good they are going to live forever keeps most religious people going.
worse than christians are the agnostic bunch that thinks aliens came to earth and built or helped build pyramids... They are worse because they claim to be men and women of science (more like sci-fi) but then completely disregard rational explanation - egyptians understood geometry and applied physics...just like the guy who built the Coral Castle. Sure, it took him 30 years but I guess with 20,000 slaves one can build something faster or a lot bigger.
http://www.coralcastle.com/
Maybe so, but you have to be specific in a Poll, especially when words and phrases hold different meanings to different people.
If I'm doing a poll on alien spacecraft in or around Earth's atmosphere, I'm going to very well ask about alien or non-human spacecraft. Of course, anytime you ask 'do you believe X exists', you should be aware that you're going to find 'kooks'. Whether X be aliens, faries, dragons, angels, or even God.
But if I was trying to increase the numbers, I might ask about UFO's. My own answer to whether I believe that manned alien spacecraft are visiting earth would be 'unlikely', because I feel it's very hard to prove a negative. I'd answer 'Yes' to the UFO question. I'd answer 'Yes' or 'Almost Certain' to the life on other planets question.
I don't read AC A human right
Odd isn't it? Christians don't believe in aliens. But crazy rednecks do, as they are abducted all the time. However, all crazy rednecks are christian zealots! It's a paradox! Space-time, you say? Hah! ps. I'm a Christian, and have never seen any reason to either believe or disbelieve in the existence of aliens. I am fairly well read, and have never come across something in the bible that would make the issue a deal breaker. I'd suggest to someone telling people they can't receive salvation if they believe in aliens should take a break and crack open the bible. ;P
Let's just hope they don't ask to be taken to our leader.
What difference does that make? Science and reason have been along for quite a while now, and yet still many doubt/are unaware of fundamental scientific advances.
If aliens suddenly come down from heaven with the Truth, I'd guess that 1/3 of the world will believe them mindlessly and possibly form a new religion, 1/3 will believe them after methodical inquiry, and 1/3 will stick to their old beliefs regardless of the validity of the aliens' claims.
I always suspect that, if we "met" aliens, they'd be so far beyond us, we'd have essentially nothing to say to them.
I wouldn't fear that they'd take our homes. I'd fear that they would find us a nuisance.
I mean, how often do you dream about taking the ant's home from them, so you can use up all their resources and suck them dry?
You don't. We don't care about ant homes. We don't care about stealing their babies from their mothers. We don't think any of those things, that we fear so much from "the aliens."
They probably don't need our precious Earth. If they can make it all the way out here, they've probably got something else going on such that anything Earth would give them is totally irrelevant. They're probably cyborgs, or computers, or cross-dimensional beings, or something like that.
No. What I fear is annoying the hell out of them. I fear being termites, or ants that are going after scraps too aggressively, or something like that.
Because when people get mad at the termites, they really go after the termites.
the answer to the second part of the poll would be, "but, their speech patterns are wooden."
Well, I thank you for taking the honor this time around. By that I mean, every time a story about aliens comes up, someone makes a post like this. Unfortunately the history of ufology is an obscure one, long since rejected by science and subjected to incessant ridicule, very few people are willing to take the statements of people like this at face value, because they believe they are being made in a vacuum.
The problem is compounded when you still have a few kooks mixed in with the credible people. Anytime one of them is exposed the baby is once again thrown out with the bathwater. Only those who invest significant hours in doing reading/research by themselves can get at a reasonable picture of what is currently known. Without any serious motivation to do so or the promise that anything is there to make it worth it, few people choose to do so.
I would say there is progress being made though. For those who want a respectable quick assessment, check out INFLATION-THEORY IMPLICATIONS FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITATION by DEARDORFF/HAISCH/MACCABEE/PUTHOFF (JBIS, Vol. 58, pp. 43-50) A very compelling argument about why close minded rejection of this phenomenon needs to end (and the first paper on this topic to be published in a mainstream refereed journal in a very long time).
Outside the realm of science, I don't think the general public will catch onto this in any greater magnitude until someone makes it a serious national political issue.
I can prove it. Ebay Search Another Somewhere out there there is life!
Somebody said alien, and she thought they meant illegal alien and signed up!
As a race, we are simply bastards from hell. We grow like weeds, are greedy, short sighted, end up killing significant percentages of our own lot every 10 years or so, arrogant as hell, shit where we eat....
Anyone advanced enough to actually be in a position to address us, knows better!
Blogging because I can...
I guess that we Christians are generally just a bit more skeptical than those gullible atheists ;-)
Well I kinda came up with my own political philosophy a while back, maybe it's a form of democracy, I don't know... also, it needs a better name. :-)
Accountabilitarianism
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Any species that moves off-planet in a big way goes into nanotech Singularity and will have absolutely NO interest in communicating with semi-intelligent chimpanzees.
