Do you believe in Aliens?

Zeeboe
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Do you believe in Aliens?

This is something I've wanted to ask you folks for a long time but just never got around to it. I just got back from a weekend trip in New Mexico and one of the cities I visited was Roswell. I read some rather interesting things at the local museum I went to, and I'll post my opinions on them in a moment.

Most atheists I know of don't believe in anything other then what we can see, but I'd love to read the opinions from you guys in regards of any and everything alien and UFO related.

In my view: I think it's all lies. I think what goes on in area 51 is war related and if our enemies found out about it, we'd all be dead. But I highly doubt there are any aliens (living or dead) there, no UFO parts and no secret meetings about forming a new world order. I honestly think they use the whole alien thing as an angle to make $$$$. People who are into all that alien stuff are no better then most Christians when it comes to running bullshit central.

And I never knew that those guys could use deadly force if anybody were to venture beyond the gates of area 51 until this weekend, but from what I've read the people who do that are usually asked to leave and they usually do, and if they don't.....the locals cops come out there and arrest them. And then they may have to pay a big fine but I doubt anybody has ever gotten shot out there. And heck, all U.S. bases have that law where they can use deadly force if they have to. Area 51 isn't the only one.

On a more personal note, I truly feel sorry for the locals there. Everything.....from Wal-Mart to the street signs have something related to Aliens. If I loved there, I'd hate forever being known and viewed as Alien Central. Although it's a small town and I suppose the city depends on the money they make from it to get anything decent out there.

If you ever go there, and you want to budget your time.....do yourself a favor and go to only one shop. There are quite a few Alien stores in the little downtown area and all the business's sell the exact same stuff.


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Aliens or alien visitations

Aliens or alien visitations to earth?

 

I actively disbelieve there's been any visits here from intelligent aliens.  In general though, I don't see any reason why there wouldn't be some kind of life out there somewhere, even if it is just bacteria-like.  As far as actually ever finding any outside our solar system goes, I doubt it... the distances are so damn huge.


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I believe 100% that there is

I believe 100% that there is intelligent life out there and that they have atleast buzzed us as my parents saw a UFO that moved in a way no (known) modern aircraft could have, though I kinda doubt that first contact with any of our governments has been made. It'd be too hard to cover up, even if no one in that country leaked it you could bet any rival that found out would.


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I strongly suspect that

I strongly suspect that there are other forms of life around other stars. I very seriously doubt that any of those lifeforms have visited our planet. I don't for one minute buy that aliens have crashed here, built the pyramids, talked to the Sumerians, engaged in human breeding projects, or abducted and anally probed rednecks.

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All together now...While the

All together now...

While the sheer number of stars in the cosmos suggests it is very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe, the possibility that intelligent life exists is a possibility independent of the simple existence of life elsewhere.  There is no reason whatsoever to expect that intelligence exists elsewhere in the universe unless it clearly makes itself evident to humanity in a sample size larger than one or two (which is apparently the current mode of communication if UFO loonies are to be taken at their word).  Hearsay is hearsay and faith is faith but only the truth has the virtue of being the truth.

 

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I think extraterrestrial

I think extraterrestrial life has pretty good odds of being out there somewhere and I've had very credible people describe things that seem to be evidence to support alien visitation but I'm still very doubtful about how or why anything would travel zillions of light years just to do anal probes and make circles in wheat fields.


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I had only seen a big,

I had only seen a big, glowing colourful object, in orange and green. It was at night and my younger brother watched it with me. Many years later, I saw at night a big flash in the sky from a static object of relative size as 1/3 of the moon. The flash enlightened all the landscape in white and awakened all the neighbours' livestock.

