Are we alone in the Cosmos? The Bible vs Evolution...

[Rack of T'Pol]

...And really, much more than that...



This is a subject of endless fascination for me personally...Anybody else?


We have The Drake Equation dating back to 1961...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation. This equation was devised by Frank Drake in 1961, in an attempt to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way with which we might come into contact with some day. That number is 10,000 earth-like planets in our galaxy alone.

And this is the number for our own galaxy, the Milky Way only. If I'm not mistaken, science believes there are at least one billion...1,000,000,000...galaxies out there...

So, in the entire universe, one can assume there are ten thousand billion...Or, 10,000,000,000,000...(A number that personally, I can't even comprehend because it's so large)...planets out there that have intelligent civilizations...Now, we add to that, the total number of planets with some kind of primitive life (A number I do not have, but I can only assume is something along the un-stated lines of ten thousand billion to the Nth Degree)...Again...A number so large that I can't even really comprehend it.

Now...I've got a few problems with us calculating this number and using it as a benchmark for civilizations that we might one day come in contact with...





1) Man (Or aliens) traveling at, or faster than, the speed of light. Einstein tells us that the fastest we'll ever move is the speed of light...So, even if we do accept the Drake Equation number of 10,000 planets in the Milky Way that we might come in contact with, we'll never do it because space is so vast...I believe our closest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, is about 4.4 Light Years away...So even at the speed of light, our closest neighbor is 4.4 years away...But, that's not our closest neighbor who might hold intelligent life...So, to reach the stars, to reach any intelligent neighbors we might have, we'll need to move faster than the speed of light...Which, from what I understand, would result in time-travel...In that if we did visit our closest neighbor and then return, hundreds of years would have passed on earth, rather than the total number of years it would take to get to our closest neighbor, and return. And, I don't believe in time-travel because if it was possible, we would already know...In other words, we would have already told ourselves. (This is why I don't believe earth has been visited by UFOs...They would have the same troubles as us concerning light travel/time travel).





2) The bible. If we're to believe in the bible, or a higher being, and 95% of all of the population does believe in a higher being, then why didn't God tell us about little green men in the bible? Rather than only telling us about Adam and Eve?? The bible is supposedly the word of God after all. Of course, those who truly believe in the bible, also believe the earth is only about 6,000 years old...And Man walked with the dinosaurs...Things I have a hard time accepting...But then again, only a short 500 years ago, we all believed earth was the center of the universe. (Damn we've come a long way in a very, very short, as the cosmos' go, time.)

Creationism is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural agency some 6000 short years ago. The history of creationism can be traced back to around the time of Jesus. In the 19th century, geologists and other scientists argued that the world was considerably older than the 17th-century, scripture-based calculation of less than six millennia. In the United States, where "culture is dedicated to a thoroughly scientific outlook but remains firmly rooted in its deeply religious traditions", the apparent discrepancies between science and religion were seized upon and amplified in "cultural warfare" over whether science or religion could provide the most authentically American creation story. By the 1920s, Biblical creationism had become "the standard alternative to scientific explanations of the biosphere.

3) Evolution: My problem with evolution...Supposedly "Man" has only been around for about 160,000 years...Or, to put it more plainly:

According to evolution, man is a “Johnny-come-lately.” He is a newcomer to planet Earth, far removed from the origin of the Universe. If the Universe was born 14 billion years ago, as many evolutionists, theistic evolutionists, and progressive creationists believe, man did not “come along” until about 13.996 billion years later. If such time were represented by one 24-hour day, and the alleged Big Bang occurred at 12:00 a.m., then man did not arrive on the scene until 11:59:58 p.m. Man’s allotted time during one 24-hour day would represent a measly two seconds.

Also: "homo sapiens" which means wise or intelligent has lived from about 250,000 years ago to the present. Between 400,000 years ago and the second interglacial period in the Middle Pleistocene, around 250,000 years ago, the trend in cranial expansion and the elaboration of stone tool technologies developed, providing evidence for a transition from H. erectus to H. sapiens. The direct evidence suggests there was a migration of H. erectus out of Africa, then a further speciation of H. sapiens from H. erectus in Africa (there is little evidence that this speciation occurred elsewhere). Then a subsequent migration within and out of Africa eventually replaced the earlier dispersed H. erectus. This migration and origin theory is usually referred to as the single-origin theory. However, the current evidence does not preclude multi-regional speciation, either. This is a hotly debated area in paleoanthropology.

Current research has established that human beings are genetically highly homogenous, that is the DNA of individuals is more alike than usual for most species, which may have resulted from their relatively recent evolution or the Toba catastrophe. Distinctive genetic characteristics have arisen, however, primarily as the result of small groups of people moving into new environmental circumstances. Such small groups are initially highly inbred, allowing the relatively rapid transmission of traits favorable to the new environment. These adapted traits are a very small component of the Homo sapiens genome and include such outward "racial" characteristics as skin color and nose form in addition to internal characteristics such as the ability to breathe more efficiently in high altitudes.

