# Is it time to accept that we are alone in the universe? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2014, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713 "2014-11-15T18:17:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/61 "2014-11-17T04:04:12Z")
Most seem to think life arising under early Earth conditions is inevitable. If that’s the case it seems we should have been able to reproduce it by now. I’m not sure the answer is in the amount of favorable conditions that exist in the universe but rather what the chance of life arising is. And despite the extrapolating factors regarding life elsewhere, that (chances of life arising) is a figure that no one can know… much less the chance of complicated life forms evolving from that first “life”. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/62 "2014-11-17T04:28:08Z")
> [@PlainJain](#): > > Most seem to think life arising under early Earth conditions is inevitable. If that’s the case it seems we should have been able to reproduce it by now. . . . That doesn’t seem to follow logically. One thing nature has that we don’t is a few million years to try different chemical combinations. A million years is still a very short time in geological terms…but a damned long one for laboratory science. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/63 "2014-11-17T05:25:30Z")
Even if life occurs elsewhere, how far will it develop? Consider dinosaurs were on this planet for over 165 million years yet in all that time no intelligent species of dinos ever evolved. In fact we have yet to have any evidence of a dino using even a basic tool. Humans have been around for just 2 million years and look where we are. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/64 "2014-11-17T05:50:17Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Why would God create a universe as vast as ours and put 99% of it off-limits, forver? God must not think we’re very special if he has to keep up in a cage. I’ve thought about this and I think its for our own good. Consider - humans are the only “advanced” creatures on the earth. There are no talking fish, birds, or lizard people here even though for example, dinosaurs were on the earth for 165 million years (compared to humans 2 million) yet never advanced. We humans dont get along well. God chose to scatter the different races across the planet and everytime we meet we have had wars. People killing and enslaving each other. Think Australia, Africa, and North America. Now imagine we were forced to share the earth with say bird people. How well would that have worked out? Our last competition were the Neanderthals and homo sapiens wiped them out. Now imagine our solar system had other habitable planets all populated by other creatures. Would we have gotten along with say the red insect people of Mars, the squid people of Jupiter? The lizard people of Saturn? In Battlestar Galactica their home system had 12 habitable worlds and it took centuries of war to work things out. Their is speculation that the asteroid belt that is between Mars and Saturn is the remnant of a destroyed planet that may have had life but God chose to allow it to be destroyed. What God did do was leave us in a solar system of 9 planets with plenty to explore and utilize. We dont really know what awaits us on Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus. I’m nobody special this is just what I think. ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/65 "2014-11-17T06:11:08Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > That doesn’t seem to follow logically. > > One thing nature has that we don’t is a few million years to try different chemical combinations. A million years is still a very short time in geological terms…but a damned long one for laboratory science. Except we now know what those chemical combinations are, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Yet when we combine them we are unable to breathe life into them. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/66 "2014-11-17T06:13:22Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > I’ve been hearing for a while now that the scientists who know the most about SETI think we will probably find something within the next couple dozen years - and I’m glad to hear this, because it means I’ll probably get to hear about it. > . Lets say SETI does pick up a repeating signal. It might be that, just a series of beeps. If there is a pattern would we be able to figure it out? And after we have figured it out, could we send a reply? How long would that take? If it takes years to get a signal it might take decades or even hundreds of years to have a real conversation? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/67 "2014-11-17T06:23:54Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I disagree that “we have absolutely no clue”. Just for starters, amino acids and their precursors – the organic chemical building blocks of life – have been found in comets and meteorites, leading to a plausible theory that not only is there abundant life elsewhere in the universe, Sorry, but a “plausible theory” doesn’t cut it. I do not dispute that intelligent life somewhere else is a plausible theory, but that you can make pronouncements about the likelihood of it being true. Amino acids don’t make an intelligent life. > [@](#): > > Aside from the fact that we therefore _ **know** _ that the most basic elements of life exist elsewhere, there’s also this amazing sort of anthropic center-of-the-universe arrogance about saying that in a galaxy populated by some 300 billion stars, and hundreds of billions of other galaxies in the universe, this one ordinary average-sized star on the backwoods outskirts of one spiral arm of an ordinary small-ish galaxy is the only place in the entire universe that harbors life, because gosh-darn it, we’re special! We don’t know and have no way to know at this point whether or not the likelihood of intelligent life appearing is smaller or greater than your 300 billions times some hundred of billions example. It might be a billion times more unlikely, and it can be miraculous that it appeared in even one place in the whole universe. If you disagree with that and think you can make an estimate, bring your figures and explain to me how you