This post is for all you scientists or science lovers out there 🙂
Debate away 🙂 
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Does it exist?
About Author
This post is for all you scientists or science lovers out there 🙂
Debate away 🙂
of course it does!
I believe life is abundant all throughout the universe, but intelligent life is unique to earth.
I’ll say though that I’ve struggled much with getting my thoughts on faith and science to work well together.
There is life out there.
No, there isn’t.
Is.
Isn’t!
Look, this isn’t an argument.
Yes, it is.
No, it isn’t, it’s just contradiction.
(This is one of those topics you can debate solo.)
There are thought to be about 10 to the power of 21 stars in our Universe. If you write that number out, it looks like this:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
One thousand billion billion
(This is also supposedly conservative)
If you ask me, that is a heck of a lot of chances for other life to exist out there somewhere! I wuld ask what are the odds of it not exisiting! Surely very small. 🙂
Life–most definitely!
Intelligent life–probably, but the question is how intelligent?
Would dolphins (or a similar type of animal life) be considered intelligent? How about dogs, or honey bees, or ants or … ? Or, for that matter, any type of animal life beyond single cell organisms?
Jerry, I appreciate your honesty about faith and science. For me, (and I consider myself to be a very faith-filled Christian) it seems like any search for the Truth must be universal. In-other-words, a scientific truth is a “true” as a spiritual truth and visa-versa. Medical professional, scientists, theologians, sociologists, etc., all use very different language and methods to explain our life and existence in this world, but in the big picture they are all explaining the same truths, just from a different perspective. It’s like the analogy of five blind persons each touching various parts of an elephant–each will use different language in their description, but they will all be describing the “truth” about what an elephant is like (the big picture).
Oh well, that’s my two and half cents.
-mm
Any life most probably leads to intelligent life.
Okay, so now it’s time to reveal my true identity. You see, I’m not from this planet at all. Regretfully, I’m not even carbon-based. I just tapped into your internet to study you earthlings.
But don’t worry. I’ve grown to actually like you. Especially your religion. I think I want to be a Christian. Can I be baptized?
That’s a real problem to me because the Bible only talks of humans being saved. Since I am not descended from Adam and Eve, do I even need to be baptized? No original sin, get it?
Wait a minute. News flash from Home. There’s this silicon-based rock form that just appeared on our planet. Says he’s the Messiah. Says WE’RE the chosen people now. Cool! My tendrils are twitching. Send an e-mail to the Pope.
The number of the planets and stars as our “Sun” is so big…stadistically i am sure:it does,but of course: they are not close to us or visiting us!
I believe just in one type of green beings like us…THE IRISH 🙂
Watch the movie “Contact”, or better read the book “Contact” by Carl Sagan. After that you will have a lot to think about this.
If there were intelligent life out there and able to reach earth, wouldn’t it be common sense to avoid it? I mean, they can even try picking up things we broadcast on tv and it’d be more than enough to scare them off.
So the film “proves just that scientists can have fantasy and say stupids things as everyone”. Did you really understand it or, as it is obviuos: you are part of that everyone you mention?
The film is, overall, only a film, but it points to the boundaries between faith and facts, and for me that is the central issue here.
P.S.: The first to sustain the Earth was flat by means of faith was religion. Remember the name Galileo? for example.
>>If you ask me, that is a heck of a lot of chances for other life to exist out there somewhere! I wuld ask what are the odds of it not exisiting! Surely very small. 🙂
>>
It depends what the odds are, which is something nobody knows. For example, if you wanted to roll a 7 on a six-sided die, then it doesn’t make sense to say that surely you can get one in 60 billion tries.
The popular image, fueled by Star Trek and other shows is that inanimate matter is just aching to come to life. Just provide a breathable atmosphere and life will come about almost by itself, given enough time. Just like Frankenstein. Zap a lightning bolt into a pit of Jell-o, and voila, you’ve got life.
It’s a little more complicated than that. A single cell is more complicated than the most complicated computer in existence (and what’s the chance of your laptop forming by itself over a billion years?) There might be life elsewhere. Or maybe there’s not. Maybe (just to throw a possibility out) life can’t form out of non-life under our physical laws, and all life has to come from a different universe with different laws.
Nobody really knows. Arguments based on statistics are meaningless without accurate percentages to feed in. And arguments based on psychology (i.e. surely it would be arrogant to presume ourselves the only intelligent life) are even worse. The fact is, we just don’t know and people are afraid to admit that.
Faith has nothing to do with science.I do not understand both words working together.
If you can prove something then is a fact else is nothing.