Some of my friends and my parents, even saw an UFO to fly and maneuver beyond aircraft possibilities. For example, flying low, near the ground, on a mountain side, where no machine could get.
Every month there are numerous reports of whole families or villages being a witnesses of such a phenomena, and of the most intricate, but extremely precise crop circles in their vicinity.
Obviously, if these are intelligent beings, they don't show any interest for our government officials, (and who can blame them?) but a bit more for a common people and the nature. With their technology, they can know everything about the humanity (monitoring of the television and internet must be easy) and they doesn't need anything from us, not even an anal-ysis of our certain body parts. All theoretics think that aliens may a beings who travels far and are really curious at the unseen civilization approximately comparable to theirs. This is a primitive idea. Thanks to the C-speed limit, it's more probable that the travel will be almost instant, or none at all. This also implicates, that we have nothing to offer to such a civilisation, and everything they do, is thus selfless. And it is also logical, that they would avoid a commercial, selfish interest towards them, this is why there hardly can be any official contact and trade between us and their civilization. An advanced technology would be quickly misused. It's obvious that we need a moral, idealistic values in the first place.

As for my favorite theory, I think we don't have to go anywhere far, to find the aliens. I study the existence of subtle realms of the world, finer than our known solid-material, with their own equivalents of matter. According to my information, the subtle realms are much more hospitable to the life, than ours. Being based on them, civilizations and ecosystems can thrive in our neighbourhood, where our dense-material devices only found a deadly temperatures and poisonous substances. The advanced civilizations can use their technology to make their crafts dense enough to be observed by us, but unaffected by our material world, unless they wish.
So much for the theory. Of course it has only value for those, who are at least marginally aware of the subtle realms of existence. I say that I am, and that I saw UFO at least once. Based on this, the theory looks considerably to me.

 

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I don't believe in alien

I don't believe in alien visitation, but I do believe that in all probability there is life on other planets. Of course probability has no memory, so it's impossible to know if other life does actually exist, let alone intelligent life.

Let's say you're tossing a coin. The probability of getting heads is 50%, as is the probability of getting tails. Imagine you throw five heads in a row, what is the probability that you'll get a tails on your next throw? Surely this next one must be a tails right? Wrong, the probability remains 50% for this next coin toss. Of course if we were to go back to the beginning, the probability of throwing six heads in a row would be very low (I'm no mathematician, I'm not going to work it out).

So, how does this apply to extra terrestrial life? We can imagine that whether life happens (and survives) on other suitable worlds is like a coin toss (although with varying probabilities for each one). There may be an over all probability of how much life is likely to come about in the universe. But this probability does not affect the probability of life arising on each individual planet. Just as each coin toss remains 50/50, not matter what has happened before.

This does not mean that the Drake Equation is unreliable. It is more likely that the number of civilisations in the known universe is closer to the DE than to 1 or infinity but this does not rule out that it may be much less or more than what the formula predicts, ergo, we could be alone in the universe, or we could be in a universe teeming with life.


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I don't "believe" in aliens

I don't "believe" in aliens or have faith that they're out there, but I'd say we're kidding ourselves thinking we're the only life form in the entire universe. We can pretty much say whatever might be out there isn't carbon-based like they are often are in cheesy sci-fi movies, and I think whatever is out there is most likely beyond our realm of perception.

*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*

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peppermint wrote:I don't

peppermint wrote:

I don't "believe" in aliens or have faith that they're out there, but I'd say we're kidding ourselves thinking we're the only life form in the entire universe. We can pretty much say whatever might be out there isn't carbon-based like they are often are in cheesy sci-fi movies, and I think whatever is out there is most likely beyond our realm of perception.

Actually, any extraterrestrial life is highly likely to be carbon-based.  There isn't a better atom for making the complex ring and chain structures that you need to separate self from not-self (by way of a membrane or a cell wall, for example).  Discussions of the possibility of silicon-based life fail to take into account the infrequency of silicon-silicon bonding, and most astrobiologists (useless though they are, and poorly funded) concern themselves with the possibility of analogues to deep sea vent-dwelling archael life.  Harmless, but a waste of time.  They might as well be doing research on extremophiles, and in fact, most of them eventually do so.

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 Quote:I'd love to read the

 

Quote:
I'd love to read the opinions from you guys in regards of any and everything alien and UFO related.

