The Goat Pen

You're right, I had never seen her run that fast before...

though of myself as god fearing christian for 30 or so years--evolved into more of a anything is possilbe but a god didnt put us hear for the majority of us to be sent to hell kind of guy

reason I believe somebody named jesus might have existed and did the things credited to him is the same reason I believe UFO's, the loch ness monstoer, the theories about stonehndge, cropcircle theories, and any myriad of unexplained occurences

how different civilizations from other worlds evolved then somehow interacted with ours is ultmately the question i have

likely we havent heard the last of them I imagine

and to say some kind of life after physical death doesnt exist is a little naieve i think--I imagine somewhere theyve figured out how to keep braincells alive which could lead to a whole hoist of out of body experiences

So now do you think of yourself as a crackpot crazy person?

sure why not

At least we agree on something

crashcourse wrote:though of myself as god fearing christian for 30 or so years--evolved into more of a anything is possilbe but a god didnt put us hear for the majority of us to be sent to hell kind of guy

reason I believe somebody named jesus might have existed and did the things credited to him is the same reason I believe UFO's, the loch ness monstoer, the theories about stonehndge, cropcircle theories, and any myriad of unexplained occurences

how different civilizations from other worlds evolved then somehow interacted with ours is ultmately the question i have

likely we havent heard the last of them I imagine

and to say some kind of life after physical death doesnt exist is a little naieve i think--I imagine somewhere theyve figured out how to keep braincells alive which could lead to a whole hoist of out of body experiences

I put God in the same boat as the Loch Ness Monster, crop circles, and Stonehenge mysticism, too.

[img2]http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/le- ... 0915005854[/img2]

crashcourse wrote:though of myself as god fearing christian for 30 or so years--evolved into more of a anything is possilbe but a god didnt put us hear for the majority of us to be sent to hell kind of guy

reason I believe somebody named jesus might have existed and did the things credited to him is the same reason I believe UFO's, the loch ness monstoer, the theories about stonehndge, cropcircle theories, and any myriad of unexplained occurences

how different civilizations from other worlds evolved then somehow interacted with ours is ultmately the question i have

likely we havent heard the last of them I imagine

and to say some kind of life after physical death doesnt exist is a little naieve i think--I imagine somewhere theyve figured out how to keep braincells alive which could lead to a whole hoist of out of body experiences

Well, you've definitely listed jesus with the correct peer group. I'd really like to know why you believe in the Loch Ness monster.

[youtube]83bkpkCQu2Q[/youtube]

Will somebody please get aTm a hooker.

ATM - Makes me laugh with the memes.
NO
Now as far as the other discussions, I believe in something. Do I think I can wrap my mind around what "it" is? Not really. Man is arrogant to think we have all the answers and the only life form out there in this vast universe. Maybe it isn't walking talking life forms, but I am willing to bet there is something. Look at mother nature and the earth. There have been diseases that have killed millions, weather disasters, earthquakes, and any other natural disasters. When she is ready to deal with humans, she was shake us off like a bad case of fleas and not think twice about it.

I don't think it's arrogant to think we may be the only life in the universe (or rather, intelligent life remotely "like us"). Yeah, it's a big place, but just think of the exact things that had to come together over millions and billions of years to arrive at this point. The very narrow range of temperature, the exact mixture of gases, all of the other life forms that had to go extinct in order to make room for man to evolve (and the countless forms of life that failed, for whatever reason, to get a foothold and actually come into existence in the first place). I'm not saying there's not other forms of "life" out there, stuff that can survive in, say, the methane sea of Jupiter or on planets 200 degrees hotter or colder than ours with completely different atmospheres, but I don't think they're anything like us. And not only all of the above had to happen for us to be here at all, it had to happen in the exact order over billions of years, including all the unforeseen disasters at the exact time that they occurred and all the millions of other "accidents" happening exactly when they did for us to evolve as we did. Yes, the universe is a big place and time is theoretically infinite, but the number of events that could possibly occur is even more infinite (I know that's a oxymoron, but you know what I'm saying). I'm not saying it's not possible, but it seems very unlikely...