And you faithfull man…do you think your faith is the real one and jews,indians,muslims,etc are wrong?
Imagine that:They think the same about your faith.
If no proves you can choose you way,but it is not a fact.
And yes, i say stupid things too, exactly like you and everyone.
>>P.S.: The first to sustain the Earth was flat by means of faith was religion. Remember the name Galileo? for example.>>
Uh, no. That’s a modern myth, created by Washington Irving, if you want to know.
In fact, every educated person going back to Ptolemy has known that the world was round. Certainly all of them in Columbus’ time knew it. Irving, in his highly fanciful biography of Columbus created the myth that there was an argument in those days about the shape of the earth, but the real issue was the width of the oceans. Bugs Bunny perpetuated the myth, and the average person has had faith in it ever since.
In fact, Columbus thought that the world was about a third of the size that it really is. His opponents were right about the size, but the unexpected presence of two hitherto unknown continents turned Columbus from a goat into a hero.
Yeah, anyone who has faith in atheism based on the believe that Galileo proved the earth was round, has got some serious re-thinking to do.
Medieval astronomy came not from religion, but from the ancient Greeks, who believed three things: 1) the world was round, 2) the stars were millions of miles away, and 3) the sun revolved around the earth.
Two out of three ain’t bad, they say, but in this case it was. Aristotle was at that time, the greatest genius who had ever lived. The DaVinci before DaVinci. To even think of questioning his conclusions was anathema.
Even Galileo was prone to this way of thinking. My logic textbook shows a quote from Galileo committing the ad verecundiam fallacy by arguing that surely air must have weight, because Aristotle said so. Greek science was indeed incredible, and discovered some amazing things. Not only did they know the world was round, but Aritostehenes, using only a plumb line, trigonometry, and two wells in Alexandria and Athens, was able to accurately measure its size with 98% accuracy.
It was these numbers that Columbus’s opponents were using when they said that trying to get to Asia by sailing west would be a much longer journey than going East. The Greeks achieved some incredible things using only stone knives and bearskins, but they weren’t right about everything. Galileo’s problems stemmed from the fact that even scientists are susceptible to dogmatic thinking, and tried to shut out anything that contradicted Greek science, using the church to help maintain the scientific orthodoxy of the day. Even today that thinking continues in academic circles.
Can you really understand what I wrote?
I said it is about “the boundaries” between faith and science.
And why did you assume I am faithfull in terms of religion?
That it´s me that doesn´t understand… well, we are human, that´s a fact ;-))
“Can you really understand what I wrote?”
Heck no, I don’t even know who you are or which post was yours. Or what your point is now. You’ve got to learn to express yourself a bit better. You’re somebody and you’re talking to somebody else that you think is wrong about something or other. That’s as far as you got.
Now you’re being a little hard on him. He put the word “boundaries” in quotes, so he must be the one who used that word in a post earlier. (Excellent deduction, Holmes).
So, from that, we can confidently conclude that he thinks someone (he’s not quite clear about who) misunderstood that post (he’s not quite clear how). You’re right, he doesn’t communicate very well, does he?
All right, let’s look a little further. The “boundaries” post was also the one that contained the historical error about Galileo rebutting the idea that the earth was flat. There have been two posts that pointed that out, so he’s probably responding to one or both of them.
But what his point is is hard to figure. It looks like he’s saying that the person who pointed out that his example was based on a historical falsehood somehow didn’t understand his point, but that makes no sense. If the fundamental issue is the boundary between faith and facts, and you’ve got your facts wrong|, that’s fundamental, isn’t it? Maybe he’s saying the facts don’t matter because he has faith. Whatever his point is, it would be nice if he’d just said it in one of those two posts instead of making us guess.
doesn’t anyone here ever watch ufo files on the history channel?
What a moot question!
How do I know?
The Polgars exist!
Well, the tenants of my time-state-space theory are that the next level of intelligence is not constrained by our familiar time and space frames. Therefore, either we evolve as a specie and discover them…or we just fade away into the sunset (pun intended).
Hmmm…yes sr_physicist, I’ve heard something of your time-states-pace-mass transfer theory: where two equivalent masses may swap instantly (in no time at all) anywhere in our time-state-space…ultimately allowing instant transportation between any two locations in our universe…and…the key to immortality as we know it. The two new fields of mathematics…sigh
Any word when/if you plan on publishing soon?
Given the size of the universe, there is probably intelligent life out there somewhere beyond earth.
But as far as claims of UFOs visiting the earth (like the President of FIDE believes, since he says he flew in one) here is a quote from the late Carl Sagan:
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Yes, I do exist. Thank you.