Alien visitation to earth: So unlikely as to be completely ignored as a possibility.  The technological hurdles necessary to find another planet with life are tremendous.  The technological hurdles to send unoccupied devices to those planets are brobingdagian.  Transporting lifeforms through interstellar space... you might as well believe you're going to win the lottery a hundred weeks in a row through sheer luck.  Beyond the technological hurdles, there's the simple matter of time.  The most likely way that any species would find another intelligent species is through some sort of artificial organization of electromagnetic radiation.  ER travels at a finite speed, and can only start travelling when a species starts making it.  That means that any intelligent species has an effective bubble of invisibility around them.  Only species within a "light distance" smaller than the length of time since they've had advanced technology can see them.  Given the immensity of the galaxy and the paucity of evidence for uniformity of solar systems and planetary bodies, it seems tremendously unlikely that we're in the same sphere of technology as another intelligent species.

Beyond all of this, we have to realize that evolution doesn't move towards intelligence as a goal.  If you think about it, out of the millions of species on earth, there's only one capable of building spacecrafts.  There are only a handful more who are even smart enough to recognize themselves in a mirror.  Intelligence is a quirky biproduct of one very specific evolutionary arms race.  Most of the time, if our own planet is a worthwhile case study, evolution doesn't bother too much with very high intellects.

This brings me to the next question.  Alien life that hasn't visited earth:  I think it's incredibly likely.  If you think about probability, it becomes very easy to imagine.  The chemicals in our primordial soup are abundant in the universe.  Life arose on our planet within only a couple billion years of the primordial soup being available.  That seems like an awful lot, but if we multiply a one in a billion chance times a hundred trillion, we get an awful lot of hits.  The thing is, it's all guesswork at this point, but if our understanding of the cosmos is relatively accurate, I think it's damn likely that replicators form relatively often, in a cosmic sense.

I think sentient intelligence is probably extremely rare.  I'm just making this number up, but my gut instinct is that it's probably about a one in a million occurance.  Don't ask me to justify that with math.  I can't.  This question is just an idle curiosity for me, and I honestly could give two shits either way.  I haven't bothered reaching a justifiable position, and I recommend that my opinion be weighed with that in mind.

Quote:
In my view: I think it's all lies. I think what goes on in area 51 is war related and if our enemies found out about it, we'd all be dead.

Personally, I think we were trying to invent personal jet packs or funnelling money into quackery like remote viewing.  I think Area 51 is a remnant from the cold war, but somebody somewhere has the pull to keep it funded enough to keep government quackery alive.

Quote:
I honestly think they use the whole alien thing as an angle to make $$$$. People who are into all that alien stuff are no better then most Christians when it comes to running bullshit central.

I agree.

Quote:
On a more personal note, I truly feel sorry for the locals there. Everything.....from Wal-Mart to the street signs have something related to Aliens.

Have you ever been to Gatlinburg?  Branson?  Tampa?  There are many afflicted cities.  I think we should have a telethon.

 

 

 

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phooney wrote:Aliens or

phooney wrote:

Aliens or alien visitations to earth?

 

I actively disbelieve there's been any visits here from intelligent aliens.  In general though, I don't see any reason why there wouldn't be some kind of life out there somewhere, even if it is just bacteria-like.  As far as actually ever finding any outside our solar system goes, I doubt it... the distances are so damn huge.

To think that out of the billions of galaxies which in turn would constitutue hundereds of trillions of plannets, I think that it would be a staticitical occurance, however rare, that at least some single cell life exists on another planet somewhere. BUT I am with you, that anything outside our solar system we wont get to for the reasons you stated and certainly IF there were life like us in some form, it too, would probably be stuck in it's own neighborhood like we are.

To the Original Post:

NO, the garbage you saw out there is merely a product of vivid emagination combind with buzz words plucked out of science and bastardized by people as delusional as when the ancients actually believed a god named Thor banged the clouds together to make thunder and lightning.

Certainly sometimes people see things in the sky that they are unsure of, but it is the same gap argument that they pull, to justify the absurdity of "little green men".

I wich it was true, however,  because it would be fun to see how Muslims and Christians would project their beiefs onto our visitors.