As for this planet, UFOs are most likely the Transhuman (or Trans-whatever-the-hell-they-were-before) descendants of a species which got intelligent before chimpanzees did. A mere few hundred years would have been sufficient given the acceleration of technology stimulated by the discovery of nanotech and advanced physics. Add on another fifty thousand since then as we evolved, and I'd say they are either several billion years ahead of us technologically, OR they reached whatever end point there is in technology.
Which is why the phenomena is so weird and why we (as humans) will never comprehend it.
SETI is SO irrelevant as to be ridiculous.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
500 years ago if we asked people if earth where flat, more than 99% of population in europe would have say "yes".
When did the earth change its shape ?
Today SETI asked whether people believe in ET life form. What does it mean ? Nothing.
In fact THERE is prooved Extra Terrestrial life form. Not many though. There are a few spacemen in orbit...
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Even if life, intelligence and civilization are a common occurrence, which I very much doubt, the distances involved will make any communication, let alone contact impractical. Chances of that happening in my lifetime tend to 0.
As a race, we are simply bastards from hell. We grow like weeds, are greedy, short sighted, end up killing significant percentages of our own lot every 10 years or so, arrogant as hell, shit where we eat.... Anyone advanced enough to actually be in a position to address us, knows better!
You are completely mistaken. Compared to other species on our planet our reproduction is very slow. Also in comparison our thinking is long term. And other species are often very greedy and destroy habitat, nature keeps things in check by limiting the population size not by removng the greed.
Regarding our violence well we are the decendants of the survivors of ruthless competition for limited resources. You can not expect to completely undo millions of years of natural selection with a handful of years of pacifist philosophy. I'm not implying that pacifist philosophy is new, just that it has not been very successful historically and has to be periodically rediscovered. Pacifists need isolation or friendly non-pacifists to protect them from the hostile non-pacifists.
Now it is naively optimistic to think that any other civilization that evolves in a competitive environment and achieves a high level of technology would be completely devoid of aggressive and exploitive tendancies. Such beliefs are the stuff of TV Sci Fi. Given a non-competitive environment the rise to hi tech may never occur, an intelligent species may be quite happy and content as things are.
In short if aliens show up they will most likely not be evaluating our readiness for membership in peaceful galactic federation. More likely they will be evaluting whether or not we are an exploitable resource. Thankfully we will probably never run into anyone else. Someone else is probably out there but they are also probably so far away we will never meet. We are probably isolated and probably better off that way. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
As someone who smokes i um have to totaly agree ;) , Ofcourse it is mainly the Addiction thing keeping me doing it but i intend on stopping smoking on monday (I will no ifs no buts no maybes). . . .
.Moral arguments aside whether smoking Pot is wrong or not (no worse than drinking booze and perhaps alot better IMO) But if your going to do , dont catch a tobacco addiction at the same time .
You know they say Pot is a gateway drug , well thats very true but not a gateway drug to Contraband
Its what started me smoking , got addicted via Joints when i was in my teens (too late did i discover the Joys of a bottle or a bong)
Now i dont smoke pot anymore but still stuck with the Ciggarets
For the love of god people , if your going to smoke pot then do it using a method that does not require tobaco
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
It's because God created the universe for Man to rule. That 'Man' is us humans. According to the Bible, there is no other life in the universe.
A strong christian once told me that all the stars we see on the sky is just a skybox (much like in FPS games) painted by God with little stars, because God would not waste resources in order to impress us.
Another time I had a muslim friend which told me that angels are built out of light.
What the hell can one expect then if people believe such things? we are doomed!
Well, the problem is that the things that Bush is most unpopular for are the things that he's done outside of the region of the world where people get to vote for him.
How many Iraqis got to vote for the US president? Don't you think the outcome of the last election affected them on an individual level more than you?
Ignoring whether or not the war was good or bad, it doesn't make a lot of sense to crowd behind democracy when people are most critical of a leaders forein policy. It's pretty wacky to assume that the will of 4% (about 1.5% if we're just counting those that actually voted) of the world's population should be juggling the fate of much of the remaining 96% under the banner of democracy.
And only 1% of extraterrestrial life thinks there is intelligent life in the US :-D
With the large number of posts quoting statistics on this article (over 30 or so) I would remind people that almost 67% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Rightly, people must be free to believe (and Believe) what they want, since none of us has the mental capacity to completely comprehend the universe or each other.
Leave them to their Beliefs, and concentrate your mental energies on more productive pursuits.
If only I'd figured this out when I was 18...
Stick Men
Vasquez?
A blog about stuff.
Sorry, couldn't resist! ;p
seriously.
My other first post is car post.
