life on other planets

PostmodernProphet said:
dude you seem to forget........you claimed to have facts and reason that prove my beliefs are not true.......I'm just here pointing out you haven't done it yet......
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Atheists are not required to disprove your deity exists.

Even Christianity's greatest thinkers realized that their religion had to be based on reason and logic, if Christians did not want to look like dumb asses.

I will not do your homework for you, but Saint Thomas Aquinas used Aristotelian logic to construct one of history's most notable proofs of God. Preeminent age of reason philosopher Rene Descartes is also recognized as having constructed a famous deductivly based proof of God.

20th century physicists have extensively written about how cosmological constants and fine tuning of the universe seems to point to some intentional organizational principle that we can only be aware of through the realm of metaphysics. Arguments have been advanced that the origin of life seems to strangely defy the laws of entropy.

I am not sure I buy any of it, but Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas made a compelling point that Christianity had to use the methods of reason and logic to justify the religion -- and not to lamely holler that non-believers were on the hot seat to prove them wrong.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
why pretend someone asked him to?.....I think the post you quoted is fairly easy to understand.......why didn't you understand it?.....
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If you are going to make a teleological claim for the nature of the universe, the burden is on you to prove is. The burden is not on someone to disprove it.

If I were going to argue for an intentionally ordered universe, I would use the principles of physics and the finely tuned universe argument.

Even the preeminent 3rd century Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria knew that the Book of Genesis had to be read allegorically, not literally.
 
Cypress said:
If you are going to make a teleological claim for the nature of the universe, the burden is on you to prove is.
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only if I were trying to prove it to someone.......a statement of faith is simply that........people that deny the existence of deities, also deny their's is a faith statement........I have nothing to prove because I don't give a fuck what your faith choice is........

Even the preeminent 3rd century Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria knew that the Book of Genesis had to be read allegorically, not literally.
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Genesis is not a single narrative........it contains many passages, in many different types of prose.......there are actually four accounts of creation in the Bible if you count the passage in Job.......three are in the first two chapters of Genesis.......Genesis 1:1 is written in the Hebrew imperative, thus "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth!"......verse 2 begins with the Hebrew word generally translated as "Now" which is traditionally the way Hebrew poetry begins.......Genesis 2:4 and following are written as narrative.........in English we understand commands, poetry and narrative differently.......so did the Hebrews.....one should not treat poetry as narrative or narrative as commands......
 
Cypress said:
Atheists are not required to disprove your deity exists.

Even Christianity's greatest thinkers realized that their religion had to be based on reason and logic, if Christians did not want to look like dumb asses.

I will not do your homework for you, but Saint Thomas Aquinas used Aristotelian logic to construct one of history's most notable proofs of God. Preeminent age of reason philosopher Rene Descartes is also recognized as having constructed a famous deductivly based proof of God.

20th century physicists have extensively written about how cosmological constants and fine tuning of the universe seems to point to some intentional organizational principle that we can only be aware of through the realm of metaphysics. Arguments have been advanced that the origin of life seems to strangely defy the laws of entropy.

I am not sure I buy any of it, but Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas made a compelling point that Christianity had to use the methods of reason and logic to justify the religion -- and not to lamely holler that non-believers were on the hot seat to prove them wrong.
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Agreed.

A person is allowed to believe whatever they like without evidence. OTOH, if they wish to persuade others, then it's best they provide evidence, not just empty salesmanship promises like "I got your back". LOL

4xrm89.jpg
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Agreed.

A person is allowed to believe whatever they like without evidence. OTOH, if they wish to persuade others, then it's best they provide evidence, not just empty salesmanship promises like "I got your back". LOL

4xrm89.jpg
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Nice work.
I personally do not think persuasion, and certainly not coercion, is the job of religion. But sound metaphysical reasoning was always of goal of the great Christian theologians.

In some senses, the Protestant Reformation resulted in the dumbing down of Christianity, with it's pronounced emphasis on biblical literalism and the inerrancy of the bible. The great Christian theologians of late antiquity through the high middle ages were actually brilliant people by the standards of their day, and keen on using the principles of Platonic and Aristotelian reason and logic to justify their faith.
 
Cypress said:
Nice work.
I personally do not think persuasion, and certainly not coercion, is the job of religion. But sound metaphysical reasoning was always of goal of the great Christian theologians.

In some senses, the Protestant Reformation resulted in the dumbing down of Christianity, with it's pronounced emphasis on biblical literalism and the inerrancy of the bible. The great Christian theologians of late antiquity through the high middle ages were actually brilliant people by the standards of their day, and keen on using the principles of Platonic and Aristotelian reason and logic to justify their faith.
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Edit to say: dumbing down in the sense of eschewing the principles of logic and reason in the contemplative and spiritual life.

The Protestant focus on the work ethic and the rewards of this world, as opposed to the next, clearly resulted in substantial economic, technological, and scientific advances in Western Europe after the Reformation. Cannot call that dumb
 
Cypress said:
Nice work.
I personally do not think persuasion, and certainly not coercion, is the job of religion. But sound metaphysical reasoning was always of goal of the great Christian theologians.

In some senses, the Protestant Reformation resulted in the dumbing down of Christianity, with it's pronounced emphasis on biblical literalism and the inerrancy of the bible. The great Christian theologians of late antiquity through the high middle ages were actually brilliant people by the standards of their day, and keen on using the principles of Platonic and Aristotelian reason and logic to justify their faith.
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Agreed in principle but in fact, both Christians and Muslims are big on converting followers. This means they should use persuasion, although history proves force was used by both religions.
 
Bulletbob said:
Well I tend to think there is and has been even possible intelligent beings, b ut the main reasons I think there is life out there are 2 main factors.

The sheer numbers of galaxies and planets .


The Hubble telescope has been active for awhile, and its estimated that there are 125 billion galaxies in the observable universes. As for planets that's any bodys guess.

Next for me would be some examples on planet earth, namely extremophiles. For those of you who don't know what they are look it up. to me the water bear is a great example but there are many others.

As for truly intelligent life forms say with the intelligence of primitive humans or perhaps great apes or more intelligent creatures , its possible such species have came and gone as the universe is estimated at about 14.5 billion years old and earth is about 4.5 billion.
So such species could have come and gone in that time and we will never know about them.

They could be out there now even at our primitive level and we would never know.
What it takes for a planet like earth to form and be protected so that life can evolve is a amazing number of events to all line up over time.

It starts at the very beginning as dust lumps together and form a planet at just the right distance from a sun to hits from asteroids and meteors and comments carrying various organic materials, , the odd are not in life's favor at all but against it.

Yet Im sure the universe is teaming with basic like such as extremophiles and maybe more , spread over billions of light years apart.

We may indeed be the cream of the crop the most advanced species in the universe , which by the way is a sad thought .
Then again we may be very low on the scale of intelligence .
We will never know the answers and maybe that's a good thing I don't know.

For some reason I think we may have been visited in the past by a race of people who travel in space maybe in time like the adventures on the high seas, its just a feeling I get from reading history books and other material .
Again I will never know the answers to this in my life span but , I do wonder what others more advanced then us, if they do or did exist would think of us.

Its hard to think of the possible advances inn science and medicine and flight and space travel a species could develop given the time and conditions to do so.
Our own race has made huge strides in the last 140 years even with all the wars we had , and in the last 70 years these advances have been huge coming in leaps and bounds so to speak with amazing results .

I hope its humans from earth that end up being the top dog over time if we don't kill each other off first , I actually have a lot of faith in that .
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There isn't intelligent life on this planet.
All that's out there is rocks.
God chose to tell his story on this rock.
 
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