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Brian37 wrote: I wich it

Brian37 wrote:

 

I wich it was true, however,  because it would be fun to see how Muslims and Christians would project their beiefs onto our visitors.

 

I actually had a thread here somewhere (in irrational precepts I think) a while back giving a link to a Christian site that was planning on sending a satellite up in order to preach to any aliens out there. The link no longer worked a while back, though. Maybe that could explain why the aliens in a lot of the old SF movies were so pissed off at us?

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Luminon wrote:I study the

Luminon wrote:

I study the existence of subtle realms of the world, finer than our known solid-material, with their own equivalents of matter. According to my information, the subtle realms are much more hospitable to the life, than ours. Being based on them, civilizations and ecosystems can thrive in our neighbourhood, where our dense-material devices only found a deadly temperatures and poisonous substances. The advanced civilizations can use their technology to make their crafts dense enough to be observed by us, but unaffected by our material world, unless they wish.
So much for the theory. Of course it has only value for those, who are at least marginally aware of the subtle realms of existence. I say that I am, and that I saw UFO at least once. Based on this, the theory looks considerably to me.

 

 

What is a "subtle realm" (in 100 words or less, please) ?

 

 


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There is no evidence for the

There is no evidence for the existance of alien life (as opposed to precursors for life) but that doesnt stop it being likely. Things we do know is that the laws of Physics and Chemistry are identiical for billions of light years in every direction. The universe is really so big it just seems incredibly life doesnt evolve somewhere.

 

However one thing I could be pretty certain of, if an intelligent alien species was out there they would know to reveal themselves at the moment would be the end of humanity.

Sure the educated top couple of % of humanity (that includes most people here) would celebrate the rest of the world would collapse. Religious wars would destroy humanity as each claimed this alien as their god or the devil etc.  It would be the complete destruction of what the vast majority of the world believe in.

So  ET if you reading this for the sake of our species keep quiet Smiling

 

 


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MattShizzle wrote:Brian37

MattShizzle wrote:

Brian37 wrote:

 

I wich it was true, however,  because it would be fun to see how Muslims and Christians would project their beiefs onto our visitors.

 

I actually had a thread here somewhere (in irrational precepts I think) a while back giving a link to a Christian site that was planning on sending a satellite up in order to preach to any aliens out there. The link no longer worked a while back, though. Maybe that could explain why the aliens in a lot of the old SF movies were so pissed off at us?

Nice, so the nutty get nuttier. Christians, "We could send messages about our technology and language patterns so that they might be able to understand us, BUT NO, we'll tell those bastards that they have no right to their autonomy because Jesus's dad owns them and all life is the property of God".

It is a good thing that theism on this planet is limited to this planet, because at least, when humans commit their own self distruction, it at least will not effect the ecosystem of the universe.

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Quote:Most atheists I know

Quote:
Most atheists I know of don't believe in anything other then what we can see, but I'd love to read the opinions from you guys in regards of any and everything alien and UFO related.

Extraterrestrial life: This is a 'duh' no-brainer, in my mind. It's like asking if there's any other stars out there like our sun. Carbon-based replicators assemble spontaneously with rather great ease, given appropriate conditions. After the replicators start churning-out copies of themselves, it's all just a matter of natural selection from that point forward.

In the only observable example of a system where life clearly emerged (Earth), we have two distinct paths that each lead to greater intelligence & planetary dominance (first with the bipedal dinosaurs, who were developing both large brains and starting to develop complex hand/finger combinations, then - of course - us, after the KT impact event wiped-out our competitors). Moreover, this was - in cosmological terms - over an extremely brief period of time.

Of course, one example is nowhere near a sufficient sampling to build and accurate model with - however, I would reasonably speculate that we can expect:

 - Life to arise on any body with similar characteristics to the early Earth

 - Natural selection to apply to said life, ultimately branching-out dominant life-forms with higher brain functions and complex environmental manipulators (some analogue to our hands & fingers; tentacles may even be a possibility)

 

Of course, I may be dead wrong. Earth may prove to be little more than a puzzling anomaly in the cosmos; a place where the threads of stars were quite accidentally tangled together in a marvellously beautiful mistake.