H. sapiens idaltu, from Ethiopia, lived from about 160,000 years ago (proposed subspecies). It is the oldest known anatomically modern human.

But, I can't help but question that...Only 160,000 years and we've went from throwing feces at our monkey counterparts to fucking around on the internet, using computers that double in technology every year??






4) The longevity of the dinosaurs on earth, and evolution combined...I can't help but look to the dinosaurs where evolution is involved...They were around for something along the lines of 165,000,000 (165 million) years...So, why didn't they evolve into sentient beings in all that time? How could they not have??

Recent discoveries would appear to push the age of the earliest dinosaurs back to at least 232 million years ago. The great Permian/Triassic mass extinction event of 251 million years ago opened the ecological door for the evolution of the dinosaurs. Many scientists now believe that the low atmospheric oxygen levels of the early Triassic (GEOCARB data) led to the evolution of the dinosaurs, which were morphologically more primitive in most respects than the synapsid reptiles (ancestors of mammals) but apparently had a superior respiratory system (as modern birds do). Dinosaurs evolved from a squamate lizard of the early Triassic. As more paleontological discoveries are made it is possible (probable) we may have to push to age of first dinosaur farther back, perhaps as far as 240 million years ago.

The demise of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago due to the visit of a giant asteroid upon the Earth as many believe, leave about 200,000,000, years (Another big number..."Millions") of evolution for the dinosaurs...How could they NOT have evolved into sentient beings?


And, more to the point...If we're to believe we're only 160,000 years old, the universe being about 14 billion years old, 10,000 earth-like worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy, billions of galaxies out there, how could some of them not be millions, or even billions of years old? And if so, what form are they in after all these years? I can't imagine, that if we take evolution at face value, after millions or billions of years, human-like creatures would still be walking around in these extremely fragile bodies...I can only assume that one day, we, and others like us from other worlds out there, will be nothing but pure energy...Taking who knows what kind of visual form??






Anyway...I don't mean to ramble on, but I thought we might discuss the potential for "Aliens" (A favorite subject of mine) in easy to understand terms...Thus the above information.

Personally, aliens, and a hundred other subjects, like who built the pyramids, who built Machu Picchu, who built Stonehenge, etc...are what I look forward to finding-out in the afterlife. (Of course, that is assuming that when we die, we go somewhere like Heaven...And if we do, if we go to live with our creator, God, how could we NOT find the answers to all these questions and more?)

At least believing that is what lets me sleep fairly well at night, and to the much more relevant point of the issue, not fear death.



I'm looking forward to the thoughts of others...Feel free to argue against what I've listed above...No hard feelings...Or agree with it, or parts of it, and then discuss whatever interests you along these lines.



Thanks,

Rack of T'Pol

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

why didn't God tell us about little green men in the bible?

Why should He have? We can find the aliens ourselves. Or they can find us first. In any case, the Bible is about God's relationship with humanity and Jesus' death for our sins. Tell me where, in that equation, aliens could possibly be relevant?

The bible is supposedly the word of God after all.

But it's not ALL of God's word. If He chooses not to tell us about something, it doesn't mean that thing does not exist.

 

[Brent]

This is the way I look at it, the Bible doesn't mention aliens, so it just isn't something we have to worry about. However, that doesn't mean that aliens don't exist. A lot of people assume that for some reason if aliens are discovered that the entire Bible would all the sudden be proven false. I do not believe this. Since they are never mentioned, there is no reason it would render the Bible inaccurate and believers would all the sudden turn atheist. Aliens are not proof that the bible is wrong.

God can exist and the Bible can exist and Aliens can exist, all in the same Universe.

I am a believer of Gods word, and if Aliens are discovered, it only further proves Gods wonder to me. In fact, I'm of the belief that we aren't the only beings God has created. For example, Angels/Demons etc... he created, so why not other things we are not aware of?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yes, we are - and we are not.

 

[Lindley]

So, to reach the stars, to reach any intelligent neighbors we might have, we'll need to move faster than the speed of light...

Not necessarily. There are other options, although they aren't a whole lot more practical at the moment.

Which, from what I understand, would result in time-travel...

Not all forms of FTL imply time travel. One particular theory of wormholes does, actually, but in general, only events on Earth as perceived from the traveler would actually seem to go in reverse once the traveler exceeded light speed. And on the return trip, events would appear to accelerate, so there's no way they could get back before they left.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Man (Or aliens) traveling at, or faster than, the speed of light. Einstein tells us that the fastest we'll ever move is the speed of light...So, even if we do accept the Drake Equation number of 10,000 planets in the Milky Way that we might come in contact with, we'll never do it because space is so vast...

