OT: Alien Contact

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Guys, do you want another mandy to light it up?

Thanks!
Doesn't really help but hey.
As far as I'm concerned this topic is over. This thread can now go back to discussing aliens.

[Fyron]

Yes, some people did believe this. But mankind in general was what I was driving at.

The people living around the people writing the Bible, sure. But, many ancient cultures believed the world was round. Pretty much all of the people in those cultures believed that. Mankind in general was torn 50/50 between the two beliefs.

My mistake. But did come true, did it not?

Almost all (if not all) of that stuff was written after the fact. It was not prediction, it was postdiction.

I gave other examples to make up for that.

No they don't. They are all flawed.

In the new testiment parts of it are still being fulfilled down to this day. The new testiment brought out that we would see multitudes of bad things happening in the Last days. These things are indeed happening. You may say that they have always happened. Granted they have, but not to the extent that they are right now.

This has totally changed topic from where this thread started.
But I have to take off for a while. I will be back later tonight.[/QB]

No they aren't. What are some examples of these things that are supposedly happening?

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Do you think that it is possible for Earth to have been or is going to be visited by an Alien race?

What do you think would be our response now given all of the hype that Sci-fi shows, books, and movies has generated. Would we be open minded and accept them as friends, if they come in peace, or would we be secptical and be threatened by them?

First and foremost, I do not believe that Earth has ever been visited by Aliens, nor do I ever believe we will be. I do believe that life may exsist else where in the universe, but I do not believe it is wide spread. I feel that Earth is a fragile bio-sphere, and that all life on Earth is a trillion to one happenstance.

If for some reason we were contacted by alien life, then I think we would fear it, but accept it. I think a few nutball goobers might try and mock it up, but overall the people of our world would accept the new reality without wanting to blow it to hell.

That is say for the ultra fanatical religious types and ultra paranoid "the sky is falling" fruit cakes of the world.

Whoooeee, you have a talent for starting discussions. Have you ever considered getting a job as a talk show host?

I think it's barely possible that earth has been visited in the past by 'aliens' from other solar systems. Given the difficulty of travel between the stars, especially the time scale of it, it would most likely have been in an era when there weren't even 'proto' humans to witness it. The 'little green men' would most likely have seen dinosaurs and ferns when they visited. And it's not likely that any other 'visitors' will arrive in any historical time that we can imagine.

Of course, statistics are only attempts to model reality. What really happens is what really happens and that's why bookies and insurance adjusters often have to pay up. If we saw real live 'aliens' arrive I think it'd be a huge shock to the world. Yes, many people would panic, and many people would proclaim the 'new age' of enlightened life in the galactic community. Which reaction was justified would depend on the actual character of the aliens, of course. But the actual long-term effect on our civilization would probably be more like the effect that 'discovery' has had on the various isolated primitive tribes that we've heard about in the Last century or so. Have you ever noticed how that goes? They learn about the huge, complex, confusing world out here and their own world-view is bLasted to dust. They lose motivation and incentive in their old system, as their religion and 'economy' such as it is collapses. I think something similar would happen to the whole world if we were suddenly exposed to a new context including intelligent life beyond earth. Not just because various 'fundamentalists' would be confounded in their view of humans on earth as somehow 'special' either. I think it would rattle the materialists as much as the fundamentalists.

For this reason, I think the 'conspiracy theories' about government cover-up of alien contact is not so outlandish as some have assumed. IF there were in fact clear evidence of extra-terrestrial civilizations I think the govt. would do just that out of fear of our society collapsing. They too have seen what happened to various isolated cultures here on earth when they were 'discovered' by the larger world...

[ February 26, 2003, 22:40: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Guys, do you want another mandy to light it up?

No. That doesn't lighten anything up.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Ragnarok:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Guys, do you want another mandy to light it up?

Thanks!
Doesn't really help but hey.
As far as I'm concerned this topic is over. This thread can now go back to discussing aliens.

---

Well that's nice. Just abandon the discussion so you can't have your views questioned, and can go on happily living with them, even though they could be wrong. That is probably worse than that other horribly horribly wrong thing that happened earlier.

[Ragnarok]

Well that's nice. Just abandon the discussion so you can't have your views questioned, and can go on happily living with them, even though they could be wrong. That is probably worse than that other horribly horribly wrong thing that happened earlier.

I'm not abandoning the discussion. If you wish I will return later and discuss further. But I see no point in it as neither one of us are getting anywhere.
I've had my views questioned many times before and it has never stopped me from beliving them.

Almost all (if not all) of that stuff was written after the fact. It was not prediction, it was postdiction.

How can you prove it was postdiction?
Again, if you examine each book of the Bible, and really look for dates and so forth, you can come out with a date of when the book was started and completed.

No they don't. They are all flawed.

So you're saying that Babylon never did fall to the assyrian army?

No they aren't. What are some examples of these things that are supposedly happening?

2nd Timothy 3: 1-5 has some. Earthqacks, wars, famines, pestilences, nation rising against nation, etc.

Ok, now I'm really leaving, but if you wish, I will return tonight.

[minipol]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
In that case... why do you think the Bible is any evidence? Why is it (and hence Christianity) better than other religions? What makes it right, and everything else wrong?

The "evidence" in the Bible is only corroborated by the world around you because the authors of the Bible were good authors and wrote it as such.[/QB]

Hhhmm. You also referred to a book (a physics book) as and i quote: "It was in my physics book Last year, which is generally accepted as the best physics text book out there. "
So if it's ok for you to refer to a book, why can't Ragnarok do it. Just because your book is a scientific book and his the bible doesn't mean that your book is more inclined to be true.
History is full of scientific books that years later (or centuries later) proved to be utter crap.
And it's always easy to question a book:
"why do you think that physics book is any evidence? Why is it better than other physics book? What makes it right, and everything else wrong?"
Don't get me wrong i love science and i do believe that what you are saying about the speed of light is true, it just don't agree with the way you are trying to show there is no evidence that the bible is true (or wrong for that matter).
Any book can be full of crap.

And i personally don't believe that there is a good or upper being. When we die, there's nothing. The big void. The big zero.