 

Extraterrestrial visitation: Dubious at best. We know quite conclusively that no intelligent life aside from ourselves populate our own solar system, so any supposed extraterrestrials would then have to come from another star. We know that any such imagined travellers absolutely cannot be travelling at or faster than the speed of light (it's also stretching one's credibility that they may be travelling terribly near such a velocity, given our recent research into what happens to objects going at relativistic velocity).

If you wish to brave the waters of hypothesizing aliens visitors, you also need to brave the water of inquiry. How did they get here? Why would they have come here? Where would they have come from? When did they come?

It's a big, big universe - and while a big universe does improve the odds of intelligent life existing elsewhere, it also means that the likelyhood of one interplanetary species encountering another is extraordinarily low (unless the propagation of one species throughout a galaxy is particularly high). The proposed 'reasons' most UFOologists give to justify the possibility of alien visitation (the 'cosmic zoo' theory, for example) are unfalsifiable, largely religious, guesses; until the subculture in question takes their work more seriously and hunkers down in preparation to do objective research that may yield results uncomfortable to them, I consider them an embarassment to modern SETI efforts.

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Alien Lifeforms

I personally believe there are other lifeforms other than what is found on earth. Just due to the sheer amount of galaxies out there, the possiblity is there that, there are other lifeforms, if intelligent or not is a different issue. As well due the age of the universe, another intelligent species may have existed and already died out, that is a possiblity as well. We just won't know in our life time. We may never know in our species lifetime.

However the technological implications for intersolar travel may seem huge but who knows, in a few hundred years that may not be an issue. A few hundred years ago the technological implications to send someone to the moon would have seemed impossible as well, and yet we have done that. I just seems at this point unlikely that we will be able to do such travel.

 


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Quote:Personally, I think we

Quote:
Personally, I think we were trying to invent personal jet packs or funnelling money into quackery like remote viewing.  I think Area 51 is a remnant from the cold war, but somebody somewhere has the pull to keep it funded enough to keep government quackery alive.

Area 51 is a field-testing area for radar-absorbing alloys for use in your modern military aircraft.

 

Money (relatively) well spent (as far as military endeavors go), IMHO.

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"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

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Do I think there's

Do I think there's intelligent life on other planets?

 

I don't even think there's intelligent life on this one.

 

 

 


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Cpt_pineapple wrote:Do I

Cpt_pineapple wrote:

Do I think there's intelligent life on other planets?

 

I don't even think there's intelligent life on this one.

 

 

 

 

Reminds me of Monty Python's "Galaxy Song. "

 

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MattShizzle

MattShizzle wrote:

Cpt_pineapple wrote:

Do I think there's intelligent life on other planets?

 

I don't even think there's intelligent life on this one.

 

 

 

 

Reminds me of Monty Python's "Galaxy Song. "

 

 

Maybe, I don't know where that's from.

 

 

 


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Brian37
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Kevin R Brown

Kevin R Brown wrote:

Quote:
Personally, I think we were trying to invent personal jet packs or funnelling money into quackery like remote viewing.  I think Area 51 is a remnant from the cold war, but somebody somewhere has the pull to keep it funded enough to keep government quackery alive.

Area 51 is a field-testing area for radar-absorbing alloys for use in your modern military aircraft.

 

Money (relatively) well spent (as far as military endeavors go), IMHO.

Area 51 was born the same way that Scientology was born. Myth is born out of the gap of knowledge of reality, and our brains evolved to "fill in the gaps". We see a patern and see it so much, that when the pattern deviates or in reality is not there at all, our brains will fill in the gap.

A simple experiment to show this is the old "line" example where you have two black lines on white paper where one appears to be longer than the other, but as soon as you mesure it you see in reality that the shorter line is actually longer.

People who actually think Area 51's  existance is based on finding little green men is bullshit. It was, and is now, nothing but a Military base that is secretive because of the sensitivity of what they do there.

