Alone or not
 

Are we alone in this universe or not? I know the scientist at the SETI organization have the luxury of having some idea, but I think even will admit we may never know. On the other hand, we could find out tomorrow.

Here's a thought...if we're not alone, what does that do to religious beliefs? If the beings don't look like us, then God couldn't have made them since He made us in His image. If they do look like us...then...whoa!

The flip side of the coin is, what if we are alone? We're totally alone on a lone ball of rocks circling a star. That's it in this whole huge universe...no neighboring planetary neighbors, no impending alien invasion. Just us, sitting here going about our 80 years of life.

So...where do you stand? Alone or not?

edit:BTW, I land on the "We are definitely not alone." side. I just can't believe we're it and there is no other intelligent life in this huge expanse of space.

when im outside at night and look up into the sky, i see thousands upon thousands of stars. It seems to me that it would be very likely that there is AT LEAST one other planet out there capable of sustaining some kind of life. I hope we are not alone and I hope I live long enough to see contact. But its gonna suck if after contact we all get vaporized....

The odds are way too remote. Sure the Universe is infinite and all that, but just looking at the odds; life on earth most likely started entirely by accident against astronomical odds. By astronomical I mean 1:1000^1000 ( made these numbers up btw :))

The chances of those odds coming up twice in just 10 billion years does not strike me as possible.

ok we have odds for something that is infinite? I believe that there IS something out there. There has to be. If not it seems like a very incredible waste of space. Wondering if anything is out there is one of the questions everyone wants answered. Anything can happen and look it has happened..we are all here talking about this right now! I am sure we will find out soon. At least i hope we find out in my lifetime.

I really find it hard to accept that "we" are the only intelligent life.

People once thought the world was flat..................

If the universe is infinite then the possibility of anything/everything happening eventually reaches 100% on a long enough timeline.

It's a big universe, unless you guys are all figments of my imagination, in which case, my imagination sucks. :D

Logic tells us (sounds like spock) that since life developed here, it most probably developed many other places in the universe. I certainly hope that some (many) of these lifeforms are way more intelligent than us. We don't have a clue yet. We probably haven't developed far enough to be able to comprehend much.

No way are we alone!

given the age of our universe, our distance from it's centre, the relative age of our solar system. allow fractional statistical percentages for number of planets supporting life, speed of their development and compatibility of technologies we should be bombarded with radiowaves from alien civilizations, given that we only look at a small percentage of range (3%) evidence overwhelmingly predicts that we would have heard something by now, Occams razor suggests we are definately alone

It's not infinite

Even if it is not infinite, for our little minds it is close to infinite.

If it would turn out all that space was made, and the only intelligent life form in the universe is right now playing online-deer-hunting, you bet I`m gonna shoot myself.

LMAO Roland. Thank you. lol that just made my day...

oh and i agree...

it would be pretty pathetic if we were the only life forms...

i can always hope...

When forced to make a decision I have to believe we are not alone... The Universe is just too big to rule out the possibility that there is other life out there...


That said it is also so big that we are not *ever* likely to meet this other life...

If not, it's a pretty severe waste of space.

Scientifically speaking, until I see some proof I have no choice but to belive we are alone. I would like to think there is a benevolent race of T'pol looking Vulcans out there, but without proof or at least the hint of proof it's not logical to belive.

I can't prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist either, but that does not mean he does.

hhmmm...(now considering santa...)

Whoa now, back the truck up.
You mean...Santa doesn't exist?
If you're right...I mean, if that's true...then that shatters the very core of every belief system that I have.
It can't be true.
I won't listen. Lalalalalalalalalalalala.

hahaha..yea seriously..next your going to be telling us that the easter bunny doesnt exist!!

Whoa whoa whoa, I don't want to dash anyone's belief system. All I said was that I could neither prove nor disprove the existance of Santa (or hot Vulcans in spandex). Therefore, so far as I am concerned neither exists. (but just between you and me, Santa died in 1959)

hahaha..*demanding tone* and where may i ask is his grave..hehehe..everyone knows santas immortal...the easter bunny however...

The most assured proof that there are extraterrestrial beings is that they have completely avoided contact with us.

*blink blink* archer..thats far to deep for me...explaination needed for the dumb blonde..

If you weren't from this planet, would you want to meet us? I sure as hell know that I wouldn't.

ohhhhhhhhh...yea good point...hmm..i wonder ...what if theres like things way smarter then us watching us...it must be like some sad late night comedy..liek mad TV for us...only weirder...

Mad TV is brodcast from an underground bunker on planet fox.

There has to be something out there man; probably not in our live times well we meet them or be taken over by them but probably one of these days.

