That’s not true. We have every reason to believe they are possible; our own existence proves that. We have no reason at all to think gods are possible. And give the size of the universe thinking that somewhere there must be other intelligent civilizations is a perfectly reasonable position to take; it doesn’t require (among other things) ignoring physical laws like claiming gods exist does.
This sounds a bit like a common misapplication of Occam’s razor.
Occam’s razor is to prefer the simpler of two equivalent explanations, not to disbelieve anything that isn’t proven by evidence.
If it’s not a misapplication of the razor, but merely based on the assumption we should disbelieve in anything that we don’t have concrete evidence for, Der Trihs answered that above. The evidence for life elsewhere is inconclusive, but there are plausible arguments that it might exist. It’s not even a case of “An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.” Since we have one case, positing the possibility of a second case isn’t “extraordinary”.
If your position is “I remain unconvinced,” then that’s perfectly legit, and might also be your stand on the existence of God or gods. But that doesn’t mean that they equate.
Forget about us.
I’d like to know what are the chances two separate intelligent civilizations are close enough that they could effectively communicate with each other?
As to the OP: Yes there’s life. No we will never contact them.
That’s my guess. We are probably the most advanced civilization in the Milky Way, because I think the Fermi Paradox asks a very valid question, the answer to which is, “they don’t exist yet.”
But in the whole universe? I would guess there’s a civilized species out there somewhere. I wouldn’t stake my life on it, but if forced to guess, I’d say yeah.
On the other hand, as the expansion of space increases in speed, the knowable universe decreases. If we don’t make contact soon, we never will, and my guess is we won’t.
There is no evidence for the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. That’s because the rest of the universe is very far away. We’ve barely been able to examine our own solar system. But yes, evidence is not the only reason to consider that intelligent life has formed elsewhere. As you’ve stated well, it’s not an extraordinary claim to say there likely is, because it happened once already.
Well, there’s nothing theoretically impossible about two or more planets orbiting within the same Goldilocks zone, is there? That is, a star system with more than one life-bearing planet is conceivable. But, the emergence of intelligent life is a rare phenomenon, took 2 billion years on this planet, and it’s unlikely it would happen on both planets within the same geological time-period. So, when the first planet in the system produces an intelligent species, and they develop a technological civilization, they will go visit the other planets of their star system and find that some bear life, but none bear intelligent life – that is, they’re the first. It’s theoretically possible that an intelligent species will evolve some time within the next 10 million years if the planet is left alone. On the other hand, if the intelligent species exploits this life-bearing planet and colonizes it, invasive species from their world might crowd out the whole local biosphere.
What we would we do in that situation, I wonder?
Drill there, and drill now!
And here, both you and DT have missed the thrust of the question and my answer. The belief that there may be other life can be justified by your means. The belief that there is other life cannot.
First of all, that’s a back-pedal from this quote:
It is more reasonable to posit other life, because we know life exists somewhere. We don’t have scientific evidence of a first god, on which to predicate the question ‘might there be others?’
Second, your question and answer are different than the OP’s question, to which you answered no.
Finally,
is pretty much what both **LearJeff **and **DerTrihs **said.
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Yes. To insist that we’re alone in the universe is the highest form of arrogance.
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Never. There’s no reason for us to have been the first intelligence in the universe to start reaching towards space- and if another race had started, oh, a million years before us, they’d already be here. After all, look how far we’ve gotten in just a few hundred years. So if the other races already exist, why aren’t they here already? I’d say it’s either a lot more energy efficient to “turn inward” and explore simulated universes, or intelligence is a kind of evolutionary “dead-end”- it might be that intelligent species inevitably kill themselves off before they can contact anyone else.
Well damn. Now I’m a bit depressed.
Which makes it significantly different than belief in God.
We have evidence that life happened at least once. Unless we believe in miracles, that’s reason to ponder the possibility that it happened more than once.
With God, we have no solid evidence that it happened even once.
There’s a huge difference between comparing 0 and 1, versus comparing 1 and 2. The former is what I’d call an extrordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence. The latter is a pretty significant claim and would require pretty significant evidence. But a probability argument might be possible for the latter. For the former, not so much.
In any case, there’s almost nothing that I know for certain, other than silly stuff like the fact that I can’t doubt my own existence without contradicting myself in the process. After metaphysical or phenomenological stuff like that, everything else is a gray area. The question is how dark or how light.