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We know life began and

We know life began and evolved on our planet so I’d say it’s possible to have happened somewhere else. The number of planets in the known universe points to this being probable.

Other galaxies, solar systems and planets formed before ours so it’s possible that other life forms exist that have been evolving for longer than ours. They may be more technologically advanced than us – by millions of years.

However, I don’t for one second believe that our first contact with other life would be by them paying us a visit. We would surely hear from them thousands (if not longer) of years before they could reach us physically.

It's also possible that we may never detect or communicate with any other life.


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I want to believe

     I really want to believe that there is other intelligent life in the universe.  However, until I get some proof beyond doubt that they do exist I will reserve my judgment.  I think that our greatest benefit to meeting another civilization will not come from any technological advances we may gain, but from the cultural exchange and potential social and evolutionary knowledge that we may gain.  That is granted that we aren't visited by religious zealots who want to convert us to worshiping their god.


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The Aliens are Here or Not

 Another UFO report, this time the UFO is recorded by channel 10 Sacramento.

See Here.

So what is the US govt testing this time?

I also agree there is likely alien life due to the expanse of the Universe. If life emerged once clearly that shows it is possible to occur. If there is intelligent life they would know to stay away from us by just watching our electronic transmissions. If they had the capability to get here we would offer nothing to them worthwhile other than as subjects to study. I doubt that intelligent aliens would bother with a race of sky daddy worshiping fools.

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Why would the aliens

Why would the aliens necesarilly be all that rational even if they have super technology? They could very well have their own religious beliefs. I myself think intelligent life on other planets is likely but ability to travel here for them is extremely unlikely - seeing it would take an extremely long time to get here without travelling faster than light, which as far as we know is utterly impossible.

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Luminon
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MattShizzle wrote:I actually

MattShizzle wrote:
I actually had a thread here somewhere (in irrational precepts I think) a while back giving a link to a Christian site that was planning on sending a satellite up in order to preach to any aliens out there. The link no longer worked a while back, though. Maybe that could explain why the aliens in a lot of the old SF movies were so pissed off at us?
One of my favorite questions to Christians is what they would treat the aliens, as for Christianity. So far, one said quite reasonably, that they weren't on Earth, weren't in the Garden of Eden, so the Original sin doesn't apply on them, and there's no need to get them Saved.
Another one responded, that  he would demand a knowledge of God from them. (or even a knowledge of God's son and religiosity itself? Something like that ) Otherwise, he would reject them as demonic beings.
If I remember, in one of his stories, Arthur C. Clarke or someone like that described an arrival of a missionary on a swampy planet of primitive, but intelligent and very logical creatures. The locals listened to the missionary, built a church, and then crucified him, to see if God will resurrect him, so they can start to worship God. 
I find this story very educative, and I'd recommend it to every Christian, who ever turned his sight to the sky, wondering if there are intelligent beings out there.

nikimoto wrote:
What is a "subtle realm" (in 100 words or less, please) ? 
It's simply an energy and matter having a gradually different, more 'finer' quality than ours, which gives it a bit different properties and allows it to occupy the same space as our world, as two radio signals of different frequency doesn't collide. It might be the remaining 95% of the universe, known as 'dark' energy and matter. As for the theory, all the realms, including ours, are sevenfold, and there is seven of them known. The point is, that a life, and specially a sentient life, lives in several of these "realms" at once, and serves like a bridge between them, usually unconsciously.

 

The experiences and information ocassionally getting to us from our organically linked counterpart made of other realm's matter may be a basis and an explanation for all the worldwide legends of Heaven, Hell, afterlife, God, souls, spirits, ghosts, elementals, clairvoyance, demons, angels, and so on. If this is true, it promises to explain them scientifically and discover a new technologies based on them. There will be no longer a hole in knowledge, where a superstitions, fear and manipulation can hide.

This is the short summary. The technical details I study are very complex, extensive, beyond belief, and it's not even a beginning of a rigorous, mathemathical definition. There is a bright future ahead of science, equivalent of another several, fundamentally different worlds to explore.

