[marney]

Originally Posted by Shasown

The existence of life forms in other parts of the universe - highly probable
The existence of intelligent life forms in the universe - possible
The existence of "god" as taught by any of the religions - highly improbable

What makes one highly probable, the other only possible and yet one improbable.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by marney

What makes one highly probable, the other only possible and yet one improbable.

Sheer logic and common sense? We know that the Christian God is a belief based on nothing more than Jewish folklore and word of mouth that has somehow survived in the form of The Bible. A highly contradictory text of pure meaningless rubbish that can easily be disproven by a group of eight year olds with a white board and a few Red Bulls on a Sunday afternoon.

Extraterrestrial life forms are highly probable given what we know about the size of the greater cosmos compared to our one planet. It doesn't give one a carte blanche to then allow all other things to be possible. If you work on that hypothesis then the Christian God has an equal chance of existing as Spiderman does, based on this tired idea of 'well if you can't disprove it it could exist!'.

Originally Posted by 'Conor

just my opinion...

I doubt it. I'd say it's more something you thought without thinking it through. Why would we have found aliens by now? We know there are at least 80 billion galaxies in the universe - I typed 'million' by accident a while ago. It was in fact billion. Eighty billion. So far a human boot has made it as far as the moon. And that was last century. Like the entire lifespan of life on earth so far that's an astonishingly meaningless amount of time.

[GypsyGoth]

Originally Posted by Stu

A highly contradictory text of pure meaningless rubbish that can easily be disproven by a group of eight year olds with a white board and a few Red Bulls on a Sunday afternoon.

[Shasown]

Originally Posted by marney

What makes one highly probable, the other only possible and yet one improbable.

Ever heard of the Drake Equation?

N = RfpneflfifcL


In this equation, N is the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy. The other variables are described below:

R is the rate of star formation in the galaxy
fp is the fraction of stars that form planets
ne is the number of planets hospitable to life (i.e., Earth-like planets)
fl is the fraction of these planets on which life actually emerges
fi is the fraction of these planets on which intelligent life arises
fc is the fraction of these planets with intelligent beings capable of interstellar communication
L is the length of time such a civilization remains detectable

The only variable known with any degree of certainty is the rate of stellar formation, R. In the Milky Way, a typical spiral galaxy, new stars form at a rate of roughly four per year [source: Cain]. The variable astronomers feel most uncertain about is L, the length of time a civilization remains detectable. A variety of estimates have been used for L, ranging from 10 years to 10 million years.

Astronomers can make educated guesses about the rest of the variables. For example, of the nine planets in our solar system, only four are what astronomers call terrestrial planets -- those that have a solid surface. Of those terrestrial planets, only Earth supports life. If we take our solar system as representative, then we might argue that ne equals 1/4 or 0.25. Similar guesses have been made about the other variables and, interestingly, they all end up having very similar values, usually in a range between 0.1 and 1.0. So, a typical calculation might look like this:

N = 4 x 0.5 x 0.25 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 3,000,000

which gives us a value of 12,000 civilizations in our galaxy.

Drake's original calculations were very close to this value for N. When he ran the numbers, he predicted that there might be 10,000 detectable civilizations in the Milky Way [source: Garber]. Carl Sagan, a leader in the SETI movement until he passed away in 1996, was even more generous when he suggested that 1 million civilizations might exist in the galaxy [source: Lemarchand]. That's a lot of ETs!

But thats only in the Milky Way, our galaxy, there are billions of other galaxies out there.

Obviously some civilisation or life forms will be more advanced and others less advanced, that reduces the probability down from highly.

There are lots of religions on Earth, there have been a lot more, most talk of an all knowing all powerful merciful God who favours his believers. Thats a joke. Why would God even bother with us, we are insignificant.

A lot of religious beliefs have been shown to have been invented, adapted and changed by man, take for example Christianity, until the Pauline Conversion old JC wasnt really looked upon as being son of god. Followers of him still followed the Jewish faith. People who started following him converted to the Jewish Faith.

It wasnt until Paul was accepted in the Nazareans and pushed out a belief in the divinity of Jesus that there was schism in the "early church" and a belief established that JC was the son of god.

[Pyramid*]

Originally Posted by Shasown

Ever heard of the Drake Equation?