Of course, I don’t posit that there is no God. I don’t use lack of evidence as evidence of lack. God and intelligent life on other planets are alike in that regard.
I strongly doubt the possibility of God mostly because I can’t come up with a definition that makes much sense.
There’s another difference, though. One can argue that it’s impossible to decide whether there’s a God. A higher being might do things that might seem God-like to us, but we’re easily fooled. I don’t know what would constitute real proof that there is a God. (Of course, I’d probably be convinced by a fairly simple display of apparent omnipotence, but we’re not just talking about me here.) On the other hand, evidence of intelligent life elsewhere isn’t nearly as hard to evaluate.
From Bruce Sterling’s SF short story “Swarm”: Afriel, a human agent of the Solar System’s Shaper faction (specializing in gene-engineering), at war with the Mechanists (prosthetics and technology), has been sent to the Hive, a cluster of asteroids in a distant star system, where, in air-filled tunnels burrowed through the rock, live the Swarm, a race of nonsentient beings with many specialized castes. His mission is purportedly scientific study, but his real mission is to domesticate the Swarm, alter their genes to make them produce things the Shapers can use. At the end, his partner, the (real) scientist Mirny, vanishes, and Swarm of the soldier caste arrest him and take him before what appears to be a new caste, a Swarm with a giant brain, which has absorbed his partner’s mind and memories through a tentacle thrust into her head, so it can now speak her language. Afriel’s pheromonal experiments created a chemical imbalance which the Queen detected, triggering genetic patterns, causing the brain to be born to deal with the threat.
No, there’s no backpedaling at all. You seem to be entirely skipping over the parenthetical phrase in my first statement that you quoted.
No, I answered the exact question asked, the question of belief in the existence of other intelligent life. Belief in existence is a far different thing than belief in possibility.
Again, you are conflating belief in possibility of existence with belief in existence. These are two entirely different questions.
For the former, there is a slightly higher rationality for other intelligent life than there is for gods. This is not so for the latter.
While we have no reason to discount the possibility of “intelligent” (silly word!) life elsewhere than on this planet there is a plausible heuristic case to be made for the proposition that such societies may never be contacted by our species.
Which, of course, is one way of accounting for the Fermi paradox.
In terms of a kind of “cosmic censorship” by the non-biological cognitive entity which is on track to supersede humankind.
The very broad evolutionary model which supports this contention is outlined (very informally) in “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” , a free download in e-book formats from my “Unusual Perspectives” website
Post-biological cognitive entities might be the most common form of life in the galaxy, or even in the universe. We might not easily recognise them as such, however.
My thoughts on this are:
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No. Big as the universe is, and it’s very, very big, I think the chances against the occurrence of all the events that brought about life are even bigger, by a very long way. There are probably an infinite number of universes in which no life evolved at all. We are just very lucky, that’s all, and if we hadn’t been, we wouldn’t be here to wonder about it.
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Yes. We will certainly, either as humans or whatever our descendants become when we are clever enough to control the forces of nature and evolution, colonise the entire universe. We will become our own “aliens”. Since time travel will be easy, we may already be out there somewhere.
Some things are simply, physically impossible no matter how clever we get.
Of course, one problem with using the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox to argue that aliens don’t exist, is that right now, on the planet Zog over on the other side of the galaxy, there could be someone on an alien message board using the same reasoning, and concluding that humans can’t exist. And yet we do.
Firstly, There is a serious problem with the Drake equation – inadequacy of reliable input. Even one incorrectly guessed input variable rendering the output meaningless.
We must always remember the IT mantra of GIGO : garbage in – garbage out.
So it cannot sensibly be used to argue the issue either way.
With regard to the Fermi paradox, there are other ways of accounting for this rather than the exclusion of the possibility of extra terrestrial cognitive entities.
One of which I discuss in chapter 17 of “Unusual Perspectives: An Escape From Tunnel Vision” (Free download)
Learjeff makes a good point above in in noting that our direct evidence of imaginatory (sic) life having evolved once puts the speculation of it having occurred more than once on a far better footing than such entities as a “god” or “great flying spaghetti monster” for which there is no hard evidence whatsoever.
There is also, in the broad evolutionary context of my books, a quite good heuristic case to me made for the emergence of other technological societies.