I think within a few thousand light years, yes, we’re very alone. But God’s out there with the same chemistry and physics as here. So, maybe.
That said, alone is actually good. There is no guarantee that other intelligent beings would be friendly or benign. The could just as easily be lovers of conflict, implacable xenophobes or worse. The residue of civilization can be deadly. Intelligent supermachines like Saberhagen's Berserkers are not impossible, but unintelligent but prolific self-replicating machines would be just as problematic. But even the friendliest extraterrestrial neighbors would surely cause technological, cultural and religious shockwaves that would change human civilization forever.
I can live with alone.
Question: Why is Carl Sagan so lonely? (pick one)(a) Sagan is lonely because, as a true devotee of science, a noble and reliable method of attaining knowledge, he feels increasingly isolated in a world in which, as Bronowski has said, there is a failure of nerve and men seem willing to undertake anything other than the rigors of science and believe anything at all: in Velikovski, von Daniken, even in Mr. and Mrs. Barney Hill, who reported being captured and taken aboard a spaceship in Vermont.
(b) Sagan is lonely because, after great expectations, he has not discovered ETIs in the Cosmos, because chimpanzees don't talk, dolphins don't talk, humpback whales sing only to other humpback whales, and he has heard nothing but random noise from the Cosmos, and because Vikings 1 and 2 failed to discover evidence of even the most rudimentary organic life in the soil of Mars.
(c) Sagan is lonely because, once everything in the Cosmos, including man, is reduced to the sphere of immanence, matter in interaction, there is no one left to talk to except other transcending intelligences from other worlds.-- from Walker Percy's Lost In The Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
We were going to be the generation that went to the stars. We can’t even send people to the moon. I doubt if we will be able to keep sending people to the space station. We laugh at the story of The Tower Of Babel, yet, we live it every day. Some of us have hearts that long to explore the universe, but, while we can escape the earth’s gravity, we cannot escape the people on earth with all of their fears and needs and jealousies. The realities of earth destroy the dreams of space. And it isn’t overpopulation or pollution or war.....it’s our smallness that holds us back.
with all the radio telescopes and tech we have not heard or seen a single piece of communication or evidence of Aliens .not a peep. So we are alone. face it.
“...,Imagine, for a moment, an alternative reality....”
That’s what it comes down to. For crying out loud...the lengths people go to in order to escape the concept of our creator. To escape the idea of being held accountable.
I was raised religious, then became too smart (for my own good) to believe in a God, and considered those that did as weak.
Then I learned about quantum physics, and realized that wave/particle duality and the uncertainty principle was God’s way of saying “you may know this much, but NEVER more than that.”
Sealed it for me. There’s just no getting around it.
Now, with the grace of God, I know better, and my hubris has been humbled.
Can I get an Amen?
:)
We are the seed of life, one of the first tasks our Creator has given us is to “Go forth and multiply”. Unfortunately the dark one has lead us astray and we have wasted much time and effort in silly games of ambition instead of doing our work.
Here is what we know so far. Life is possible in the universe. Intelligent life is possible in the universe. Processes are universal and certain, outcomes of those processes are not. Natural law operates the same throughout the universe as far as we know. Other natural phenomenon such as comets, planets, galaxies, black holes, gas clouds and stars are universally present. We know that simple organic compounds exist in vast quantities in space. Scientist have proven that these compounds can spontaneously form more complex molecules such as amino acids and even some precursors to DNA. Science has more recently shown that self replicating molecules can form spontaneously from these simpler building blocks including self replicating RNA. Science has also shown that lipid compounds can form spontaneous in hot springs and spontaneously form miscelles, or microscopic spheres. It is reasonable to assume that these miscelles would trap some of these self replicating molecules and the catalyst molecules they require inside. So now you have a simple cell membrane with self replicating RNA inside which utilizes molecules around it to make more of the self replicating molecules. Interestingly, the scientists found that these self replicating molecules were subject to evolution, with the ones that most readily self replicate predominating over time and that these molecules were subject to copying errors producing variation. So We don’t have any evidence that life exists elsewhere in the universe but we can see now some of the ways in which it could arise given the right conditions.
The question of whether humankind is alone in the Universe as a life form raised to the level of intelligence to inspect the Universe fascinates people who want to know the 'why' of life. But there are clues to be found in places not in the realm of 'Science', like in the fifth chapter of Daniel, the Old Testament. The Universe is stranger than we can even imagine, much less inspect. I happen to believe there is a dimension as real as dimension Space or dimension Time which I call the dimension of Life-Force. There may even be a dimension of Spirit.
None of these speculations preclude The Creator for them all. Space is a volume in which variable expressions of linear, planar, and point reside. Dimension Time is also a volume. We have been created --as we are now, in these bodies-- to generate a virtual map of present time, or planar time if you will. Our sensing mechanism receives information from the Universe, as if linear rods of time are arriving on our sensory grid, to be processed for meaning by our mind which uses our physical brain as a tool. The mind may exist in a dimensional mix which is different from our physical body, but is never the less a place, a where/when with time and space characteristics.
We haven't figured out that such a reality exists, yet, much less how the soul of life accesses our physical bodies in order to use that physical thing to gather and process data.
To quote Steely Dan, “Any world that I’m welcome to, is better than the one I come from.”
i am aone, there isnot now elwe in the room.
FYI: Pinging the unidentified aerial phenomena list (ufo).
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/are-we-alone/about-this-show/about-are-we-alone.htm
Are We Alone Week returns March 2-7, 2014, with all new episodes of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman and NASA’s Unexplained Files, plus new shows asking big questions.