10th March 2003, 3:28 PM
Quote:Originally posted by A Black Falcon
Also, we still don't exactly know how life arose on the earth... if/when we do figure that out it'd go a long way to seeing how hard it truly is. But I very much doubt its some super-rare thing... is it in every solar system? Certainly not! But are there plenty of other races out there? I am absolutely sure that there are a lot of them... but we will probably never meet any of them. The chances of another one being both near us and at a level of technology that they'd be able to see our communications (or us theirs) is remote... there are a LOT of stars, so probably there isn't one in the stars very close to us...
But given how long it takes light to travel for most stars we really have no clue so I can't figure out how you think the way we do... and in the abscence of other proof we have just the earth to look at... and as far as I'm concerned, that proves that there could be plenty of planets out there with life on them.
Even though you may argue, I think you DID miss Weltall's point. What he was saying is something one hears a lot if one reads ANY book dealing with the universe/creation written by a Christian: believing in a divine creation involves similar faith to believing in a blind creation. You say that earth is your proof of it being possible that other life exists in the universe. You don't have a single fact to your cause, other than "there's a possibility it could happen." To put it simply, you BELIEVE there's life on other planets. So why is that belief correct and belief in God isn't?
That probably sounds familiar, because it's almost exactly what Weltall said. Just makes sense, I guess. In all honesty, no living man can ever PROVE it either way, so it's almost moot to DEBATE. However, I think that if someone really wants to know how the universe could work with a loving God, then it's worthwhile to go into semantics over religion. As far as a debate topic, though, it sucks.