This actually hurts my brain a little bit.

[ruetheday]

You guys are all retarded. For one it's not 4,000 or 6,000 it's 9,000. That is also 9,000 going by todays modern calendar and standards of time. You people do of course realize that in ancient civilizations methods for dates and keeping time were different right?

[thelastgreatman]

Well either way it's not 4000, but I still think you're wrong about that. I wasn't raised in any of this stupid religious bullshit, cut me some slack.

Also, how the fuck did you pick that complete non sequitur part of the debate to respond to and why?



Sorry I don't know what stupid thing Christians believe. I worship Pan, the Goat God. He's very play-it-by-ear, doens't keep a schedule.

[ruetheday]

I was raised in it and I have studied a lot of other religions as well.

I picked that part of the argument because I always laugh when people bring up the whole "according to christians the earth is only this old." It's the dumbest argument there is and they are always wrong about it. If you don't have an understanding of ancient civilizations then you shouldn't try to discount them.

[thelastgreatman]

As always, I'm right. It's 6000. At least that's the number that's become their recent dogma. Here's the "historian" who apparently fabricated the explanation for this date: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=57900

[TomAz]

not believing in Pan the Goat God is just human arrogance.

[whynotsmile99]

Did anyone else think a screaming monster would pop up at the end of that GIF? I kept waiting for it

[thelastgreatman]

Well, the problem is if they're saying CHRISTIANITY claims that, then they're equal assholes to the modern Christians who happen to believe it. And they do. I've met some. There's millions of them. 6000 years old, Intelligent Design... dude, some of these fucking people actually believe the Old Testament is factual.

[TomAz]

Are you claiming the diaspora was faked?

[Blinken]

... right. Yeah, actually the point I was making is that you have absolutely no grounds to act like it's stupid to doubt the existence of other intelligent beings because we have absolutely nothing to go on to lead us to a conclusion in either direction. And as you well know, I'm not Christian (also, it's 6000 years, not 4000). But I recognize that if there's anything to Chaos Theory, the millions of years of events that eventually led to the development of humanity must have contained an immeasurable number of chance occurrences all the way down to the cellular level. The idea that the life on this planet was a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 chance freak result of millions of chain reactions factored exponentially and that our existenece is a complete fluke of the universe is not actually that unrealistic--no more so than being sure there is other life despite no indication of any whatsoever.

Lets say there is other life out there, we would give no indication to us being on this planet ether. So just saying there is no other life since we can't detect some speck of life in another galaxy across the universe is crazy. There is other life out there, we can't prove it, but in the billions of solar systems out there it is reasonable to assume that more than 1 planet is suitable for life. Maybe we as a species couldn't live on such a planet, but other creatures with different biology could. They are finding remaints of water on mars, the terrain appears to have had rivers at one point in time. There is a likelyhood that under the frozen crust of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, is a vast ocean much larger than ours. With water comes the possibility of single celled organisms. Of course this hard to prove, because Europa is far away. But the possibility of other life in our own solar system means that almost certain that there is some form of life in some remote part of the universe. Will we ever meet them? No, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

[Barbara, the ninja]

But I recognize that if there's anything to Chaos Theory, the millions of years of events that eventually led to the development of humanity must have contained an immeasurable number of chance occurrences all the way down to the cellular level.

The universe is a huge place and has been around for a fucking long time. It sounds conceited to think that Earth was the only place to get the chance of life.

The idea that the life on this planet was a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 chance freak result of millions of chain reactions factored exponentially

After seeing that gif image you don't think that there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns in the universe that have planets that could have freak results for life?


Check out Panspermia

[thelastgreatman]

No. I hate when people make this argument. Yes, there are billions and billions of potential settings for life in the universe. However:

1. We don't know what the rules of the universe are on this matter. Maybe it actually is only possible for life to exist in carbon-based form with conditions somewhat similar to ours. Or maybe the lucky series of chain reactions that caused Earth to develop completely differently than any other planet in the solar system (since these are the only planets we know half a shit about, I'm referencing them) were so specific that the odds of them being replicated in the way "life" might need in order to spontaneous generate (however the fuck that happened) on any other planet in any galaxy are a trillion to one.

Maybe there's 50,000 trillion planets in the universe so you can still claim the "but with so many chances it certainly must have happened somewhere else" argument (it's still completely invalid conjecture), but the problem is we have absolutely no way of knowing (a) how life came into existence and (b) in what circumstances it is possible to happen again.

Without that data, there can be an infinite number of planets and that still doesn't make it any more likely that a completely unique circumstance in the universe (as far as we know) happened somewhere else too. It's impossible to have a logical conviction in either direction is my point. From our perspective, the likelihood that Earth is a total fluke, a freak mutation spun out of control that has never happened before and the likelihood that there are other life forms of some kind or another are perfectly equal because they're complete unknowns and can't be deduced in any way.

