Do you think any aliens exist in the universe?

[aupmanyav]

YOU will. I’m an atheist: God will kill me.

God kills every one, the theists and the atheists. Even children who are neither theists nor atheists yet. I too am an atheist Hindu and a strong one at that. God will send me to his worst hell, known as 'raurava' hell in Hinduism. But, Hindus have a chance to return to life.

They MAY, but universality is hardly guaranteed.

If they don't worship God and do not accept Jesus as son of God or Muhammad as the last messenger of God, then God has an eternal hell for them.

I've posed a few times now a formulation for these "powers" that is not nonsensical.

We know of only one power in the universe, and that is of the four fundamental forces of nature.

 

[aupmanyav]

Life will be moving up and away from the equator. And new things will arise to take advantage of the areas left open.

In half a billion of years, the continents also will move and only Allah knows where the equator would be.
Aouth American will come closer to India.

 

[aupmanyav]

And if we were created to worship gods why did the gods do such a poor job of making us aware of our purpose? An awful lot of people either do not worship at all or simply pay lip service to worship.

Ah, you forget! God is testing us. That is why he had given us free-will.

Jarhyn said:
"Well, honestly I'm not going to stop anyone from giving me compliments? They're nice to hear.
But I have also never heard them and if it means having to also scour through the hate mail? Nobody got time for that.
I would rather people here or in my games just try to play the game well: build heaven for everyone, here, today."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"worship" is to "behold that which has happened with eyes full of wonderment, such that I see it and seek ever more to know how such a thing happens", then I "worship".

+1
Establishments that depend on worshipers’ material support usually try to subsume wonderment, as evidence of the divinity of whatever god(s) they worship.
It’s something that gave me the creeps as a 5-6 yr old being dragged to Sunday services.

I was a kid. I fucking LIVED in wonderment. I knew what it meant better than they did, far better than I do now.
I knew they were trying to complicate the picture to get Jesus‘ hand in the pie, credit The Church , and let them accept payment for the experience of wonder.
I knew THEY didn’t deserve payment for that, because the Church(es) had nothing whatsoever to do with my experiences of wonderment in the first place, despite their often gaudy efforts (which often seemed to verge on intimidation and threats of danger).

Anyhow, Aliens are better than Jesus IMHO. They make better reading anyway, and you can shoot at them. At least in the South.

Yup, that's religion in a nutshell. Take credit for anything good that happens, blame anything bad on not having enough religion.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And if we were created to worship gods why did the gods do such a poor job of making us aware of our purpose? An awful lot of people either do not worship at all or simply pay lip service to worship.

Ah, you forget! God is testing us. That is why he had given us free-will.

Testing, how? For gullibility?

 

[aupmanyav]

Testing, how? For gullibility?

God gives us problems and checks whether we appeal to him for succor or not. If we do, we are in his good books. Otherwise he de-lists us.
That is his way of checking.

 

[Elixir]

Yup, that's religion in a nutshell. Take credit for anything good that happens, blame anything bad on not having enough religion.

The amazing thing I will never understand, is, If that is plain as day to a little kid, how the actual fuck does it escape grown-ass adults?

 

[ideologyhunter]

Yup, that's religion in a nutshell. Take credit for anything good that happens, blame anything bad on not having enough religion.

The amazing thing I will never understand, is, If that is plain as day to a little kid, how the actual fuck does it escape grown-ass adults?

Partly because early religious training blocks the child's persistent "But why?"s with "Because of the story I just told you." I admire the kids who, either because their minds won't be shut down or because they're truly obnoxious little brats, keep challenging the adults' fairy tales and won't get in line. I wish I'd done that earlier than I did. And I don't have many excuses; I was an obnoxious brat.

 

[Elixir]

I admire the kids who, either because their minds won't be shut down or because they're truly obnoxious little brats, keep challenging the adults' fairy tales and won't get in line.

I don’t deny having been an obnoxious little brat, but it’s probably straight up luck of the draw that gave me “agnostic” parents who exposed me to religions and their adherents without comment or preference. They were always respectful of others’ religions though. Me? Not so much. I guess that’s their fault too.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Testing, how? For gullibility?