determined them. And obviously, if it appeared only once, we’re are this example. It has nothing to do with being special, it’s just the anthropic principle. If it was some other planet in some other galaxy, its inhabitants would ponder exactly the same thing, and someone (something?) would say also “why, you believe we’re so special?” Our existence is a fact. But it doesn’t give us much insight into the odds of intelligent life appearing and surviving. I could point out that there has been no kind of intelligent life on our own planet for 3 999 millions of years out of 4 billions. So, the existence of intelligent life doesn’t exactly seems to be the norm even on a planet where life can thrive. As I already pointed out, for most of the history of earth, there wasn’t even a multicellular organism. So, even the apparition of this can’t be taken as granted, from the only example we know of. > [@](#): > > And saying so without any evidence against the incredible statistical odds that mathematically alone it couldn’t possibly by true. What incredible statistical odds? How do you determine this "mathematically? Again, I’m going to use a random number generator. It’s plausible in theory that it will generate “6”. It’s plausible in theory that it will generate an abundance of “6”, even. What is the likelihood that it will actually generate it if I run it a thousand time? A billion times? A trillion billion times? What are the statistical odds, given that you know nothing about my random number generator? > [@](#): > > That to me sounds more like religious proselytizing than science, and the center-of-the-universe stuff was pretty much done in by the time of Galileo. “Even though I have absolutely no evidence for it, I proclaim my faith that there has to be other intelligent life in the universe, and I’ll call you a religious zealot if you point at my complete lack of evidence”. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/68 "2014-11-17T06:46:36Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Lets say SETI does pick up a repeating signal. It might be that, just a series of beeps. If there is a pattern would we be able to figure it out? > > And after we have figured it out, could we send a reply? How long would that take? If it takes years to get a signal it might take decades or even hundreds of years to have a real conversation? I don’t know what the official word from SETI scientists is. Someone was probably just being enthusiastic about how much more of the sky we’ll be able to scan with improving technologies or something. I don’t see it though. We still can’t scan the whole sky. There would have to be 1000s of civilizations beaming signals right at us. If that’s the assumption, that the sky is filled with signals then sure, I guess we’ll stumble across one soon enough. Pretty big assumption. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/69 "2014-11-17T06:58:03Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > It’s the only place we know of that is not ‘theoretically’ able to support life. But it’s basically the only place we know…period. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/70 "2014-11-17T07:27:45Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I’ve thought about this and I think its for our own good. > > Consider - humans are the only “advanced” creatures on the earth. There are no talking fish, birds, or lizard people here even though for example, dinosaurs were on the earth for 165 million years (compared to humans 2 million) yet never advanced. > > We humans dont get along well. God chose to scatter the different races across the planet and everytime we meet we have had wars. People killing and enslaving each other. Think Australia, Africa, and North America. > > Now imagine we were forced to share the earth with say bird people. How well would that have worked out? Our last competition were the Neanderthals and homo sapiens wiped them out. > > Now imagine our solar system had other habitable planets all populated by other creatures. Would we have gotten along with say the red insect people of Mars, the squid people of Jupiter? The lizard people of Saturn? > > In Battlestar Galactica their home system had 12 habitable worlds and it took centuries of war to work things out. > > Their is speculation that the asteroid belt that is between Mars and Saturn is the remnant of a destroyed planet that may have had life but God chose to allow it to be destroyed. > > What God did do was leave us in a solar system of 9 planets with plenty to explore and utilize. We dont really know what awaits us on Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus. > > I’m nobody special this is just what I think. Alternatively, god could have made us with less aggressive tendancies, and then we could have been put in a universe that was easier to explore. Heck it would probably mean we’d be much further advanced technologically, and much better off economically too. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/71 "2014-11-17T07:43:47Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Alternatively, god could have made us with less aggressive tendancies, and then we could have been put in a universe that was easier to explore. > Heck it would probably mean we’d be much further advanced technologically, and much better off economically too. If all that were true, would you believe in god? If there was no hunger, would you believe in god? How much better off economically or further technologically advanced would we need to get for you to believe? Just curious. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/72 "2014-11-17T09:39:13Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Alternatively, god could have made us with less aggressive tendancies, and then we could have been put in a universe that was easier to explore. > Heck it would probably mean we’d be much further advanced technologically, and much better off economically too. Hard to say. But my point was if we have trouble dealing with a human who is a different color of skin than us, how would we have reacted to another race of intelligent beings altogether? Or how aggressive would those other races have been towards us? Would we now be slaves to our dinolords? ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/73 "2014-11-17T09:46:44Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Hard to say. But my point was if we have trouble dealing with a human who is a different color of skin than us, how would we have reacted to another race of intelligent beings altogether? Or how aggressive would those other races have been towards us? Would we now be slaves to our dinolords? His point was god could have made it hunky dorey if he wanted to, dinosaur overlords or no. He didn’t have to make us in such a way as to have trouble dealing with skin colour. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/74 "2014-11-17T11:20:23Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > If all that were true, would you believe in god? If there was no hunger, would you believe in god? How much better off economically or further technologically advanced would we need to get for you to believe? Just curious. In my case, the answer is never as our living conditions have nothing to do with why I reject (in the “weak atheism” sense) the idea of gods: I reject it because there is no reason to think such an entity exists, and it’s straightforward to explain why humans have such beliefs. But I’m not sure how someone who’s atheism was primarily motivated by the problem of evil would answer. Playing devil’s advocate, sure, I could conceive of a reality where I would suspect the influence of an intelligent outside force. For example, if I lived in a reality that appeared to have consistent laws, but those laws repeatedly would be bent in my favour in a clearly measurable way. Even then though, the god “hypothesis” would be fighting a tough battle vs Solipsism. We may have gone off topic. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/75 "2014-11-17T13:23:14Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > That to me sounds more like religious proselytizing than science, and the center-of-the-universe stuff was pretty much done in by the time of Galileo. [whiny Luke Skywalker voice] Well, if there _is_ a center of the universe, this must be the planet that it’s farthest _from_.[/wLSv] ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/76 "2014-11-17T14:41:19Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Lets say SETI does pick up a repeating signal. It might be that, just a series of beeps. If there is a pattern would we be able to figure it out? > > And after we have figured it out, could we send a reply? How long would that take? If it takes years to get a signal it might take decades or even hundreds of years to have a real conversation? Kurt Vonnegut, in his novel _The Sirens of Titan_, talks about some species that is telepathic, and can only send or receive two messages. The first is a response to the second, and the second a response to the first. The first message is “Here I am”. The second is “So glad you are.” The most important thing another civilization can communicate is that it exists. At a stroke, we have doubled our knowledge of the universe. Then we set to work analyzing the structure and method, but that comes later. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/77 "2014-11-17T16:46:42Z")
> [@PlainJain](#): > > Except we now know what those chemical combinations are, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Yet when we combine them we are unable to breathe life into them. We have made amino acids. It’s more than just mix & stir. I’m not sure, but I think we have or are getting close to making RNA. I’m not sure there are that many scientists with big budgets working on it anyway. As mentioned, nature had millions of years and a whole ocean with trillions and trillions of increasingly complicated molecules and chemicals to work with. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/78 "2014-11-17T18:12:36Z")
It is interesting to see in this thread the confluence of ideas about life in the universe and religion. Altho different in a lot of ways (science versus faith), they both rely on “belief”, and both are short on evidence. “There MUST be something out there” works for both concepts. Perhaps there is life out there, somewhere. It may or may not be sentient, and may or may not have technology. Perhaps it is in a non-sentient form we cannot sense and is already here. Perhaps they are sentient and technologically enabled, but have chosen to avoid this place for some reason. It’s all great speculation - we are using terms here like “could be”, “likely”, and “mathematically possible”. That does not prove a thing, unless you just want to take things on faith alone. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/79 "2014-11-17T18:18:21Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > It is interesting to see in this thread the confluence of ideas about life in the universe and religion. Altho different in a lot of ways (science versus faith), they both rely on “belief”, and both are short on evidence. “There MUST be something out there” works for both concepts. > > Perhaps there is life out there, somewhere. It may or may not be sentient, and may or may not have technology. Perhaps it is in a non-sentient form we cannot sense and is already here. Perhaps they are sentient and technologically enabled, but have chosen to avoid this place for some reason. It’s all great speculation - we are using terms here like “could be”, “likely”, and “mathematically possible”. That does not prove a thing, unless you just want to take things on faith alone. I had the exact same impression after about the first 4 posts. I think the fundamental difference between this and religion is that any life out there would still be contingent on physical laws we understand where sprititual life would require that we accept an entirely unknown form of laws that are not physcal or anything we can relate to. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2014, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713/80 "2014-11-17T18:21:26Z")
Not the same thing at all. Humans are 100% proof that humans can exist. There is no evidence of God, and his existence would violate all the laws of physics. It’s not faith that there is life out there, it’s a reasonable assumption based on facts. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-accept-that-we-are-alone-in-the-universe/704713.md?page=5)