I think it has been the subject of several Sci-Fi stories too. I remember on where this guy is traveling from planet to planet, trying to get to the one he (Jesus) has last been born on but never catching up.
If my understanding of Christianity is correct though, Jesus would only need to die for their sins if the species had Original Sin, like the humans getting booted from Eden. But I'm sure bettter versed people can argue that one to death.
First, because I don't believe the very small sample sizes can really fully show an accurate picture of the entire population's feelings. 1,000 out of 250+ million with only a ~3% margin of error? I'm sorry, but no.
First you have the 3% random error. Then you have the systematic error, which you can not quantify. As an example, my mom will never answer a poll. Assuming there's some corrolation between not answering polls and the subject of the poll, the results are skewed. Same with availability. I got a cell phone, no landline. My parents only have a landline. Many others have both. Where do you pick the numbers from? One or the other, or both and let those have twice the odds of being called? The odds of reaching me is much higher, since I carry my phone at all times. Usually they call for one in the household. What if we had 3 cell phones instead? Would we then have three chances of being picked out instead of one?
Overall, they're fairly good at balancing it out. The best example is polls and an election. Sure, they may bounce up or down a few percent (remember at +/-3% you can go from -3% to +3% from one poll to the next) but it works.
The real question as you say the wording, not only of each question but the ordering. If you ask specific questions, which invokes certain thoughts and examples, then "pull back" and generalize you can make people answer almost exactly what you want them to.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How many americans belive life exists out side of America
about 6.0%
--
We wouldnt be making it easier for the aliens by killing our own species. If theres aliens, beware of humans, we are a suicidal species who will kill anything in our path including ourselves.
Really, it doesn't matter if you believe in alien intelligence, because alien intelligence believes in you
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
The study claims that the majority of mentally ill people smoke. You turn this around to imply that the majority of smokers are mentally ill. That just isn't very sound logic.
I have a friend who works as a social worker for people with mental illness and predominantly schizophrenics. She tells me that the smoking rate amongst these people is very nearly 100% and that they smoke very heavily compared to your normal smoker (which would explain why so many cigarettes are purchased by these people). Why? Because something about nicotine is very medicative to these people and helps them control the symptoms of their disease.
(Interestingly, according to her, most schizophrenics, despite their poor lifestyles, also live into a surprisingly ripe old age.)
As a former smoker who is mentally sound and who knows many smokers, I've seen no evidence of mental illness in any of the tobacco consumers that I know. I think your post is just another derogatory attempt to demonize people who choose to use tobacco.
If we all agreed to live under a system of rules we could justify every action that our government makes mathematically. But how do you agree on the axioms? We come back to democracy.
Why should all people agree on just one system of rules? Wouldn't it be better to choose a system of rules we're willing to follow individually? With only a low common denominator in the rules, several cultures or subcultures can exist in parallel.
likewise, show me evidence of jesus, alah, that taxes are LEGAL, and that there is good vs evil and that heaven and hell exist.
meanwhile there is firm reason to believe that the govt wants aliens kept secret, since it would undermine their authority if aliens can offer 1000x more wealth and money and no taxes and infinite help.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Any physical life forms, obeying the laws of physics as we know them cannot be too radically different from life on earth.
That's a anthropocentric prejudice, similar to thinking that Earth is the center of the universe (isn't it obvious?). Also your phrase "Because the laws of physics appear to operate uniformly throughout the Universe as far as we have observed until now, the only physical life allowed must be based on carbon, just like life on Earth" is more a guess than an established fact.
Have you seen Solaris? (the novel, not the movies). It described an alien intelligent life in the form of a whole planet: the ocean itself had evolved to react to the environment in order to sustain its existence.
That lifeform wouldn't have a need to "communicate", "feed" itself or any other action that we usually relate to life. This kind of "alien" life is what the previous poster was arguing. It has nothing to do with spirituality, the Bible or alternate planes of existence.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I mean, i think if we found bunny rabbit like creatures on another planet that would be cool, but would that qualify as intelligent life? What about primate-like or dolphin-like? Would that be considered intelligent?
I think there's life out there, but it's more likely that we're not going to recognize it right away. It's more likely to be adapted to its environment, like we have to ours, and depending on what their environment looks like...
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Aliens probably wouldn't take over Earth for its resources (unless we happen to be located conveniently close to a wormhole or some such), but they might like it as a new home. Planets with a suitable gravity and atmosphere, and with an agreeable local biosphere, might be quite rare. Perhaps they'll settle here, and see us much as we see ants on a tropical island that we want to settle: not much of an annoyance at all, and perhaps something fun to set fire to when we're bored.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Good guess - I'm not a christian :). And I'm not really having a go at any religion in particular (in spite of the post title). But I find all the main monotheistic religions to be very earth-focused. Of course modern technology did not exist in Jesus' time. But Alien life presumably did. Surely God would have revealed this at some point.