N = RfpneflfifcL


In this equation, N is the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy. The other variables are described below:

R is the rate of star formation in the galaxy
fp is the fraction of stars that form planets
ne is the number of planets hospitable to life (i.e., Earth-like planets)
fl is the fraction of these planets on which life actually emerges
fi is the fraction of these planets on which intelligent life arises
fc is the fraction of these planets with intelligent beings capable of interstellar communication
L is the length of time such a civilization remains detectable

The only variable known with any degree of certainty is the rate of stellar formation, R. In the Milky Way, a typical spiral galaxy, new stars form at a rate of roughly four per year [source: Cain]. The variable astronomers feel most uncertain about is L, the length of time a civilization remains detectable. A variety of estimates have been used for L, ranging from 10 years to 10 million years.

Astronomers can make educated guesses about the rest of the variables. For example, of the nine planets in our solar system, only four are what astronomers call terrestrial planets -- those that have a solid surface. Of those terrestrial planets, only Earth supports life. If we take our solar system as representative, then we might argue that ne equals 1/4 or 0.25. Similar guesses have been made about the other variables and, interestingly, they all end up having very similar values, usually in a range between 0.1 and 1.0. So, a typical calculation might look like this:

N = 4 x 0.5 x 0.25 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 3,000,000

which gives us a value of 12,000 civilizations in our galaxy.

Drake's original calculations were very close to this value for N. When he ran the numbers, he predicted that there might be 10,000 detectable civilizations in the Milky Way [source: Garber]. Carl Sagan, a leader in the SETI movement until he passed away in 1996, was even more generous when he suggested that 1 million civilizations might exist in the galaxy [source: Lemarchand]. That's a lot of ETs!

But thats only in the Milky Way, our galaxy, there are billions of other galaxies out there.

Obviously some civilisation or life forms will be more advanced and others less advanced, that reduces the probability down from highly.

There are lots of religions on Earth, there have been a lot more, most talk of an all knowing all powerful merciful God who favours his believers. Thats a joke. Why would God even bother with us, we are insignificant.

A lot of religious beliefs have been shown to have been invented, adapted and changed by man, take for example Christianity, until the Pauline Conversion old JC wasnt really looked upon as being son of god. Followers of him still followed the Jewish faith. People who started following him converted to the Jewish Faith.

It wasnt until Paul was accepted in the Nazareans and pushed out a belief in the divinity of Jesus that there was schism in the "early church" and a belief established that JC was the son of god.

Now....that's what I call an informative post! Interesting stuff - learn something new every day.

[James]

Originally Posted by Shasown

Ever heard of the Drake Equation?

N = RfpneflfifcL


In this equation, N is the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy. The other variables are described below:

R is the rate of star formation in the galaxy
fp is the fraction of stars that form planets
ne is the number of planets hospitable to life (i.e., Earth-like planets)
fl is the fraction of these planets on which life actually emerges
fi is the fraction of these planets on which intelligent life arises
fc is the fraction of these planets with intelligent beings capable of interstellar communication
L is the length of time such a civilization remains detectable

The only variable known with any degree of certainty is the rate of stellar formation, R. In the Milky Way, a typical spiral galaxy, new stars form at a rate of roughly four per year [source: Cain]. The variable astronomers feel most uncertain about is L, the length of time a civilization remains detectable. A variety of estimates have been used for L, ranging from 10 years to 10 million years.

Astronomers can make educated guesses about the rest of the variables. For example, of the nine planets in our solar system, only four are what astronomers call terrestrial planets -- those that have a solid surface. Of those terrestrial planets, only Earth supports life. If we take our solar system as representative, then we might argue that ne equals 1/4 or 0.25. Similar guesses have been made about the other variables and, interestingly, they all end up having very similar values, usually in a range between 0.1 and 1.0. So, a typical calculation might look like this:

N = 4 x 0.5 x 0.25 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 3,000,000

which gives us a value of 12,000 civilizations in our galaxy.

Drake's original calculations were very close to this value for N. When he ran the numbers, he predicted that there might be 10,000 detectable civilizations in the Milky Way [source: Garber]. Carl Sagan, a leader in the SETI movement until he passed away in 1996, was even more generous when he suggested that 1 million civilizations might exist in the galaxy [source: Lemarchand]. That's a lot of ETs!

But thats only in the Milky Way, our galaxy, there are billions of other galaxies out there.

Obviously some civilisation or life forms will be more advanced and others less advanced, that reduces the probability down from highly.

There are lots of religions on Earth, there have been a lot more, most talk of an all knowing all powerful merciful God who favours his believers. Thats a joke. Why would God even bother with us, we are insignificant.

