Life on Other Planets and the Existence of God

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I don't know if anyone else has ever thought about this or not, but I think whether or not there is life on other planets is important to consider when it comes to the existence of God or some creator. Most religious people would argue that Earth and humans were the most important of God's creation and what he focused on, and that is why that is the only place there is life. They would argue that life originated because of God even if they agree with the theory of evolution. With such a vast universe it seems like it would be likely for similar conditions to the origin of life on Earth could happen somewhere else on some other planet in the universe. The non-religious argue that humans are not that important to the overall universe, and that life on other planets, especially some kind of other advance life form, would prove that. Does this make sense to anyone else?

Last edited by wowiexist on 02 Aug 2014, 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think the probability for similar conditions are relatively high.

Actually that is what I meant to say. I will edit it.

The universe is likely full of lots of civilisations of weird looking aliens that have evolved along different lines to humans; it is quite possible that these aliens have themselves invented god concepts too prior to them discovering the principles of science to explain how the universe and their own biology works. It wouldn't surprise me that there are green tentacled beings worshipping a similar green tentacled being who got nailed to the equivalent of some sort of cross and who died for their "sins" and that only those who pray to said being will be reborn into an afterlife where they will all copulate in huge balls of slime for eternity... humans of course would be excluded from "heaven" as they don't have souls unlike the tentacled beings.

There are many civilizations in the universe, but there are probably thousands of lightyears between them. Goldilocks planets are rare, and there's a very short time frame where life can originate in the first place. While there may be no more than 10-20 lightyears between every planet with primitive life, it's reasonable to assume that eukaryotic life is rare, that animals are even more rare, and that intelligent animals are the exception and not the rule.

Where life as we know it can originate.

I assume that if they are there one day we will find them. NASA says they think they will find more life forms in the universe. Up to this point they have not said that they have found any yet. I will just have to keep following it and see what they find.

Lifeforms on other planets probably have the same bottlenecks as life on earth. There are many inhospitable places on earth where no extremophiles thrive (many places in Antarctica are completely lifeless). Bacteria need at least -20 degrees celsius to reproduce, and no lifeform can survive more than 121 degrees celcius for an extended period of time. Advanced lifeforms were only possible after oxygen became abundant (notice how there aren't any advanced lifeforms where there's no oxygen).

The sun is a young star, and there were many similar stars billions of years before it even existed. If intelligent life was abundant, extraterrestrial time capsules similar to Voyager would also be abundant.

Maybe. Maybe not.


On Earth, yes, but other chemical configurations and temperature ranges could yield different results, even more advanced than what is achievable under our earthly conditions.


Maybe they are.

We know what we know based on known conditions. The rest is just speculation. Interesting, though.

http://history.nasa.gov/CP-2156/ch1.3.htm

Goldilocks planets are not really rare. NASA's Keplar probe actually found quite a few of them, or possible planets that could be the Goldilocks zones of their respective stars, just yet to be confirmed from examining the data. Whether or not life actually developed on them is a different issue.

The flying spaghetti monster is a joke to us but somewhere out there are aliens that are serious about worshipping an identical deity. It's no joke to them.

Our ancestors looked up at the sky and saw that the sun revolved around us, as did all of the stars in the night sky. So it was obvious that where we stood was the center of the universe. So obviously god set the whole thing up with us in the center of it.

But as science progressed it transpired that that geocentric thing was all an illusion. That it was the earth that was the slave to the Sun, not the other way around. And that the apparent motion of stars and the sun was caused by the Earth rotating on its axis. And the sun was actually just a mediocre star in the boondocks of a galaxy, and so forth. Mankind gradually got booted farther and farther out of the center of known cosmos. So it became obvious that earth wasnt so special after all. The idea that there was a god that put us at the center of his creation began to take a beating, but also the notion that there might be other worlds with other beings equivalent to us began to take hold. So- yes - the two notions- that there is a God- and that there are ET's do have an inverse correlation with each other as human history progressed. They may not be directly contradictory ideas, but belief in God and belief in ETs are products of different ages with different cosmologies. And indeed if the grays landed on the red carpet in front of the UN tomorrow it would show that something big got left out of the story of Genisis in the Bible.

Define rare, and how do you know, it was only in 1984 that the first extra-solar planet was discovered. We have know idea how many "goldilock planets" there may be. But yes, I agree, unless there is a way to jump across space then we may remain isolated.

Know what the Bible says about life on other worlds?

Nothing.

Does that mean it's not out there?

No.

The Bible is about God's relationship with Man. Just because it says nothing about a topic doesn't mean there isn't anything to say about it or that it doesn't exist. If the Bible covered everything in the universe, it'd be too much to read (or carry about).

Depends on how strict your definition of a Goldilocks planet is. If it only means a rocky planet with an atmosphere within the habitable zone of the star, then maybe most stars have one. If it means a planet that starts out like our own (where life could originate in the first place; this is no longer possible), has plenty of water, a moon like our own, a dense atmosphere, a strong magnetosphere, the right axial tilt, a day that's only a couple of hours long, sheltering from comets and other nasty solar system bodies, and all that, they're probably not that common.

Don't get me wrong--there are probably thousands of civilizations, but they're scattered across a universe with a diameter that stretches out for billions of lightyears, and I don't think they'll ever interact in any way.

God IS an alien. When we die, our essence is transported via some futuristic technology to the planet Heaven, where it is downloaded into a new, perfect body.
Just kidding.
But maybe. Who knows?