I'm not a hugely familiar with the bible, so I'm prepared to be corrected, but does the bible not say the man was created in God's image, and doesn't mention god creating any other planets even?
If Jesus is the son of god, then he must be omnipotent. Surely he would have mentioned that God was the God of the universe, and was going to save all civilisations, not just humanity?
I think the real point I was trying to make was that logic and rational thought would dictate that Alien life must exist somewhere in the universe, in some form. Yet only 46% Christians believe this to be so. Do they believe that because of their religious principals, or because they don't believe on a rational level?
Still not clear on this...
Er.. what's wrong with people finding a point of view interesting?
Let me guess, not the same as yours?
....is whether life exists in the White House....
You should read the Bible again. The Jews are the "chosen ones that God looks out for". Of course, the Jews were chosen by God because they were the most stubborn people on Earth - if God could convince them, he could convince anyone...
Christians are just the ones who accepted God's forgiveness somewhat later. An entirely different deal than the one offered to Abraham and company.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You're anthropomorphizing. Big mistake.
Another possibility is that life on other planets won't exist anytime while humans exist - either it's already died out, or won't happen until we go extinct or revelations happens, whichever you like - and so God/Jesus had no reason to mention it. Maybe once we're gone, God plans to start over with a new race on another planet and hope that they won't eat the damn apple this time. If you're thinking totally rationally about this, there's no reason to think that life must exist elsewhere in the universe at the same time we exist, given the miniscule amount of time we've been here (and are likely to stay here).
And Genesis does say that god made the heavens, including the sun, moon, and stars. You're right, it doesn't specifically mention other planets, though. I suppose that could be interpreted as there not being any other planets, or just that they're not important enough to mention them apart from stars.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
It also gave rates of mental illnes for the population at large (around 20% in any given year)
Take the smokers out of the equation and the rate of mental illness drops.As for your slur against me, trying to say that I'm attempting to demonize people who "choose to use tobacco", you also fail to note that I pin the blame on the manufacturers and marketers. They ruthlessly exploited a sizeable portion of the population.
Given the high rates of mental illness (1 in 5), I find it extermely unlikely that your statement
is an accurate reflection of what's really going on in the world around you. Even if their rate of mental illenss was no greater than the general population, you'd still probably know a few people who are having trouble coping, or are depressed, or "too stressed out", and not dealing with it.Oh, BTW, living with a schizophrenic is a health risk. It's not nice to say, but sometimes the truth is ugly.
The reason is very simple - to use your terms - life doesn't exterminate life. It creates conditions conducive to more life.
"8 out of 10 Americans think it is likely that the intelligent life forms on other planets are more advanced than us"
"7 out of 10 Americans think that these life forms have the technology to communicate across deep space".
That means 1 in 10 think they would be more advanced than us, but remain unable to communicate across space...
eh?
Smoking joints does not require tobacco! Kids out there, do not put tobacco in your joints! It's disgusting. Why would you pay for nice potent crystally dank and then ruin it by adulturating with tobacco? You wanna smoke that cheeba straight man.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Totally political post which is false and uses an argument from the Bush administration's bag. I say castration is in order.
I expect you to support a comment like that, with a WWW.GNAA.US link under your username
Get your Unix fortune now!
You are obviously completely without a clue. On the road to transhumanism, there will likely be mistakes just as there were with early medical sciences. However, considering the much more advanced technologies we have today in comparison to early doctors, the mistakes are less likely to be as widely spread. As our technology improves and the human animal is evolved forward in a synergy with machine, the small minded, like yourself, will be relegated to primitive 21st century lifestyles. The man/machine hybrid is the way of the future. We are simply augmenting both man and machine. Man will acquire perfection of thought, enhancement of intellect and senses and machine will acquire emotion, compassion and the most important force of all: LOVE. A machine that is capable of loving will be the ultimate expression of life. A man that is capable of being simultaneously throughout the universe is the ultimate expression of life. But your puny mind is too primitive to comprehend that. And that is the same for others who scoff at metaman. Remember that at one point there was a day when people scoffed at men flying. Today they do it by the billions. Transhumanists are simply doing what the most enlightened men of every age have always done: improving and augmenting the human animal. Without our machines we are nothing. Without us, our machines are nothing. Together we will expand throughout the universe on a mission of peace to help other races to evolve in the same way. Those who wish to not participate can lead their pedestrian lives with limited lifespans. Those who wisely choose to join with us will take the next step in the evolution of the entire universe!! Join us now!!! In the end we will be right!!!!! All those who scoffed will be dead matter in the ground, but se shall persist for the whole of time from the beginning of the universe to the end of existence!!!!!!!!!!! EXTERMINATE!!!!!! EXTERMINAAAAAAATE!!!!!!!!!! EXTERMINAAAAAAAAA[TT]E THE DOCK-TOR!!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...really wants to get rid of democracy. The real issue is the framework we build on top.