A lot of religious beliefs have been shown to have been invented, adapted and changed by man, take for example Christianity, until the Pauline Conversion old JC wasnt really looked upon as being son of god. Followers of him still followed the Jewish faith. People who started following him converted to the Jewish Faith.

It wasnt until Paul was accepted in the Nazareans and pushed out a belief in the divinity of Jesus that there was schism in the "early church" and a belief established that JC was the son of god.

fl, fi, fc and L are guess-timates at best. fl and fc could be much less probable than 0.2 (1 in 5), which reduces the number of potential civilisations in the galaxy considerably.

[Pyramid*]

Originally Posted by Shasown

Ever heard of the Drake Equation?

N = RfpneflfifcL


In this equation, N is the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy. The other variables are described below:

R is the rate of star formation in the galaxy
fp is the fraction of stars that form planets
ne is the number of planets hospitable to life (i.e., Earth-like planets)
fl is the fraction of these planets on which life actually emerges
fi is the fraction of these planets on which intelligent life arises
fc is the fraction of these planets with intelligent beings capable of interstellar communication
L is the length of time such a civilization remains detectable

The only variable known with any degree of certainty is the rate of stellar formation, R. In the Milky Way, a typical spiral galaxy, new stars form at a rate of roughly four per year [source: Cain]. The variable astronomers feel most uncertain about is L, the length of time a civilization remains detectable. A variety of estimates have been used for L, ranging from 10 years to 10 million years.

Astronomers can make educated guesses about the rest of the variables. For example, of the nine planets in our solar system, only four are what astronomers call terrestrial planets -- those that have a solid surface. Of those terrestrial planets, only Earth supports life. If we take our solar system as representative, then we might argue that ne equals 1/4 or 0.25. Similar guesses have been made about the other variables and, interestingly, they all end up having very similar values, usually in a range between 0.1 and 1.0. So, a typical calculation might look like this:

N = 4 x 0.5 x 0.25 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 3,000,000

which gives us a value of 12,000 civilizations in our galaxy.

Drake's original calculations were very close to this value for N. When he ran the numbers, he predicted that there might be 10,000 detectable civilizations in the Milky Way [source: Garber]. Carl Sagan, a leader in the SETI movement until he passed away in 1996, was even more generous when he suggested that 1 million civilizations might exist in the galaxy [source: Lemarchand]. That's a lot of ETs!

But thats only in the Milky Way, our galaxy, there are billions of other galaxies out there.

Obviously some civilisation or life forms will be more advanced and others less advanced, that reduces the probability down from highly.

There are lots of religions on Earth, there have been a lot more, most talk of an all knowing all powerful merciful God who favours his believers. Thats a joke. Why would God even bother with us, we are insignificant.

A lot of religious beliefs have been shown to have been invented, adapted and changed by man, take for example Christianity, until the Pauline Conversion old JC wasnt really looked upon as being son of god. Followers of him still followed the Jewish faith. People who started following him converted to the Jewish Faith.

It wasnt until Paul was accepted in the Nazareans and pushed out a belief in the divinity of Jesus that there was schism in the "early church" and a belief established that JC was the son of god.

Would you believe the coincedence..... I watched a program last night on BB4 OD - all about this very subject!

[Shasown]

Originally Posted by James

fl, fi, fc and L are guess-timates at best. fl and fc could be much less probable than 0.2 (1 in 5), which reduces the number of potential civilisations in the galaxy considerably.

Very true, but it could also be slightly more which would increase potential civilisations considerably. And it only takes into account, this galaxy, not the rest of the universe.

Originally Posted by Pyramid*

Would you believe the coincedence..... I watched a program last night on BB4 OD - all about this very subject!

Journey to the Edge of the Universe? Quite an interesting program, if that wasnt the one you watched try and watch it sometime. Graphics are quite good generally and very informative sort of puts us in our place.

[Pyramid*]

Originally Posted by Shasown

Very true, but it could also be slightly more which would increase potential civilisations considerably. And it only takes into account, this galaxy, not the rest of the universe.



Journey to the Edge of the Universe? Quite an interesting program, if that wasnt the one you watched try and watch it sometime. Graphics are quite good generally and very informative sort of puts us in out place.

No, it was called The Search for Life - however....now you've mentioned 'Joureny to the Edge of the Universe'..... I am sure that''s still showing On Demand - it rings too many very recent bells !. I think I'll have a wee check and whittle away a quite Sunday afternoon (soon as the groceries are delivered and my Sunday Roast is on the go!).