God gives us problems and checks whether we appeal to him for succor or not. If we do, we are in his good books. Otherwise he de-lists us.
That is his way of checking.

I mean gullible as in whether we believe without evidence.

 

[Elixir]

I believe all aliens have been successfully repatriated to their home planets, moons etc. so they’re no longer aliens, they’re natives.

If there exists technology to overcome many millions of light years, our understanding is so out to lunch that a mathematical description would violate our very concept of numbers

 

[aupmanyav]

I mean gullible as in whether we believe without evidence.

Yeah, because without gullibility, God would not exist. It is the question of his existence.

 

[lpetrich]

Ir is easy to get to another star. Just turn on a light on the back of your spaceship and away you go.

Except that that has almost absurdly low thrust.

The effective exhaust velocity of a rocket is (exhaust momentum rate) / (total mass-loss rate)

A photonic drive seems perfect: eev = c. But (1) it will not be perfectly collimated, though for visible light one can get very close, and (2) the light-energy supply will have an efficiency less than 1. So one gets e*c for efficiency factor e.

The best chemical rockets in service are H2-O2 ones, with eev = 4.5 km/s or about 10^(-5) c. That means about 10^(-10) of the propellants' rest-mass energy, and thus, a H2-O2-powered photonic drive would have an eev of a few cm/s.

Nuclear energy may do much better, up to an eev of around 0.03 c or 10,000 km/s, but that means a photonic-drive efficiency of 0.001 or eev around 0.001 c or 300 km/s.

The only way a photonic drive can achieve high efficiency is with antimatter, and that has problems of its own, like collimating its exhaust. Electrons and positrons produce energetic gamma rays, and nucleons and antinucleons several pions each, and neither is very easy to collimate.

 

[Elixir]

Testing, how? For gullibility?

God gives us problems and checks whether we appeal to him for succor or not. If we do, we are in his good books. Otherwise he de-lists us.
That is his way of checking.

Good thing you’re an atheist, then eh?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

YOU will. I’m an atheist: God will kill me.

God kills every one, the theists and the atheists. Even children who are neither theists nor atheists yet. I too am an atheist Hindu and a strong one at that. God will send me to his worst hell, known as 'raurava' hell in Hinduism. But, Hindus have a chance to return to life.

How can you be an atheist and think god is going to kill you??

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ir is easy to get to another star. Just turn on a light on the back of your spaceship and away you go.

Except that that has almost absurdly low thrust.

The effective exhaust velocity of a rocket is (exhaust momentum rate) / (total mass-loss rate)

A photonic drive seems perfect: eev = c. But (1) it will not be perfectly collimated, though for visible light one can get very close, and (2) the light-energy supply will have an efficiency less than 1. So one gets e*c for efficiency factor e.

Kzinti lesson.

 

[laughing dog]

I'd like to think the universe could do better than humans.

 

[bilby]

YOU will. I’m an atheist: God will kill me.

God kills every one, the theists and the atheists. Even children who are neither theists nor atheists yet. I too am an atheist Hindu and a strong one at that. God will send me to his worst hell, known as 'raurava' hell in Hinduism. But, Hindus have a chance to return to life.

How can you be an atheist and think god is going to kill you??

By assuming that you are immortal, obviously...

 

[Elixir]

Can god go back in time and fuck with your past so the one you’re experiencing in memory is off in a different sector of the multiverse? HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?

 

[NoHolyCows]

The universe is just too big and too full of possibilities to think we’re the only ones. We know life can happen—because it happened here on Earth. That’s not just a guess; it’s a fact. And the basic ingredients for life are everywhere out there: water, carbon, organic molecules. We’ve even found life on Earth thriving in the harshest, weirdest places imaginable.

So while we don’t have hard evidence yet, it’s not a stretch to believe we’re not alone. Honestly, with billions of galaxies and trillions of planets, it would almost be stranger if we were the only ones.

NHC