Looks like I'm with the majority here - though I do think that we may never find out the truth - The universe is SO big that while it seems reasonable to assume that there is life out there, it also seems to rule out the possibility of us ever getting to say hello. (I hope I'm wrong though)

hmmm..95% *heart* the little green men :)

guess you 2 doubters are out polled :)

Whether there is or not, the chances of us encountering any is very slim. They would have to be far more advanced than we are because at the rate we're going, we won't be able to efficiently communicate outside of our galaxy for a few hundred years. What if another civilization lived and went extinct? What if they are not looking for other life like we are? What if they've heard us and feared us? What if they haven't evolved enough yet? Is it out there? Could be. Will we ever know? Probably not.

I don't think we're alone but we'll probably never know.

Somewhere out there
 

Our universe is billions of years old and has been expending in every direction at the speed of light ever since. So it could be said that Earth is a negligable part of the universe. In a Universe that is infinately large how could Earth be the only planet with life.

Also, think about this: every year scientists discover more about our planet. If we don't even know everything about our home, how can we assume that we know even our own solar system.

To you people who are saying it's logical that we are alone are wrong (at least in the sense that your saying because it's logical.) If something can happen once, then it can happen twice, and a third time etc. and mostly likely will given sufficient time/space. That's logic.

What youre referring to is empiricism, which is basically you need to see it to believe it.

I'm really going to have to agree that there is absolutely no way we are alone in the universe. It's such a huge place and I can't see anything but sheer ego keeping people from believing that there are other intellegent (hopefully more so), sentient beings out there. But for the sake of not being redundant, I'll not argue why I belive we're not alone.

But I'd like to address the point that wrkime made about religious beliefs. Personally, I'm something like a Secular Humanist (though that's not exactly right. I believe in a God, but it certainly isn't the Judeo-Christian one.) but I understand what you are saying about being created in God's image. Who's to say that meant we were built in God's physical image? In fact, by virtue of our corporeal existance and especially our varied genetic features, how is it possible to have been created in God's physical image? I was under the impression most modern-day religions inherently believed that God was a non-corporeal entity. That being said, maybe humans were created in God's moral or mental image. If that was the case, meeting another sentient species might have no other effect on the religious stances of some other than to strengthen it. (Though I wouldn't believe this to be the case.)

For a species that can't even answer the most basic questions about our own existence (The reigning theories a couple thousand years of "progress" has produced is limited to these two: a) God said: let there be humans/life (take your pick, can't forget the neo-darwinian christians can I?), or b) we're ameobas, but all grown up now after millions of years - neither of which actually answer any of the questions of how we got to be here in specific terms, it's awfully egotistical for us to assume we're the only living organisms in the cosmos.. infact, as a species it's far more likely we're engineered than a random event (consider the nature of our genetic structures), but then by who? Hmmmmm??? Don't they always shoot the panda bears in the ass with a big tranquilizer before breeding obtaining samples? Sure, they do.. because those things might be dangerous.. same thinking goes to why a dominate alien species wouldn't bother making contact, except say, in isolated instances where their control of the situation would be absolute (nevermind what a horrible job we do of running the planet, I wouldn't invite us over either!).

Anyways, yep, gotta be life out there.. i just hope they're not packing anal-probes.. :eek:

Anyways, I babble.. and I WANT TO BELIEVE! :lol:

we all want to believe!! goooo...*cheerleader voice* x-files!! *pulls hood over face and starts chanting*

I have to say that with the universe being as incredibly vast as it is, there is more than likely other life out there. Will we ever come into contect with it? Doubtful.

As for religious beliefs - I see no reason for it to be a problem. One, if there is other life created by a god, our salvation/enlightenment/etc does not depend on our knowing of their existence or not. Just believing that god created the universe and <i>all</i> in it is enough. As for being created in the image of god part - it doens't necessarily have to be a physical image. It could be interpretted to say the image of god we are created with is our soul, or our elevated self-realization, etc, in which case other alien life could have this as well.

where's the "I couldn't care less" option??

either way it's doubtful that we'd come into contact..as stated already. Even if we did we're not in a position to accept each other as a single race..much less something from outer space.

There is way too much space out there to believe that we are alone. When I am reincarnated I want to come back as Captain Kirk who somehow was able to hook up with every alien life form out there.

I know there is life out there. Don't ask me how I know, but I do. ;)

*walks around corner, jumps in space ship and flies away*

A lot of people seem to like "the universe is so damn huge, there HAS to be something out there", but we should be taking into account that the chances of life developing are SO DAMN SMALL. I find it doubtful that other life forms exist, much less life forms capable of inter-stellar communication or even coherent thought.
Even in a universe as vast as this, it's still a mircale of probability that we exist at all.

OR

If you happen to be a fan of "God created all", then did God create other life also? He didnt happen to mention any of this in the bible...

Either way, it's a lonely universe from where I sit. Kinda disappointing that theres so much infighting in the only interesting corner of the universe huh.

I like to think that the universe is infinate, as in "there is no end" and as such everything is possible, even the most remote chance for something to occur has occured, or is occuring now, or already has occured before. The same thing goes with life existing elseware. Is it possible? Yes. Then is it true? Yes. Quantom Physics says so.