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Hi Thor, I hope you don't mind my adding this astounding photo of an actual alien to your post.
Is he/she/it saying "Nanu nanu" or "Live long and prosper"?
I don't know. There was no audio included with the photograph.
The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical research institutes in the world. (Who do you think did all the calculations that led to the Gregorian calendar?) It has a history of adamantly defending science alongside religion.
As for believing in aliens, my brother and I discussed this back in fourth grade or so. We realized that, if there was intelligent life on other planets, Jesus would have to be born into and redeem each one, over and over again, for billions of years. Seemed like an awful way to spend eternity. ;-)
You and your brother obviously had no faith in the innate goodness of intelligent creatures. At least some lifeforms evolving on the billions of inhabited planets would have surely made the correct choice concerning any Directives given them during their early development.
No, we were simply developing a theological application for the Drake equation! ;-)
The equation, developed in 1961 by astronomer Frank Drake tries to calculate how many intelligent races exist in the galaxy. It starts with the number of stars in the galaxy (about 100 billion) and then figures X% of those stars have planets; and Y% of stars with planets have planets that can support life; and Z% of planets that can support life actually do support life; and so on.
The problem is that, for many of the variables in the equation, we have absolutely no idea what numbers to use. Even worse, some people -- including some scientists who really should know better -- try to describe the entire galaxy based on their study of just one planet: Earth. They will say, for example, that of all the planets we know that can support life (one, the Earth), 100% of them do support life. Therefore, they conclude, life is inevitable.
If this kind of reasoning is good enough for SETI, then it's good enough for us. My brother and I simply applied it to theology: of all the planets we know of where mortal beings could sin against God, 100% of them did!
And, before people start writing in with all kinds of complaints, let me remind everybody:
Irony is a subtle art.
im not go even lie i do believe in aliens i really believe that there is another university and just how we look at them they look at us scary lol but fa real i do believe in aliens.....
I believe in another university, too -- just not Ann Arbor. ;-)
I personally believe there is another species of life out there somwhere...and aliens are cool i think...i just dont think we will ever find it. :(
to me it doesn't matter if there are or there aren't any aliens, but i do believe that there are other life form that we haven't discover yet.
hey well i think there r aliens so shut up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh DANG!!!!
Forreals?!?!
If aliens were real, man i'd be like those guys off of Scary Movie 3...
Get The SHOTGUN SHOVELS!!!!
U Kno Wat Im Sayin!!!
There's another discussion about life outside the solar system going on in this thread.
I want to know if there really are alians in space. Because everybody in my class says that there is because of books, and websites. I don't rerally beleive them. Is there such thing? If they were real, what would they look like?
Nobody knows. Books and websites are fun, and they may contain good information, but so far there is no evidence of any aliens.
are aliens actually real. It doesnt seem like it.
Alians are real they are just hidding and they are to fast for us to see them. But we shouldn't desturb them.
Yes. They. Are.
FINALLY SOMEONE BELIEVES ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:D
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