h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

as john lennon famously said, the beatles are more popular than jesus.

when asked about evidence/proof of God's existance the religious agenda always trump out the same tired old aguments and very little in the way of evidence or proof(scripture, look around you, because it is!!! etc.)

when asked for evidence/proof of aliens existance the nutters will provide reams and reams of dodgy evidence(videos, photos, sworn statements, medical reports)

most of them are fake or hoax, and a lot can be explained, but there always remains a small amount that is incocclusive

what i want to know is

do we have more evidence/proof of the existance of Aliens than we do of God????????

I can't be arsed reading further than the title, but I reckon that the Aliens out of "Aliens" would kick the living snot out of any of your religious deities. Except for Thor. Cos he's well'ard, innit?

psycorp

is Thor acid proof?? and how would Thor cope against the predetor???

Way I see it, the question misses the point. Both these entities have something in common, and it's that their existence is intrinsically unprovable.

If we had evidence that extra-terrestrial beings existed, that would straightaway make them intra-terrestrial.
If we had evidence that a God existed, whatever it was would instantly become less than a God.

If this is about a choice, though, I'd much rather prove the existence of the aliens. At least there's a chance those guys might leave us alone.

My thoughts on get explicated here:

F77989?thread=6354306&skip=18&show=1

In short:

There probably are aliens but they are so far away they a) don't know we are here b) couldn't get here even if they did. C) in all likelihood it's a microbe.


Within our solar system, I'd love to know more about Titan and Europa, but beyond that doubtful.

I remember reading some papers, err, either in nature or Science, quite a few years back now, about marsian rocks, metiors I guess, which at the time at least they thought might show signs of single celled/bacterial like organisms fosselised in them, but I seem to recall some contraversy about weather they may have been contaminants from earth too long ago I fear for me to easily find the papers even if I've still got them anywhere

But, I think really that at the end of the day, the aliens woudl win, after all they've got the sharks with laser eyes, and not even BoB could better a shark with laser beam eyes.

>> ...love to know more about Titan and Europa, but beyond that doubtful. <<

That's a pretty earthcentric prejudice you got there mate. Only go for the water bearing moons, eh, well that's planetism that is.



~jwf~

"If we had evidence that extra-terrestrial beings existed, that would straightaway make them intra-terrestrial."

Strictly, as a matter of good semantics, no. 'Extra-terrestrial' means they would be 'off-Earth'. It'd be a hell of a novelty if they were found down here.

Similarly, 'intra-terrestrial' means they would be 'within the Earth'. This may be true of a pair of white mice, but it seems unlikely given that we're all pretty sure that the temperature even 2% of the way through the Earth's diameter would destroy any viable form of life.

If we're on the subject of prefixes, there may be a case for them being 'imterrestrial', 'inter-terrestrial', 'anti-terrestrial' (in the case of Independence Day and Doctor Who), 'super-terrestrial', or - in the case of Gods and other avatars - 'quasi-terrestrial'.

The latter is definitely my favourite, because it would automatically make all aliens sound like LARPers: "Hi. I'm quasi-terrestrial. Take me to your over-being."

B

Wo B
Tricky stuff, semantics, innit?
Strictly, as a matter of those self-same good semantics, I'd like to admit you've got a point here. But I can't do that, see?
Because if I said "you've got a point here", it would make it sound like that within, upon or otherwise in the general proximity of the planet, there's some purpose to your existence, which is a pretty difficult proposition to sustain, now I think about it, which I'm not going to, because it doesn't bear thinking about.
Unfortunately, I can't let you get away with an unknowable reason for existence either, because then you'd sound like a God, when everybody knows you're just the friendly neighbourhood Alien.
So I'm afraid that means you're completely wrong, as usual.

Ah, personal abuse - the last resort in any given argument.

B

The Drake Equation is an attempt to quantify the possibility of life being elsewhere:

http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html

I couldn't tell whether it was from facetiousness or otherwise that it made an appearance in this year's GCSE paper...

B

First thing that pops into my head is that proof denies faith and without faith, God is nothing. Heard that somewhere before though.

What about turning the question of proof round? Can we proove that God or aliens *don't* exist?

And, Mu Beta is a God, quo Aliens and their sharks with laser beam eyes exist.

Sorry but you've yet to convince me with that argument.

Well, we can't prove aliens don't exist (see Clive's post 5). As for God, since there's nothing that could prove it either way, even in principle, the question is meaningless.

Noggin

Fair enough that Clive's right about the aliens. Since we can't travel through the stars, they may not be able to either. And |I always wondered why abductees were always stumbling home alone from the pub or something similarly isolated. Why would they not land on the roof of the White House or something.

Re: Drake's equation

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL


I'm not a math expert by any means but isn't it true that if any one of the multiple factors on the right side of that equation was to be a zero then the net result would be zero since anything multiplied by zero equals zero?

Perhaps Drake was trying to prepare us for the shocking fact that we are a unique blip on the arsend of the Cosmos.


~jwf~

We already have proof of life on one planet. We don´t have proof of gods anywhere. So I´d say that makes aliens more likely.

i think that god and aliens are in the same boat, which its why its "almost" a unsettled argument, but only because theres no evidence for or against.
Its one of those thing where you just have to wait and see.
the only way we would no for sure is if a alien or god turned up and explained the sitution to us.