This link contains an article on an attempt to develop a geometry and mathemathics to describe the subtle realms.

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


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 Quote:Why would the aliens

 

Quote:
Why would the aliens necesarilly be all that rational even if they have super technology? They could very well have their own religious beliefs. I myself think intelligent life on other planets is likely but ability to travel here for them is extremely unlikely - seeing it would take an extremely long time to get here without travelling faster than light, which as far as we know is utterly impossible.

Consider that earth has been damn stable compared to a lot of what we've found in the rest of the cosmos.  That is, we do have earthquakes and volcanoes and such, but we're largely protected from asteroids by the gas giants, and we're protected from solar radiation by our magnetic field, which appears to be the exception rather than the norm.  Presumably, Mars has been around about as long as earth, and its magnetic field is long gone.

Life is a very fragile thing, and an individual species is even more fragile.  In even a slightly less stable solar system, we can guess that any life that did arise would be relatively likely to be eradicated at an early stage of evolution.  Intelligence, as I've mentioned, is not a goal of evolution.  Well over 99% of all species that have ever lived on earth were not intelligent enough to build radios, much less spaceships.  Even with lots going for us, we've only produced one species with any significant intelligence.

Oh, and as for rationality, I've mentioned this before.  We shouldn't be surprised that humans are essentially rational.  Rationality doesn't take intelligence.  It takes math.  That is, species that behave essentially rationally will survive.  Those that do not will not.  I would expect that any intelligent life on another planet would be essentially rational, but would be just as susceptible to the laws of evolution as us.  In other words, they'd have war, too.  They'd ruin their own environment, just like us.  

 

Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin

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Quote:Even with lots going

Quote:
Even with lots going for us, we've only produced one species with any significant intelligence.

Well, technically two. The dinosaurs were well on their way when they got wiped-out by one of those afore-mentioned asteroids. Sticking out tongue

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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Quote:It's simply an energy

Quote:
It's simply an energy and matter having a gradually different, more 'finer' quality than ours, which gives it a bit different properties and allows it to occupy the same space as our world, as two radio signals of different frequency doesn't collide. It might be the remaining 95% of the universe, known as 'dark' energy and matter. As for the theory, all the realms, including ours, are sevenfold, and there is seven of them known. The point is, that a life, and specially a sentient life, lives in several of these "realms" at once, and serves like a bridge between them, usually unconsciously.

Luminon, I'm just curious:

Are you aware of the inherent dangers in bastardizing a term like 'unconsciousness' to fit your own special desires? Do you realize that, down the road, you're enabling fundamentalist bigots?

If your idea of dualism is correct, for example (you having substituted the term 'unconsciousness' to refer to the thoughts of a second entity within you), that means that everyone's 'real' self (the energy entity allegedly using our bodies as a vehicle) actively chose things like their race, social status and perhaps even their ultimate fate upon conception. Maybe only bad energies choose to inhabit black people, and that's why there's such a high correlation with black people and crime. Maybe really power-hungry soul-thingies choose Jewish bodies for themselves, and they knew/wanted the Holocaust to happen so that we'd have sympathy for them later. Maybe impoverished people have souls that want to be poor, so we shouldn't go out and help them because it's not what they 'unconsciously' want. Etc.

 

Before you open your mouth and start echoing the quackery into the valley, perhaps you should think about what subtleties might underlie your religion.

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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Na-Nue-Na-Nue

Well, the Universe is a really big place, It would be a shame to think that we humans are the only organsiim capuable of creating a civilization.  It would be that there is life out there, it could be that the life out there is several million years ahead of us in technology, and perhaps the Fllying Spagetti Monster looks over us all with his noodly appendage... either potential fact is all up to proof that is yet to be supplied.

As for the whole Area 51 thing.  I think it would be convient for the government to transform what used to be a secret installation into a decoy to distract all the nosy conspiracy nut-jobs.  Area 51 did produce secret technology, the Stealth Bomber and the Blackbird are now well known and well aged weapons... but far from UFO's.  As far as I know, Area 51 might be nothing more than a place for goverment higher ups to host cock fighting, naked fooball, or whatever get's their rocks off.  Sure, Area 51 may be doing something amazing behind their fences, but if I were to have a secret installation, I would give up on it the moment a Redneck with binoculars could find it.