A direct democracy does not work simply because there are too many issues, and not enough time. Even the Congressman in Fahrenheit 911 admitted they don't read most of the bills, and that's a full-time job with support staff. Imagine trying to keep up with it all on your spare time, not counting how fun it would be.
So instead, we've made simplifications. In the earliest days, people voted for representatives, which left dozens of candidates. Then we invented parties, which reduced it to a handful. The US took that to an extreme and effectively reduced it to two choices. The challenge is to allow those with a qualified opinion and interest a greater participation in government, without making it a voice of irrational and uninformed micromanagement.
One example could be to make all people equal but not identical. Draw up some boundaries and let people pick say 2 out of 10 areas they would like to have a closer opinion on. Everyone would decide on the big lines of dividing the budget between areas, and you'd lose 80% of the least interested voters in deciding anything within each area.
So Alice can have an opinion on healthcare and military spending, Bob on education and foreign policy, Charlie on culture and infrastructure. Or they can all be Alices, or all Bobs. Each person has exactly as much power as the rest, but each persons influence is limited. A media frenzy can't make Alice and Bob do some stupid uninformed decision when it comes to Charlie's areas, at least not until next election, when they get to choose new areas.
Those in power today would rather goverance was left to them, and claim that more direct democracy can only lead to mob rule and irrational, media driven decision. It is not true, but who has ever given up their power willingly? It is possible to take goverance out of the hands of the representatives and into the hands of the well-informed masses, giving up no less power than today by electing representatives. That is about more self-rule, more self-determination than choosing Republican or Democrat twice a decade.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
By "life exists on other planets" do they mean other planets in our solar system or outside of it? The rationality of the answer would depend largely on this interpretation. I believe a similar survey some years ago found that a lot of americans believed that NASA had already sent astronauts to Mars - so you can see how poorly informed most people are about the current state of space science.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
You just used the definition of existetntialism as a universal truth and people modded you insightful.
That is tantamount to me saying "Jesus is Lord" or "Allah is the only Way." All three are just one persons belief and they have no evidence to suggest otherwise.
I don't know which is funnier, you or the mods!
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Suicide is killing yourself. A lot of smokers have underlying mental problems, and smoking is a form of "self-medication".
And that makes it equivalent to suicide? According to your definition, anyone who uses any sort of non-food substance is suicidal, not just smokers. People who drink, smoke weed, take pills - they're all pretty equally likely to kill you in excess or with consistent use over time.
Besides, smoking just works. People don't do drugs, drink liquor, and smoke cigarettes because they hurt their bodies - they do those things because THEY WORK. A cigarette WILL make you feel better after a long day, as will a stiff drink or a nice joint.
So perhaps the majority is not only incorrect, but mind numbingly stupid.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I'd hope the numbers would drop if they rephrased the questions:
Q. Do you believe there is such a thing as a UFO?
A. Yes, it just means something we can't identify.
Q. Do you believe UFOs are actually spaceships controlled by alien life forms?
A. No
Q. Do you believe there is intelligent alien life anywhere else in the universe.
A. Yes, based the size of the universe the odds are just too great for there not to be.
Q. Do you believe intelligent alien life has visited the Earth?
A. No, it is more likely they would try some form of e/m radiation to communicate instead.
Funny how the people who believe the most strongly in alien visitations also believe in angelic visitations (or they share common beliefs). I think there is a primitive need in these people for a savior figure from above to come and take care of them. Maybe it is a leftover from infancy and needing a protective parent.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
No, there's no "translation" - it's simple English. There are many distortions available to degraded minds, like your projected hatred. Anonymous Cowards like you are so twisted, everything you say and hear is spoken in code. Total dishonesty creating a simulated reality composed of fear. No wonder you're desperate to believe in imaginary salvation and damnation - you're stuck in a living hell, thrashing against imagined enemies.
--
make install -not war
if 60% of americans believe aliens exist -- then it
just 'must be so' -- after all, 7% of americans still
think elvis is alive -- can 21 million people be wrong!?!?
'For a successful technology, reality must take precedence
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled'
(Richard Feynman)
I find your counter opinion very interesting.
Of course I took the utopian view. Guess that's a direct reflection of my self image huh?
If they are indeed aggressive as you say, we are toast and better off.
Cheers!
Blogging because I can...
I forgive you.
--
make install -not war
This is more or less the Fermi paradox, i.e. the first civilization which develops the ability to colonize space, will do it in no time.