As far as life elsewhere in the Cosmos goes, I’d have to say that it is highly probable. I’d even say that it is highly probable that intelligent- that is, technology buildiing- life exists somewhere out there.
However, people often underestimate the incredible inherent difficulty in travelling the vast distances between the stars. The amount of energy required to fire off a large mass at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light is so great that any sufficiently advanced civilization would probably decide it is much easier to stay home, build space habitations out of local materials, than to plow forth though the cosmos to take up residence on very distant planets.
In other words, they’re probably out there. They almost certainly have not visited us.
Regarding potential communication via radio or light pulse? In this case, it would be tough, but not as impractical, to overcome the disatnnces. In this case, overcoming the radio and light “static” of the universe with a big enough blast to reach out to the nearest civilizations. I’d best against ever hearing a signal, but I wouldn’t be A LOT against it.
Regarding:
“Medieval astronomy came not from religion, but from the ancient Greeks, who believed three things: 1) the world was round, 2) the stars were millions of miles away, and 3) the sun revolved around the earth.”
While it is true that SOME ancient Greeks (Hipparchus, for instance) suggested that the Earth moves around the sun and not vice-versa, the idea that the Earth stood still at the center of the universe was, by far, the most dominant cosmological model from ancient times well into the late middle ages.
The majority of Greek “Nature Philosophers” believed the Earth stood still, and for good reason. First, they noted, we don’t feel the earth moving around. Every other type of motion any human had ever experienced (oxcart, ship, running, walking, falling) produce some sort of sensation of motion- so, of course, if the Earth moved it would logically produce a similar feeling. Second, the Greeks observed that the stars (which were held to be distant, but not terribly so) did not exhibit parallax. Were the Earth moving about the sun, the reasoned that stars would appear to be wobbling back and forth in the sky. They didn’t, ergo, the Earth doesn’t move.
Finally, and most importantly as far as the transition into medieval natural philosophy goes, the idea that the Earth was not at the center of the universe contradicted the rest of the world view of the most significant Greek Philosophers- most notedly that of Aristotle.
Aristotle most definitely DID NOT hold that the Earth moved around the sun. If he did, it would have gone against everything else he set forth in his elaborate, highly internally consistent, body of work. Most importantly, it would go against his concept of “the elements.” In his natural philosophy, all matter- in the form of combinations of the classic elements of earth, air, fire and water (and occasionally few minor ones tacked on)- had their natural states of being relative to the center of the universe- which was held to be the center of the Earth. Earth (the element), for instance, wanted to move towards the center of Earth (the planet). This explained why stuff made of earth tended to fall. Fire, conversely, tended to rise. Were the “center” to be elsewhere, a dropped rock would, according to Aristotle, tend to fall towards that- and clearly, we don’t.
The strange heavens didn’t seem to fit into this model. They were thought to be made of some material that could not be found on Earth. This material they called “Quintessence” which they proclaimed had the property of uniform circular motion about the center of the Cosmos. This explained the motion of the planets, stars, and the sun and moon- albeit, very imprecisely.
As it became known that the model of “uniform circular motion” didn’t explain the weird variation in heavenly motions precisely, this uniform circular motion was modified. The model they came up with- which was brought to its greatest height in the work of Ptolemy- featured additional motions that they called “epicycles.” In Ptolemy’s conception (which was passed on to the Western world and was the dominant model until well after the time of Copernicus) the planets, sun, stars, and moon, whirled about the sun on invisible crystalline spheres, nestled concentrically around the Earth. These spheres had a “thickness”, and the planets moved in uniform circular motion within the thickness of these spheres. In other words, it wasn’t the planet that moved about the Earth in a circle, it was the center of the planet’s smaller circular motion- called the “equant”- that did. When needed, additional, smaller, uniform circular motions were added to help save the appearances. Eventually, this unwieldy system became surprisingly good at predicting the motions of the planets.
But, everything about this model reinforced the notion that the Earth stood still.
The persistence of this model for the better part of 2000 years, until the time of Galileo, was due to the fact that Aristotle’s cosmology fit very nicely into the Christian conception of material world being corrupt. In Aristotle’s worldview (as well as that of Plato, Pythagoras and Ptolemy) the Earthly realm was a shadow of reality. The heavens were thought (and to a certain extent observed) to be unchanging and, therefore, perfect. This melds quite well with the Christian conception of the Earth being corrupted by the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the perfection of heaven.
So, in a sense, it WAS religion that kept the Geocentric world view dominant for so long.