17 Billion "Earth sized" planets

See post 81.

Now I suppose you won't tell us what this personal experience is? That's a bit of a bullshit cop out isn't it? You assert fact based on an experience that is not provable to anyone. Yet you claim the bible is open to figurative interpretation.

Might it not be said that your inability to provide any shred of proof that your experiences extablish God as fact means that your belief, in itself, is open to metaphorical interpration?

If I were to assert that your "fact" of God's exsistence was merely events, experiences and emotions that you have interpreted as fact, what could you tell me that would establish something more than "you just know"?

What element of your experience makes it indisputable fact, but renders the bible open to debate and interpertation?

To be honest, your claim that neither I, nor others who don't believe in religion or an Abrahamic God, wouldn't understand or grasp it, is not only hugely arrogant and insulting, but it also pretends that you have some greater grasp of things than we do. Is asking for some explantion of why God is isdesputable fact really such a complex question that you couldn't even begin to answer without us all falling on the floor with utter bafflement, caused by our own clear inferiority to your good self?

But what if the aliens did come, and all they wanted to do was grab our guns?

Dinosaurs disagree!

How many cities did the dinosaurs build? How many other species did the dinosaurs drive to extinction? How many space probes did the dinosaurs launch into outer space? How many times his dinosaurs visit the moon?

It's silly to say that the dinosaurs were "dominant" compared to humans. Not just silly, but "I Ought To Revoke Your Right To Call Yourself Sapient" level stupid.

I've always contended that religion was the first science - i.e., an attempt to explain How Things Work. The concept of "sin" - i.e., why people do crazy, stupid, destructive things to themselves and others - is part of that attempt.

I really don't know where to start with such an amusing post.

Cheers.

Most certainly it was, and it's why it is increasingly becoming more irrelevant and incompatible as science and tedchnology advances.

I have ben reading the bible for several years now, and am far from being an expert of any sort. I read it 3-4 times from cover to cover. I can't see how you can understand that God is physical...

Maybe it's because english isn't my first language, but this debate is kind of weird to read. I have many non christian friends who have no problems believing you can't take some of these things literally (and all the while disagreeing with what the bible has to say. They have other ways to attack the bible that seem better to me.).

You guys talk about logic, but it seems your logic just brings you into a weird place. I didn't study logic like some of you people, so I can't pinpoint the error too quickly in the argument about why it is a problem to take some things literally and some things not. But when your conclusion brings you to think that to take the bible seriously you have to believe God is physical, then you can be sure there is a problem with the logic behind. I mean, I don't think I know anyone who believes in God (even among those who have other beliefs on who God is) who believe that God is physical.

I'll have to re-read those posts, but since it takes time, the discussion will have moved on too fast. Just wanted to throw in my 2 cents worth.

So, you're one of those out of touch goobers who thinks that a bunch of stupid proto-lizards was more dominant than man? I question your credentials as a member of homo sapiens.

I don't think anybody has contended that God is physical. My contention is that those who believe in "him" assert that his existence is absolute fact, but say that the bible is widely open to interpretation. That isn't about whether or not he has is a physical manifestation, but rather why there can be an absolute insistence that he exists, but the bible must not be taken literally.

As far as I am concerned there is no greater proof of the existence of God, beyond his having said to exist in the Bible, than there is that the world was created in 6 days. So if someone is going to say that the world being 6 days isn't literal, but the existence of God is literal (physical or otherwise) then I want to know why the reasoning is different between the two concepts, especially since they both ultimately come from the same overall idea, and neither's origin is known.

I have to disagree with you on that. Wide scale profound change in our understanding of the universe can't happen on a short time line. This is just as true now as it was then. But a child is always able to be comfortable with the belief system held by his parents. Primitive society does not mean one composed of primitive minds, but one that holds to less modern data.

I think there is, at the very least, a reasonable argument that dinosaurs may well have dominated over us and had the potential to stop our evolution for reasons as basic as our place in the food chain had we co-existed.

There is also a scientific debate that has existed for a long time that had dinosaurs not been wiped out they may well have evolved into sentient beings equal to us.

So no, I don't think the notion is "out of touch" at all. Quite the opposite.

Exactly. This is why there's a Prime Directive. This is why every time travel story contains the proviso "try not to change anything in the past."

Diacanu ought to know this.

No kidding. That's some serious-level stupid right there.

None.

That we are aware of, at least.

However MILLIONS of years of decay, meteorological and geological upheaval, etc... could easily effectively vanish all traces of a possible highly-evolved saurian culture. Even satellites would have their orbits decay long-term, and come crashing back down to earth or burn upon re-entry.

Hell, even mankind, for all its dominance over the globe, would not stand the million-year test if we vanished tomorrow. Maybe if someone nano-engineers a 2500m high pyramid made of buckyballs or diamonds or something....

Now the Moon is more of an issue. No atmosphere and geologically inactive = crap lasts a LOOOOOONNNG time up there. Leftover Lunar Landers are mankind's best chance to pass the "Million Years Gone but still signs of existance" test.

But maybe intelligent Saurians did exist, did visit there, and didn't leave anything behind. Or they did leave stuff behind, but it's in a spot on the moon that we haven't landed near. Or maybe they never went to the Moon, bypassing it for the stars instead. Who knows?

The point being that lack of current evidence is not a definitive statement against them existing, simply due to the overwhelmingly long timeframes involved.... (kinda the same as the Fermi Paradox and the overwhelming large distances involved).

Ahhhh, but should I read you post literally or figuratively?

I will agree with the bolded parts. But hypotheses about a potentiality that did not occur hardly make a group of species "dominant" compared to another.

That's the spirit!

There'd be kicking, and screaming, and witch burning, but....fuck it.

I take the Prime Directive as seriously as Kirk.

Picard and Janeway can bite my ass.

Well, then, there'll be no Tardis privileges for you!

I think the concept of Sin may also be directly connected to the concept of Taboo. Like, "Don't do X because it would harm the tribe." (Taboo) When people asked, "Why?", the answer was "Because God says so", just to get them to shut up. (Sin)

I don't think you can have the intelligence without the emotion.

And you act as if emotion is a bad thing but there are many good things with it.

Or it could be that we aren't in a crowded part of the galaxy.

In other words SETI's "extensive scan" isn't extensive compared to the size of the galaxy.

Of course the word they would be an appropriate pronoun. How else would we describe them?

And if they've got math we can communicate.

Natural selection applies everywhere.

Here is the biggest IF

What if we are the only ones at this point?

Some species has to be the first one in the galaxy to attain intelligence.

Whose to say we aren't the first one?

It would be suck for them then cause we humans know death intimately and are more then capable of introducing it to them.

Absolutely. When you consider that survival depended entirely on the tribe, there had to be a group ethos and, from that, a set of taboos. The shaman/priestly caste was invested in (A) getting them to stop squabbling and shut up, and also (B) setting themselves up as having arcane knowledge about "what God wants" in order to keep themselves in meat and hides without having to go out and do that nasty hunting business.

Yes - my statement referred to "ardent biblical literalists" that Dayton mentioned, not others. I'm well aware of the plethora of different factions that have always existed in Christianity, and their almost limitless knack for seeing what they want to see in their scriptures. Apology accepted.

But the point remains - if it's so clear that it was meant figuratively, as you now instruct us, then almost everyone got it completely wrong for a very long time just until the moment where such clarity was forced upon them by the advance of science. That's rather suspicious.