If this is correct then we can only expect to discover ruins from civilizations advanced enough to build artifacts that will last for millions of years. Like stars arranged in patterns which spell "ET was here".
So. lets see some proof, bigmouth.
Q: Do you think little green men come to earth and grab White Trash. Then take them back to their space ships and shove things in their Asses A: No Q: Does life only exist on Earth? A: That is Statically improbable, so No
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
Unless those aliens are just as stupid and narrow-minded as your average human is, but used some earlier race's technology. You know, sort of how Europeans ripped off the Asian civilizations and used it to claim every strip of territory that they could, often with a hail of bullets.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, that's NOT what I did. I pointed out a serious logical mistake (anthropomorphization - the attribution of human characteristics to non-human objects) of the poster I was replying to.
- Suicide is killing yourself
- A lot of smokers are mentally ill
- They smoke to self-medicate - rather than get help.
I think you fail to see the wisdom in doing step # 3 - why bother continuing a habit that will kill you when you can deal with the underlying cause?For example, we know that 1 out of 5 people suffer from some form of mental illness at any particular time, and that 1 out of 20 are pretty much chronically mentally ill.
Now lets look at another stat - 1 out of 4 women, and 1 out of 10 men, have been the victims of sexual abuse. How much do you want to bet that the majority of them smoke, continuing to "punish" themselves for something that isn't even their fault?
Actually both you and the grandparent poster stated your personal beliefs, nothing more.
One said that the universe has meaning because his God told him what it was.
The other said that there is no purpose to the universe; didn't give a reference to why he believes this, but with the lack of evidence to the contrary (other than all the religious texts in history, dubious as they are to some people) this can be taken at face value.
Take it as an example that both of you could be wrong. There could be a meaning and purpose to the universe/life and it may be different than what the grandparet thinks it is (experience, knowledge, and such).
Stating that the universe has no meaning and life has no purpose has as much weight as someone stating that it does. Until you can stand outside the universe and explain in minute detail the exact workings of all things in and outside of it you can't make a dogmatic statement of this kind without falling prey to the argument of "faith". By the argument of "faith" I mean that you are relying on your own faith and not empirical evidence for your statement.
Just because you have no evidence of the universe caring or having a specific meaning dosen't mean that it dose not. Similarly, just because the grandparent poster thinks it has one dosen't mean that he is right. It either may or may not, and even if it does it might be something different than he believes.
As for anthropomorphising, prove that the universe and life do not have human characteristics or analogues thereof. Don't state your personal belief as proof to the contrary.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
So, until the poster can show ANY evidence that the earth, the universe, or whatever, has an actual purpose (as opposed to just existing), I'm grounded in logic, they're not.
I wanted to explain my conclusion a little more deeply, but didn't want to sound long-winded.
The existance of the sack, and it's basic properties must be agreed upon as well as some basic properties of the objects which may be contined therein to do any real observation.
Here what we see is that a foundation in nonsense must be made to start the scientific process. This process may actually result in something that gives evidence for the original nonsense, or it might just provide a useful result.
Beliefs are that nonsense foundation that cannot be completely explained. We know that there is a foundation for everthing we understand, but that foundation currently cannout be understood. This is where beleif comes in, it is simply a placeholder. Above all, you must believe something. This doesn't mean "there is no wrong religion" however, in theory all possible beliefs but one could be wrong, but they will all lead to a different view of the reality that is understood.
All this to say that any fact unfortunately rises out of a belief, or lack of fact. This is a prevelent idea, and I'm really surprised the OP didn't understand that beleif cannot rise out of fact. Beliefs can only be modified by facts which contradict a philosophy that is already held. When a fact arises from your own philosophy and it contradicts your belief, there is a lack of continuity, and that part which you think you believe you probably do not.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
There may be LOTS of life out there, but we could still be alone, if none of it is intelligent.
Well, 76% of the people polled think that there is at least "somewhat likely" to be intelligent life out there. Compare this to the 60% who think there is life on other planets, and that means at least 16% think there is no life, but that it's intelligent.
(Or in other words, as you keep asking people more questions about it as a poll goes on, their willingness to believe increases. This, of course, being why we turn to the majority opinion for all of our wisdom.)
Regardless, logic and awareness of truth are two entirely different things. Logic, in many circumstances, works to elucidate truth for a myriad of subjects.
Unfortunately I see a disparity in the subjects that you are comparing and the tools you are using.
Namely this: Once you can use logic to explain the creation of the universe and the creation of life you can then legitimately use logic to refute or prove claims on the source, intent, purpose, and meaning of said subjects.
Until that point you are using a mental tool to critically analyze something that it cannot be used to sufficiently explain. Kind of a reverse a fortiori principle if you will. It exposes a weakness in the tool and therefore invalidates the tool at a fundamental level, with respect to the subject at hand.