[Barbara, the ninja]

And we are kinda high-tech. We split the fucking atom. I guess we won't know how we stack up against other theoretical lifeforms until we find some, but please don't pull this "not believing in aliens is just human arrogance" rap. The capabilities of our species on this planet in relation to every other form of Earth life are so ridiculously advanced... the only way to think of it is if aliens DID swoop down here in spaceships that exceeded the speed of light and allowed them to travel all over the universe... MAYBE then we could see the analogy in that space-traveling aliens are to humans what humans are to everything else on Earth.

We suck! We're not high-tech at all; we haven't even landed on the moon yet.


There's human arrogance. And then there's Randy arrogance. Heh.

[kreutz2112]

There are infinite random events taking place in the universe at any given time. It just so happens that over the course of 6 billion years Earth has evolved to what it is today. I find it highly unlikely that 1/10,000,000,000,000,000* potential planets in the universe has life. As it stands right now we will never know if there is other life in the universe (SETI is a fucking joke) However, as stated in the science thread, which btw, would have been a perfect place to post that gif, as technology progresses on earth and we are able to manipulate atomic forces, exist in a virtual world, etc. we just might be able to find other life.

*http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Extrat...ial%20life.htm

[kreutz2112]

No. I hate when people make this argument. Yes, there are billions and billions of potential settings for life in the universe. However:

1. We don't know what the rules of the universe are on this matter. Maybe it actually is only possible for life to exist in carbon-based form with conditions somewhat similar to ours. Or maybe the lucky series of chain reactions that caused Earth to develop completely differently than any other planet in the solar system (since these are the only planets we know half a shit about, I'm referencing them) were so specific that the odds of them being replicated in the way "life" might need in order to spontaneous generate (however the fuck that happened) on any other planet in any galaxy are a trillion to one.

Maybe there's 50,000 trillion planets in the universe so you can still claim the "but with so many chances it certainly must have happened somewhere else" argument (it's still completely invalid conjecture), but the problem is we have absolutely no way of knowing (a) how life came into existence and (b) in what circumstances it is possible to happen again.

Without that data, there can be an infinite number of planets and that still doesn't make it any more likely that a completely unique circumstance in the universe (as far as we know) happened somewhere else too. It's impossible to have a logical conviction in either direction is my point. From our perspective, the likelihood that Earth is a total fluke, a freak mutation spun out of control that has never happened before and the likelihood that there are other life forms of some kind or another are perfectly equal because they're complete unknowns and can't be deduced in any way.

We have a pretty good idea of how life came into existence on earth. Go read the book Vital Dust.

I agree with the second bolded passage.

EDIT: except, I disagree about never being able to deduce it in anyway. If life does exist on other planets it is real and physical and is therefore possible to detect. What we will NEVER be able to deduce EVER, based on physical evidence, is whether there is some sort of spiritual higher being than the physical universe. I would not equate the two notions.

[Blinken]

We suck! We're not high-tech at all; we haven't even landed on the moon yet.


There's human arrogance. And then there's Randy arrogance. Heh.

Come the fuck on! We landed on the moon and if you think otherwise you are a fucking dipshit. There is no way a conspiracy this massive could be kept quiet for all these years.

[Barbara, the ninja]

Come the fuck on! We landed on the moon and if you think otherwise you are a fucking dipshit. There is no way a conspiracy this massive could be kept quiet for all these years.

It's not so hard, with so many willing believers.

[kreutz2112]

please dont turn this into a moon conspiracy thread.

[Barbara, the ninja]

It's impossible to have a logical conviction in either direction is my point. From our perspective, the likelihood that Earth is a total fluke, a freak mutation spun out of control that has never happened before and the likelihood that there are other life forms of some kind or another are perfectly equal because they're complete unknowns and can't be deduced in any way.

Fine, you win.

[Blinken]

It's not so hard, with so many willing believers.

Sorry Kruetz, but i got too.

http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/

check this site out, it debunks pretty much any argument you can up with for us not landing on the moon

[thelastgreatman]

I'm not saying that I think it's stupid to acknowledge other life forms are a possibility, but I immediately go into solipsism mode whenever ponderous theoretical questions no one knows anything resembling an answer to come up. And as a solipsist (I'll amend true solipsism to acknowledge the existence of the rest of the universe for this conversation) I have experienced nothing to even suggest the existence of such life. As of right now, everything in my sense memory indicates that such creatures do not exist. So that's what I believe until I see something that indicates otherwise.

