recent findings indicate most stars have planets. there are something like 9000000000000000000000 (9 sextillion) stars just in the visible universe, and we know we aren't seeing it all. it wouldn't take more than a miniscule fraction of those stars to have earthlike planets for there to be trillions or quadrillions of them.
So many forms of life on earth have characteristics that make human life elsewhere not unlikely. That is, if there is life elsewhere at all. Four limbs, pairs of eyes, nostrils, ears. Stereo vision and hearing gives a sense of distance and helps see predators in advance.
There are 8 planets, hundreds of moons, and billions of other objects in this solar system. Only one has life. What are the odds?
But how many ways are there to combine the basic functions into a sentient being, if starting from scratch?
Yeah i was just thinking what you were saying. I mean if we did in fact come from a single celled organism; and you play it over 1 to the 100th power; how many would come out exactly the same?
the reference was to specifically finding homo sapiens on another planet, not finding human-like species.
Exactly. The "common blueprint" argument of creationism is unconvincing to me here on our relatively self-contained earth, but matching blueprints (as it were) across the vastness of space is simply inconceivable without a common creator to connect them. That discovery would rock scientific and theological worlds alike.
there are not billions of places where life as we know it could possibly exist. there are at most only a handful, and it does exist in one of those and we don't know for sure that it doesn't elsewhere. i don't think it's possible to figure odds. in any case i wasn't making a claim about the probability of life, just pointing out it's likely there are an enormous number of earth-like planets in the universe. i don't have an opinion over funding SETI etc. so no need for rant ^^
Here we go again... crowTrobot involved in a atheist discussion. It's only a matter of time until he starts arguing, lacking logic, that atheism isn't a set of beliefs, just like any other religion.
atheists dont believe in god, but most would say that there is no way of really knowing. science says earth is old. theists will tell you that they know, when the surely cant, which can get annoying. bible says earth is young. and children go along happily on their way until some asshole ruins it for them unicorn fart
The Bible actually make no claims about the earths age, that's why the beginning chapters of Genesis are open to interpretation. I take them as the literal word of God though.
If the laws of physics and chemistry work the same everywhere in the universe, life should evolve the same everywhere. I'd believe in God if he appeared before me in a burning bush and produced other supernatural feats.
speaking generally maybe. you could make a reasonable argument that the ape-like form is inevitably going to emerge from evolution at some point. however the evolutionary path that led to humans specifically depends precisely on the exact circumstances of environment and available mutations over hundreds of millions of years. there's no way for nature to recreate humans exactly without recreating everything that happened in intricate detail.
Maybe it takes 5B years instead of 4.4B. I'm just saying that if nature can do it once, a second occurrence is also attributable to nature.