As an aside, one thing about religions from the ancient past that makes them mentally slippery and shows the foresight and recognition of the same arguments that you are making now: all of the meaning and purpose presupposed in the belief system is redeemable at death, invisible and hidden from those still living, perpetuating the great secret. Pretty slick.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
And when the aliens pull out their quantum scrambler rays and turn the Vatican and Mecca into elementary particles, I suspect that all this talk of Mohammed and Jesus will soon stop.
Morbo congratulates our gargantuan cyborg president. May death come quickly to his enemies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm pretty confused why people take a Bronze Age cosmological myth so damn seriously to begin with.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The problem with your find/replace argument is that "government by the people for the people" is quite different from "health care by specialists for customers".
I'll grant you, it's still pretty amusing, I guess. However, government by specialists for customers is called something else. You'd need a word like Meritocracy (for the specialization) or Plutocracy (for the clout to command the public) that also accounts for the "voting with your wallet" that the word customers implies.
It might be an interesting experiment to just pay for credentialed representation monthly, and when your representation stopped working for you -- you could just go off and get a second opinion, or sign up with someone else. The reason it might be a worthwhile experiment is that politicians would have to use their greed-reflex to please the public and not just wealthy special interests. Soft-money bans and financial transparency would be a requisite. Representatives weight in the senate would be tied directly to the per-person number of their subscriber base.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Unless you can PROVE that a person has a purpose in life over and above what we as humans choose to adduce to it, then you have NO basis for either your claims OR your religious beliefs.
I've always thouoght of the USA as a cartoon. Certainly no country like that could exist in the real world.
SLOGEN [ http://ungdomshus.nu : Sebastian cover music]
Totally political post
Only because people like you politicize it. Anybody who is capable of math and looks closely at it knows that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
which is false
Even the most optimistic and pie-in-the-sky Social Security cheerleaders insist that it will take massive tax hikes and/or draconian cuts to keep Social Security in the black beyond 2040, and God help us all if there's even one more recession during that 35-year interval.
and uses an argument from the Bush administration's bag.
Nice ad hominem. "Look, a polarizing political leader is saying the same thing! It must be extremist dogma!!!"
Rational people on both sides have been pointing out the gaping maw of the coming Social Security collapse for decades now. Hell, half the justification for Clinton's largest tax hike was to "save social security for another 20 years."
I say castration is in order.
I can understand if you don't want to bring kids into the world. It would be nice to know for sure that your bitter rage to die with you... but they can do vascectomies these days. No need to go to such extremes.
I expect you to support a comment like that, with a WWW.GNAA.US link under your username
I don't know what GNAA is, but this sounds like another worthless ad hominem. Do you happen to have any evidence to support your point (such as it is)?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The claim that jesus rose from the dead after 3 days is also not substantiated, and if it were, again, it does not prove his claim to be the son of god. One doesn't flow from the other.
Now we come to something that should be provable. jESUS claimed to have ascended into heaven. Okay, provide proof for either the existence of heaven, or for jesus' continued existence.
Unfortunately, there is no proof for the existence of either heaven or jesus continued existence. Sure, there are people who *choose* to believe, but that is their choice, and it is done without proof (which is why it's called faith, I guess :-) Me, I want proof. Absent proof, its just another story that ranks up there with alien abductions.
Speaking of which, I know someone whose wife claimed to have been abducted by aliens, and her body probed, etc, the whole ball of wax. Doesn't make it true, and there was no evidence for either the aliens or the abduction (on a side note - I told him that, since she insisted this happened, he should stop paying child support for his "alien spawn").
Again, you don't have a purpose other than tht which YOU choose. If you decide tomorrow that your purpose is to do performance art and string toilet paper over people's homes, well, then that's your purpose according to you; it has no scientific validity.
As for proving God doesn't exist, I've already debunked the "Ggod of the Bible" and Jesus often enough, but I'll take a few minutes to start down that path again, seeing as its Tuesday ...
The Bible claims man is a fallen creature who needs to be redeemed. This "fall" is supposed to have been because Man disobeyed God.
However, if you check out the first 3 chapters of Genesis, you see that the situation is far from clear that Man was in the wrong. Man did not have knowledge of good and evil before eating from the tree - "Behold, man is become as one of us, to know good and evil". So, before disobeying, Man was not able to understand the concept of wrong.
Sure, disobedience is "wrong". But if the person who is being disobedient has been deprived of the capacity to understand the concept of disobedience, they are blameless. Especially if the one condemning them for being disobedient is also the same one who withheld the very knowledge they needed in order not to be disobedient.
So, if we take the Bible's view, Man is a faulty product, and the Manufacturer (God) is solely to blame.
Our human system of justice is superior to that of God in the Bible, as we don't allow such entrapments.