 

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Kevin R Brown wrote:

Kevin R Brown wrote:
Luminon, I'm just curious:

Are you aware of the inherent dangers in bastardizing a term like 'unconsciousness' to fit your own special desires? Do you realize that, down the road, you're enabling fundamentalist bigots?

If your idea of dualism is correct, for example (you having substituted the term 'unconsciousness' to refer to the thoughts of a second entity within you), that means that everyone's 'real' self (the energy entity allegedly using our bodies as a vehicle) actively chose things like their race, social status and perhaps even their ultimate fate upon conception. Maybe only bad energies choose to inhabit black people, and that's why there's such a high correlation with black people and crime. Maybe really power-hungry soul-thingies choose Jewish bodies for themselves, and they knew/wanted the Holocaust to happen so that we'd have sympathy for them later. Maybe impoverished people have souls that want to be poor, so we shouldn't go out and help them because it's not what they 'unconsciously' want. Etc.

 

Before you open your mouth and start echoing the quackery into the valley, perhaps you should think about what subtleties might underlie your religion.

I didn't use a term 'unconsciousness'. I used an adjective 'unconsciously', meaining simply 'not being aware of something'. I don't know what the 'unconsciousness' exactly is, how it is related to my notions of 'superconsciousness'. I wouldn't use it in that controversial psychologic sense you probably mean.

As for your point, I'd recommend you a bit more of emotional detachment. My esoteric theory doesn't support or tolerate the evil. It acknowledges it's existence and recognizes it's purpose in nature. However, at the same time, it informs the students very obviously, that these aspects of the world, known as evil, are here for us to develop away from them, and that the historical period when they were useful for human evolution is long gone. They are thus obsolete and poses an obstacle to our development. It is also necessary to accept as a fact, that people were once very primitive and violent, but they developed themselves into a more civilized society. We are still far from perfection, and we used to be much worse, but we must admit it and we must focus on our self-improvement.

You called my hobby a religion. I'd like to inform you, that the religion is not characterized by a recognition of gods, spirits, and other "supernatural" things, but by their worship. It means an act of religious devotion to a particular faith, idea of God, and so on. And thus it essentially means glorifying of one thing and despising of many others.
As some theists says, God doesn't pick sides, but they doesn't live up to it. But it's true. I, as a part of GOD can not pick a side and then despise everythig else what's not according to my holy book. The only knowledge I value is the one helping me to see a divinity in everything else, because everyone and everything is G-awe-D. The real messiah of the world is the humanity, and all the messiahs and saints of various nations are just a guarantees of that fact. You miss a great depth of meaning, by calling my hobby a religion. But it doesn't matter, you're here primarily to be good what you are good at, not what I am good at. Your depth of meaning is deep enough. If you would be positively interested in understanding of different people's "depths of meaning", it would be really nice, but I can live without that. For now, I just answered Nikimoto's question.

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


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No, but I do consider alien

No, but I do consider alien visitors comming here and perform experiments on mentally ill trailler trash to be more plausible than the story of the christian god.


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JanCham wrote: Area 51 did

JanCham wrote:

 Area 51 did produce secret technology, the Stealth Bomber and the Blackbird are now well known and well aged weapons... but far from UFO's.  

 

 Wasn't the blackbird in service in the mid 60's? I can only imagine what crazy shit(technical term) is flying around up there nearly 50 years later .

 

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I was visited/probed by

I was visited/probed by Venusians. 


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jmm wrote:I was

jmm wrote:

I was visited/probed by Venusians. 

Really? For real?

Is your avatar an artistic impression of such probing?

I have a relative who is convinced that he was selected by our "grey overlords" not our "reptilian overlords" for experiments and was deemed not worthy of being accepted into the fold.

*Sigh*

 

Eden had a 25% murder rate and incest was rampant.