Which means if there's life out there (there probably is) we'll probably find it with our telescopes eons before we find it with space craft.

I'm not really sure why you consider this a problem.

2) The bible. If we're to believe in the bible, or a higher being, and 95% of all of the population does believe in a higher being, then why didn't God tell us about little green men in the bible?

Because whoever it is who wrote the Bible didn't know about them

But, I can't help but question that...Only 160,000 years and we've went from throwing feces at our monkey counterparts to fucking around on the internet, using computers that double in technology every year??

If our monkey counterparts developed computers and internet technology tomorrow, they would probably use it to electronically throw feces at each other. They would probably call it "4chan."

All kidding aside, it's not as if we've really outgrown or ignorant monkey past. We're just smart enough to pretend we've outgrown it while repeating more or less the same primitive behaviors on a massive scale in ever more sophisticated ways.

So, why didn't they evolve into sentient beings in all that time? How could they not have??

Why would they have needed to? Evolution is about necessity, not "improvement." Creatures that don't need to get smarter don't evolve smarts. Creatures that live in an environment where a high degree of introspection and verbal communication is useful tend to get better at these activities. When you're able to survive just as well by picking the fat off any carcass you happen to find (in an area that has no shortage of carion) intelligence is probably not very high on your evolutionary to-do list.

On the other hand, how do you know for sure that they didn't develop sentience? "The dinosaurs" is a term that refers to a huge extended family of tens of thousands of species, many of which didn't even live during the same time period. It's totally possible--and even likely--that one or two of them did achieve some level of sentience before becoming extinct. After sixty million years, it's not like their towns and cities would still be around for archeologists to dig up.

And, more to the point...If we're to believe we're only 160,000 years old, the universe being about 14 billion years old, 10,000 earth-like worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy, billions of galaxies out there, how could some of them not be millions, or even billions of years old?

Most of them are.

And if so, what form are they in after all these years?

How many different forms can you think of?

I can't imagine, that if we take evolution at face value, after millions or billions of years, human-like creatures would still be walking around in these extremely fragile bodies...I can only assume that one day, we, and others like us from other worlds out there, will be nothing but pure energy...Taking who knows what kind of visual form??

Or they could have evolved into a race of hyper-intelligence snails. Or they could be just now learning how to make fire. Or they could have nuked themselves into the dark ages on eight separate occasions and are about to do it again, having learned nothing from their previous experiments in global domination.

Or they might have created the Earth as a component in a giant supercomputer whose sole purpose is to calculate the ultimate question of life the universe and everything. How would we know the difference?

who built the pyramids

Jews.

who built Machu Picchu

Not sure. Probably Jews.

who built Stonehenge

Druids. Probably with the aid of the corporations controlled by the Jews.

 

[T'Girl]

why didn't God tell us about little green men in the bible?

Creatures and Giants (Nephilim).

 

[Warped9]

The Bible is not the word of God. He/She didn't write it. It is written by numerous people over time perhaps believing--or wanting to believe--that it's the word of a supreme being. In all likelihood it's a work of mythology no different than that of the ancient Greeks or any other culture. It's an attempt to explain a world full of mysteries people of ancient times couldn't understand any other way. It's literature and mostly one of fiction.

The story of God, creation of the Earth and of Jesus is a story retold over and over again in many cultures dating back into the mists of time. The same elements appear again and again.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Bible is not the word of God.

Yes, it is. He dictated it.

 

[Lindley]

The Bible is not the word of God.

Yes, it is. He dictated it.

A philosophical argument could be made for the word inspired. However, much of the Old Testament was only written down after centuries of oral tradition, so any original dictation was probably distorted by the telephone game in the meantime; and the new testament is about half collected letters by various people.

Now, the Gospels are a bit more direct. Some printings put the (translated, so still interpreted at some level) words of Jesus in red to distinguish them from the rest.

 

[John Picard]

[Face of BOE] You...are not...alone...[/Face of BOE]

 

[Mary Ann]

All kidding aside, it's not as if we've really outgrown or ignorant monkey past. We're just smart enough to pretend we've outgrown it while repeating more or less the same primitive behaviors on a massive scale in ever more sophisticated ways.

This. The development of so-called civilization doesn't equal advancing physical evolution. This is why, for example, table manners were invented; used as intended, they help people refrain from stabbing the person next to them in the eye with a fork, no matter what a dull, opinionated pillock the intended victim may be. I reckon that technological advances such as the internet have actually helped to bring our primitive poop-slinging tendencies back the forefront through anonymous commenting and the like. So many online forums are dominated by trolls.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The Bible is not the word of God.

Yes, it is. He dictated it.