So, since the God of the Bible is supposed to be just and perfect, and blaming people for your own mistakes is neither just nor perfect, the God of the Bible does not exist.
It also means that Man is either not a fallen creature, or that Jesus, who, if he is God the Son, is equally imperfect as God the Father and equally blameful, is not sufficient to redeem man. After all, an imperfect sacrifice does not cut it.
But of course, since the God of the Bible \, according to the Bible's own description, is not perfect, we don't have to worry about it.
Similarly, we don't have to worry about our "purpose" in life - it's all what we want to make of it, nothing more, nothing less.
On a side note - this is only one of many flaws in the Bible, but what can you expect; it was written by people to control other people, and more misery has been beset on people because of it than all the world wars combined.
So what? 60% of Americans also believe any number of crazy and contradictory things.
... anywhere besides Earth?
Does it exist you ask? I AM an alien from another planet, you insensitive clod!
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
Why haven't you contacted the aliens? Why is it that we need to have them contact us to prove they exist?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
or "Dianetics".
Could this survey be making the case for accepting the teachings of Scientology?
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
It's surprising it's that low. Obviously life exists on other planets; it would be a massive statistical fluk if it didn't. Probably not on the local ones tho :) (Tho Europa still looks somewhat promising)
Me (Blog)
It would be illogical to ask anyone to forget every fact they've ever learned, to suspend disbielief, when making a decision about whether something is true or not. Certainly, you're not going to get aliens to discard the science, tech, and logic that enabled them to get here ...
This is a prejudgment on your part as to how I originally approached it. It is also irrelevent to the case at hand - which is, produce evidence that would convince either me, or aliens, that heaven, Jesus, or God exist.
Again, you make statements, but fail to back them up with any proof.
You have not offered any proof, in the above, for any of the following assumptions:
All you have done is make assertions, without proof. Neither I nor an alien would be likely to accept those statements at face value. Proof. Not just a claim, but actual, concrete, verifiable proof.
Well, you still haven't offered any proof that man was created, never mind that he was created with free will or not (and how do you reconcile free will with predestination, but that's just another topic). Also, I would not want a wife to serve me, period. I'm not a slave-master. I wouldn't have a problem with cooperating, but if I have to connect all the dots for her, I'd rather find someone with more intelligence. I think aliens, unless they've come here to enslave us, would agree with me.
Again, even if we accept the Bible as authoritative (which you have not offered any proof that we should), it states quite clearly that they had no knowledge of good and evil. No moral being would hold people accountable for something they were incapable of grasping. Would you prefer that our hypothetical aliens hold us to a siomilar standard to the one God supposedly held Adam and Eve to? In that case, we may have already assigned our rights away, because we may have offended their gods without knowing.
If we do good, it is because we want to, not because we have to. If we help people laugh, it is because we want to see them happy, not because of some commandment from on high.
So, who is the better person, the one who does good because his or her religious beliefs constrain them to do so, or the one who does good because it is their nature? The one who doesn't steal because it is sinful, who struggles with this daily in prayer, etc, or the one who doesn't steal because it isn't their nature to be greedy or steal?
I don't need an afterlife, or a "purpose" asigned to me by someone on high, to give my life meaning. It has meaning to me, and that's enough.
I get my pleasures out of helping my daughters, my sisters, enjoying the company of my friends, being creative at my work, walking my dogs, etc.
This is sufficient. Guess that makes me an incurable optimist.
Now, that's one of the most insightful comments I've read on slashdot in five years.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
The binding energies of the carbon atom are neither too strong nor too weak to allow the required complexity of molecules for life functions... as we understand them.
molecules based on silicon are much more difficult to break apart and re-assemble in the myriads of configurations that are constantly happening in all.. earthling life forms
it is very safe to assert that no earth-like life forms can be based on anything other than the element carbon.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
"I am become Gerund, Destroyer of Verbs"
If we only treated those we already know properly, then we'd never get new friends. That we DO in fact develop new friendships shows that we're not rotten to the core by nature.
One of the examples is the "manufactrers defect" argument - for, even if we assume (for the sake of argument) that there is a God, and he created Adam and Eve, we still are left with the problem that the cause of the supposed "fall" would be the refusal of the creator to educate the created.
The existence of the God of the Bible is dependent upon the Bible account being accurate; it isn't, being self-contradictory in many areas, and provably wrong in others, such as condemning homosexuality as being abnormal behaviour ("abomination before God", "worthy of death", etc) - when we know there are both genetic and environmental factors involved, and that it is a common trait among mammals.
So, since the Bible is demonstrably wrong, as well as immoral in that it condemns certain classes of people, it should be discarded; its helped promulgate ignorance for thousands of years, and still does today, with such stupidity as "intelligent creation", which still doesn't answer the question "who created the creator".