In other words, here's ye one chance Fancy, don't let me down...

The Universe is so big (even just our galaxy is fucking gigantic) that the right conditions definitely exist. There are something like 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Even if only 1 quadrillionrth of them had the right conditions that still leaves 1 billion stars with the right potential. When we thought planets might be rare around stars there may have been doubts about life elsewhere, but now that we see them everywhere in other star systems, its almost certain that other planets like ours exist. Itss probably still doubtful that any are close enough for us to ever come in contact with them though.

Well, I've read that the number of potential variations in a game of chess approaches something like the number of electrons in the universe. That's seems fantastic to me, and that's just 32 pieces on a 64 square board. But in the case of life as we know it on earth right now, you're talking about who knows how many "pieces", i.e., temperature, atmospheric pressure, gravitational field, gases, etc, etc, in an almost countless number of possible variations. And then on top of all that, it all has to happen in a certain order - indeed, as far as we know, in the exact order that it actually did occur to lead up to this very moment in time with us here. It seems quite reasonable to me that if any one thing (out of everything that actually did happen to bring us to this point) had been changed, then we wouldn't be here. Out of millions of things that had to happen in the exact ratio and sequence that they did. To me the odds seem very much against it, although I have to admit that given the raw numbers of plants and stars and time you have to think it's at least remotely possible. But to me it's just that, remotely possible. Very remotely...

What you're talking about is rare earth hypothesis. Rare earthers believe basically like you do that there are so many conditions that need to be right, etc etc that other places like ours are almost impossible. The opposite is mediocrity principle, which basically says there's not really anything so special about our location or the history of our system and that there probably isn't any reason to assume that we are on the specialist rock in the universe and there are probably billions of places like ours.

If the earth hadn't had a chunk knocked out of it to form the moon we wouldn't be here.

Amongst about a million other things...

I'm not saying there's anything particularly special about our planet or the fact that life as we know it exists here. Or rather, every other planet is just as "special" in its own way. I guess you could say there's not much difference b/w planets that are basically rocks with no atmosphere and are either freezing cold or scalding hot (unless you consider the difference b/w +/- 200 degrees and +/- 175 degrees as a significant difference) and that they are all basically "the same" (and I would assume that covers the vast majority of planets in the universe). And I don't doubt that some type of germ or bacteria may exist there, which could be considered life. But to get from that to the exact type of plants and animals that we have here on earth now required an almost infinite number of things to happen, in the exact order that it happened. B/c if it hadn't happened like that, something else entirely would've evolved.

Furthermore, I would say if you went back 100 million years on our planet (or even a million, to say nothing of a billion or more) and started the whole process again, nothing like what we have now would be here, just based on dumb luck and random events. And I would also say that if you started the whole thing over on this very planet at some distant time in the past, you would end up with something very different every single time you ran the process, no matter how many times you ran it. I suppose that given an infinite amount of time and a limited number of atoms, the same configuration would have to appear again (theoretically) at some point, but it doesn't even happen like that (starting over a trillion times from the same starting point and then see what you get). So when you're not even starting at the same starting point, it seems even more remote that you would arrive at the same thing.

I guess it's impossible to know exactly, but from what I've read, something like 99% of the species and life forms that have existed on earth are all extinct, and not just from mass extinction events, just from the day to day (or rather, eon to eon) evolutionary process. You'd have to think that such events and processes are in play everywhere, so even if another species like us ever existed or will exist in the future on some other planet, the chances are it was a long time ago or will be a long time coming. And then they're going to be extinct themselves, just like we will one day. Unless, of course, the laws of evolution don't apply on the other planets and these other species's. But if that's the case, then by definition they are nothing like us at all...

crotch wrote:

hedge wrote:but everything in your life happens for a reason. Just be careful.

Says who?