A philosophical argument could be made for the word inspired. However, much of the Old Testament was only written down after centuries of oral tradition, so any original dictation was probably distorted by the telephone game in the meantime; and the new testament is about half collected letters by various people.

Well, there's the original authorship to begin with. Considering the levitical priesthood that penned the Torah were political and ideological dead ringers for Islamic Fundamentalists, it's probably the case that the vast majority of it is a thinly veiled codification of a theocratic power structure. In an age where no pre-existing canon yet existed, where the literacy rate of commoners was just about zero, where there was no capacity of any kind for anyone outside of the priesthood to even know what the formal texts of their religion meant, it is entirely implausible that the priests wouldn't have don't themselves a favor or two in all the years the document was being "inspired."

And all they'd have to do to cover their asses is claim that the stack of self-empowering tripe they just wrote down was inspired by God, and most people are stupid enough to believe them even 3000 years after the fact.

Now, the Gospels are a bit more direct. Some printings put the (translated, so still interpreted at some level) words of Jesus in red to distinguish them from the rest.

Just because I print Spock's dialog in red doesn't mean I directly heard Spock say these things.

 

[Lindley]

Well no, but I'm working under the assumption that Jesus was a historical person and some people who heard him say stuff probably wrote it down.

 

[iguana_tonante]

It's a non-issue for me. Believers or unbelievers, it's more or less established that the Torah was compiled some 3,000 years ago by a tribe of goat herders. Even if it were divinely inspired, it couldn't be more scientifically advanced than the people actually writing it, or it would not make sense to them. Considering the Christian Bible, it is mostly a game of pick and choose from the Tanakh plus the Gospels.

So any attempt to find scientific knowledge in it is simply flawed in its conception. If you want to learn about biology or astrophysics, there are wonderful books out there, and great teachers that could answer you. Leave the Bible as a source of faith for the believers, as a significant text for historians and scholars, and as a source of entertainment for all the others.

It's simply the best way to deal with it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well no, but I'm working under the assumption that Jesus was a historical person and some people who heard him say stuff probably wrote it down.

Same difference. Highlight the dialog in "Tora Tora Tora" so that Admiral Yamamoto's lines appear in the red. Whether Yamamoto was a real person or not, these are doubtful to be direct quotes.

 

[farmkid]

...And really, much more than that...



This is a subject of endless fascination for me personally...Anybody else?


We have The Drake Equation dating back to 1961...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation. This equation was devised by Frank Drake in 1961, in an attempt to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way with which we might come into contact with some day. That number is 10,000 earth-like planets in our galaxy alone.

And this is the number for our own galaxy, the Milky Way only. If I'm not mistaken, science believes there are at least one billion...1,000,000,000...galaxies out there...

So, in the entire universe, one can assume there are ten thousand billion...Or, 10,000,000,000,000...(A number that personally, I can't even comprehend because it's so large)...planets out there that have intelligent civilizations...Now, we add to that, the total number of planets with some kind of primitive life (A number I do not have, but I can only assume is something along the un-stated lines of ten thousand billion to the Nth Degree)...Again...A number so large that I can't even really comprehend it.

Now...I've got a few problems with us calculating this number and using it as a benchmark for civilizations that we might one day come in contact with...

Have you ever looked at the Drake equation? It has several terms that we have no way of knowing at present, and won't be able to estimate until we've found several other intelligent civilizations. Here's the equation:

The Drake equation states that:

where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
and
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

We know something about the rate of star formation, and we're learning more and more about the fraction of those stars that have planets, although life-supporting planets are still mostly undetectable. With only one data point to go on (our own planet), numbers for the rest of those terms are nothing but guesses. So really, that number of 10,000 earthlike planets in our galaxy is made up. We really have no idea how many intelligent civilizations might be out there.

Your last two points could be taken as evidence for God and for man's special place in relation to Him. They suggest that there is something special about humans. Those two points are supported by the hypothesis that God created the earth and everything on it for His children, us. Now, of course that does not agree with a word-for-word literal interpretation of the Bible, but I don't have a problem with that.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

The Bible is just one of many different religious books in existence.

 

[JiNX-01]

I believe God is a scientist and we're lab rats. When he decides the experiment isn't working out, he'll do what he has done many times before -- wash out the petri dish and start over.

And the reason we haven't met any other lab rats is because they're trapped in their own petri dishes.

 

[FPAlpha]

The bible was written by people who took their own legends and who have met extraordinary people and then one day put their stories down on paper/papyrus/leather/whatever so others can read about it.

As it is with stories sometimes things get lost in translation so stories become embelished or just plain out changed but in the end it was written by people with all their beliefs, morals and customes normal in their time yet we all take these words as coming from god and building our lives to the exact letter.

That people can be so dumb and narrow minded sometimes to take the bible literally is what i can't believe.. the utter stupidity to let a book tell me how to live my life.