The bigger issue with "how could Earth be the SOLE planet with lifeforms out of 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000" or whatever number you want to pull up in this specious logic exercise is how true is Chaos Theory, and to what extent? Because if there's anything to it, well, you have to somehow conceive of the millions of years that it took Earth to develop into the only planet we know of that has complicated organisms and the million^billion incredibly tiny factors that could have made it so we never existed.

Now, Chaos Theory is just theory, but it jives with my brain and particularly in this example I can see it. Shit, forget about big things like what if the first amphibian had died before reproducing, or what if the dinosaurs survived... it just ends up getting your head filled with boggling shit, but we have to take into account that in the course of evolution there were billions of mutations, inter-breeding of species that created new species and so on and so on, and for all we know just ONE of those things going wrong could have altered the course of Earth's development to a present without humans, or without any life, or Planet of the Apes.

It's a nigh-infinite number of variables over millions of years that got us to this point. We have no way of knowing what the odds of all those series of causes and effects leading to intelligent life forms was, so the number of planets in the universe doesn't tell us anything about the likelihood of it having happened again. The odds of humanity being born could very well outnumber the planets of the universe by a factor of billions--there's no way to know.

[TomAz]

this thread should be renamed the Mental Masturbation thread.

[Blinken]

all the variables don't have be equal to ours. There can be other ways to answer the problem is what i am saying. You talking about humanity on another planet, i just talking about some form of life. I completly agree that we are probably the only example of the human race, but that doesn't mean that other life doesn't exist and evolve in different ways. If we take the theory of evolution to be true over the whole universe, then there are billions of ways for life to change and move from single cell to multi cell organisms.

[captncrzy]

Did anyone else think a screaming monster would pop up at the end of that GIF? I kept waiting for it

OMG YES! Actually, twards the end, I leant back because I was sure some alien monster was going to come out screaming.

[thelastgreatman]

Come the fuck on! We landed on the moon and if you think otherwise you are a fucking dipshit. There is no way a conspiracy this massive could be kept quiet for all these years.

I'll believe we landed on the moon when I set foot on it. 9/11 looked fake from the first time I watched the buildings fall--there is no extent of bullshit I will put past authority.

We have a pretty good idea of how life came into existence on earth. Go read the book Vital Dust.

I agree with the second bolded passage.

EDIT: except, I disagree about never being able to deduce it in anyway. If life does exist on other planets it is real and physical and is therefore possible to detect. What we will NEVER be able to deduce EVER, based on physical evidence, is whether there is some sort of spiritual higher being than the physical universe. I would not equate the two notions.

Whatever the book has to say will encounter difficulty with the fact that I hate when scientists try to claim they have an idea what happened milllions of years ago when last year they discovered some bones proving there was a hominid something like 20,000 years prior to the previous consensus? If the motherfuckers can't handle thousands of years with fossil evidence then I'd just as soon they keep their thoughts on 5 billions B.C. to themselves.

Oh, and beware of absolutes, dude. Although in your phrasing of it you're technically right--we will never prove there is a spiritual higher being, because it is not a "being" and it is not "higher." But within the next hundred years I think they're going to finally start to unravel the energy phenomenon that has been mythologized into God.

We suck! We're not high-tech at all; we haven't even landed on the moon yet.

There's human arrogance. And then there's Randy arrogance. Heh.

Right. Sorry. It makes way more sense to assume that there's other entities in the universe (despite no evidence to think so) who share--perhaps exceed--the qualities our species possesses that make us the most unique element of reality as we know it.

Actually it doesn't make sense to assume it, but it might be true. Nonetheless, in the meantime you're just embarassing yourself and showing your age if you don't think that humanity is almost unfathomably special--at least on Earth.

[thelastgreatman]

all the variables don't have be equal to ours. There can be other ways to answer the problem is what i am saying. You talking about humanity on another planet, i just talking about some form of life. I completly agree that we are probably the only example of the human race, but that doesn't mean that other life doesn't exist and evolve in different ways. If we take the theory of evolution to be true over the whole universe, then there are billions of ways for life to change and move from single cell to multi cell organisms.

Dude, just to get to multi-cell organisms you're talking 5 billion years of Chaos Theory pitfalls. That's the thing. ALL of it is practically impossible I think--and yet it happened.

[gmoneyak]

Pretty colors.

[fasttrack]

this discussion is along the same lines as arguing about god. some people believe; some people don't. then there are the people who believe there is a possibility. is there a god? maybe, maybe not. is there life on other planets? maybe, maybe not.

if you've ever seen the film "what the *bleep do we know?" then you know what i'm talking about.

[TomAz]

I made that same point 6 posts ago.

[thelastgreatman]

Right, but there is still a point to determining exactly why those questions can or cannot be answered. I still say Descartes proved God exists.

[Blinken]

Descartes used circular reasoning to prove god exists. fuck descartes.