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Aliens Are Out There - And They Look Like Us
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So says leading evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris. If it transpires that he’s right, what impact will it have on the Abrahamic religions? Are the people of Earth really special, or have those who brought us ‘the word’, Jesus, Mohammed, and Charles Taze Russell included, somehow done the rounds to spread their respective messages to every other inhabited planet in the universe?
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vulcan@ That's the whole point, we don't, the Bible explains death as like a sleep, and it describes dead people as “sleeping in death.” (Psalm 13:3; 1
God created humans, not with death as the natural outcome, but with the prospect of living on indefinitely.
Note what God set before the first human pair as their future: (Genesis 1:28) .
That's the whole point of studying the Bible, you get to understand what it teaches.
God created humans, not with death as the natural outcome, but with the prospect of living on indefinitely.
Note what God set before the first human pair as their future: (Genesis 1:28) .
That's the whole point of studying the Bible, you get to understand what it teaches.
@naomi
Thanks for this thread. I have to say that was probably the first time I've read a news article where the comment section was more entertaining, informative and, in several instances, voluminous than the news piece itself. (Slightly unfair as it was basically an overly wrapped link to the featured author's full-length work).
I would like to go on at length about convergent evolution but you've made it clear that (the science) is outwith your planned scope for this thread. Fine, although I still wish to point out that he appears to be invoking it on the basis that the ecological niche for "bipedal hominin with opposable thumb and high mental capacity" is a universal thing: an "end goal".
Oh dear, what a giveaway. He's in the intelligent design camp.
I might concede that the 4-limb body plan (imho) was arrived at because 4 fins, plus a tail and a dorsal fin was the *minimum* that fish needed for fine control of movement. At the amphibian level, 4 limbs can clearly outrun 2 limbs and hunt it to extinction. 6 limbs might appear to be even better but requires more food resources to grow. Population growth would be slightly slower than 4-limb ones and survival is a numbers game, in the long run, so whichever breeds fastest, using the minimum amount of resources to do so, tends to dominate.
In other words I concede that physical laws, concerning the conversion of foodstuffs into populations will favour the bodyplan we ended up with but who is to say that life on other planets will even take the vertebrate route at all?
One of the comments sagely touched on the fact that you need fire to smelt ores into metals and that would not be feasible on a planet with a methane-rich atmosphere. A convoluted way of hinting that life can evolve as far as intelligence but there may be obstacles to technological advancement, to the space-faring stage.
Your true OP question strikes me as convoluted. If we find life in other star systems, we cease to be 'special' in the universe and it would strike at the validity of the faiths. The converse of that is that we are special but, horribly, alone in the vastness of the void.
Then you leave the door open for theists by suggesting that religious figures might be hopping around the universe, spreading their message. Lacking the constraints of corporial form, they should, notionally, be able to do this.
Or (shudder), heaven is outer space and we all become door-to-door (ie planet-to-planet) salespersons. No wonder the faiths try to recruit us by the billions!
Thanks for this thread. I have to say that was probably the first time I've read a news article where the comment section was more entertaining, informative and, in several instances, voluminous than the news piece itself. (Slightly unfair as it was basically an overly wrapped link to the featured author's full-length work).
I would like to go on at length about convergent evolution but you've made it clear that (the science) is outwith your planned scope for this thread. Fine, although I still wish to point out that he appears to be invoking it on the basis that the ecological niche for "bipedal hominin with opposable thumb and high mental capacity" is a universal thing: an "end goal".
Oh dear, what a giveaway. He's in the intelligent design camp.
I might concede that the 4-limb body plan (imho) was arrived at because 4 fins, plus a tail and a dorsal fin was the *minimum* that fish needed for fine control of movement. At the amphibian level, 4 limbs can clearly outrun 2 limbs and hunt it to extinction. 6 limbs might appear to be even better but requires more food resources to grow. Population growth would be slightly slower than 4-limb ones and survival is a numbers game, in the long run, so whichever breeds fastest, using the minimum amount of resources to do so, tends to dominate.
In other words I concede that physical laws, concerning the conversion of foodstuffs into populations will favour the bodyplan we ended up with but who is to say that life on other planets will even take the vertebrate route at all?
One of the comments sagely touched on the fact that you need fire to smelt ores into metals and that would not be feasible on a planet with a methane-rich atmosphere. A convoluted way of hinting that life can evolve as far as intelligence but there may be obstacles to technological advancement, to the space-faring stage.
Your true OP question strikes me as convoluted. If we find life in other star systems, we cease to be 'special' in the universe and it would strike at the validity of the faiths. The converse of that is that we are special but, horribly, alone in the vastness of the void.
Then you leave the door open for theists by suggesting that religious figures might be hopping around the universe, spreading their message. Lacking the constraints of corporial form, they should, notionally, be able to do this.
Or (shudder), heaven is outer space and we all become door-to-door (ie planet-to-planet) salespersons. No wonder the faiths try to recruit us by the billions!
Hypognosis, My suggestion that religious figures might be hopping around the universe repeating their mission was tongue in cheek. If they are, all I can say is poor old Jesus. He definitely drew the short straw!
I don’t believe my question is convoluted. It’s quite straightforward. It would be interesting to know how the faithful (including Simon Conway Morris, a Christian) rationalise their belief that out of a universe theoretically inhabited by an unknown number of intelligent life forms God is interested only in the residents of this one tiny, insignificant, speck of dust – and then only in those who have the good fortune to latch on to the one correct message out of what have to be thousands of fakes.
I don’t believe my question is convoluted. It’s quite straightforward. It would be interesting to know how the faithful (including Simon Conway Morris, a Christian) rationalise their belief that out of a universe theoretically inhabited by an unknown number of intelligent life forms God is interested only in the residents of this one tiny, insignificant, speck of dust – and then only in those who have the good fortune to latch on to the one correct message out of what have to be thousands of fakes.
Assuming for the moment that there is a God, what would it matter if there were any amount other life forms within this - and parallel universes ad infinitum? Homo sapiens has come and will go, but the mystery of life itself in its vast diversity even on this planet would appear to be indestructible and unaccountable.
Intelligent life forms elsewhere, if they exist, could also wish to acknowledge and respect that same God in the manner that different civilizations have done here (in differing ways) without even being aware of each other's existence.
Intelligent life forms elsewhere, if they exist, could also wish to acknowledge and respect that same God in the manner that different civilizations have done here (in differing ways) without even being aware of each other's existence.
@Khandro
the sun will turn into a red giant.
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Yet, long before the earth is burnt to a crisp...
"(in humans) body temperatures above 40deg C can be life threatening"
https:/
Hyper, not Hypo. Heh.
Other forms of life have survived many interglacials, where temperatures could have soared above 40C routinely but they only had to ascend mountain slopes to find more survivable temperatures if things got desperate. Even so, the swelling sun will tip the temperatures beyond survivability soon enough after we're done for.
In fact, in the billions of years it will take to reach this stage of the sun's life cycle, who knows what humans and other life forms will have evolved into?
the sun will turn into a red giant.
http://
Yet, long before the earth is burnt to a crisp...
"(in humans) body temperatures above 40deg C can be life threatening"
https:/
Hyper, not Hypo. Heh.
Other forms of life have survived many interglacials, where temperatures could have soared above 40C routinely but they only had to ascend mountain slopes to find more survivable temperatures if things got desperate. Even so, the swelling sun will tip the temperatures beyond survivability soon enough after we're done for.
In fact, in the billions of years it will take to reach this stage of the sun's life cycle, who knows what humans and other life forms will have evolved into?
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