For generations, scientists have scoffed at the idea of God as a silly superstition, and yet if you ask these same scientists whether they believe in life on other planets, many would say something like “of course, when you consider the sheer numbers of habitable planets in the universe, the odds of alien life is extremely high”.
But you can’t calculate odds just from knowing the denominator; you also need to know the numerator, and so far we have only one example of life emerging from nothing (biogenesis): Earth. And until we find a second example of biogenesis, we don’t know if it’s a once in a solar system event, or a once in a galaxy event, or even a once in a universe event.
Scientists will say life began early in Earth’s existence, so this suggests it’s a common event. But the mere fact that Earth has intelligent life means it must have started early enough for our complex minds to have evolved, so the fact that life started early on Earth is just another way of saying complex life exists on Earth. Still tells us nothing about the probability of complex or even simple life existing anywhere else.
Since we have no way of knowing whether the denominator is small enough to make alien life probable, and it’s only one of two possibilities, there’s a 50% chance of alien life.
Thus agnosticism is the only intelligent answer to the question of life on other planets.
What about God? We have no way of knowing whether whatever events caused the universe did so intentionally, so perhaps there’s also a 50% chance of God existing.
So even though belief in life on other planets is considered way more rational than belief in God, both are equally probable. And yet, people who believe in alien life are almost certainly more intelligent on average. Probably because alien belief is generally arrived at through reasoning while theism is arrived at through faith.
Pumpkin Person 
I think there are good arguments that the probability of the emergence of life is probably quite low – it may be a once in a universe event or a once in a galaxy event, but it is unlikely that it is a once in a solar system event.
We live on a planet with relatively good conditions for the emergence of life. But all forms of life on earth show evidence for common ancestor. So we only have evidence for life on earth emerging once. If it was not very unlikely, it should have happened more than once and there should be forms of life on earth that are not related to each other.
I find the arguments why this conclusion should not be made not convincing. Some people say that once life had emerged on earth, earth was „occupied“ by life, which prevented further emergence of nee life forms. But we have different species competing for ecological niches, the existence of one species does not preclude the existence of another. It is not very plausible that species can coexist if they have common ancestors and cannot if they don’t have common ancestors.
I agree that we can say little about the likelihood of the emergence of life as long as we don’t have evidence for any case that is independent from the one on earth. But I think that for the reasons mentioned above, the plausible range of the likelihood is probably rather low – probably much lower than most of those who say there just MUST be life in many places because there are so many stars and planets usually implicitly assume.
I find the arguments why this conclusion should not be made not convincing. Some people say that once life had emerged on earth, earth was „occupied“ by life, which prevented further emergence of nee life forms. But we have different species competing for ecological niches, the existence of one species does not preclude the existence of another. It is not very plausible that species can coexist if they have common ancestors and cannot if they don’t have common ancestors.
The difference is, because all life shares a common ancestor, it has all had an equal amount of time to evolve to its particular niches. By contrast if unrelated life had then emerged, it would not have enough time to evolve before being consumed or out-competed by the more established life. So I’m not sure if Earth being limited to only one common ancestor tells us anything either way.
I figure life probably evolved many times when the conditions were right, at least the most extremely basic forms, like amino acids in ancient geothermal vents. The existence of a Last Universal Common Ancestor doesn’t imply that life only emerged once, no more than the current existence of one human species (Homo sapiens – or H. sapiens sapiens, according to some) negates the existence of other species in the Homo genus, like H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis, etc. Also, LUCA was apparently much more complicated than the simplest forms of life, since biologists have inferred that hundreds of genes were already present in it.
If the universe is infinite in time and/or space, then the probability of alien life is 1. (Basically; I’m sure you could make some technical argument that it “approaches 1” or is “almost 1” or whatever, but let’s not reconnoiter those thickets.) Some cosmologists seriously propose this. I’m not sure I buy it, at least at the level of our physical universe, but it may be that our universe is only one finite aspect of a greater, perhaps infinite, reality.
is a “a once in a universe event” possible in an infinite universe?
it could be there is intelligent life elsewhere but it’s so far away it’s beyond the visible universe.
no because it would be ergodic. assuming that the infinity is time but (configuration) space is finite
pigeonhole principle
Thus agnosticism is the only intelligent answer to the question of life on other planets.
not if the universe in infinite.
but obviously it may require being a volunteer for the bgi study to grok what socrates meant by “the gods”.
hint: he didn’t mean zeus, neptune, uranus, etc…
for example:
when i was an actuary something one of my co-workers was a PhD in math from cal-tech.
i looked him up and he’d become an FCAS. but he wasn’t an officer.
so likely his IQ was higher than any of the other actuaries at his company (which i won’t mention) but he wouldn’t or couldn’t be a manager. so i’m guessing he made less less than 150k USD per year.
i think his situation is one a lot of high IQ people find themselves in.
and in academia even full professors who make more than 150k per year are a small %.
The guy with the phd in math from caltech was underemployed being an actuary. He should have applied to CERN or NASA.
you’re an idiot. his phd was in number theory. and you have no idea what the academic job market is like.
my own mother was asked so many times to head the seattle branch of her company and she always said no…because…
1. didn’t wanna move to seattle.
2. she thought grown ups don’t need managaers and her “job” would be bullshit.
the pill personality is funny.
he believes in indexing yet…
he doesn’t go beyond that…
he doesn’t ax his own self “what are all the implications?”
if he did he’d find that…
1. beating the market is as easy as beating an egg.
2. BUT only a little bit over a long time.
“nothing to write home about.”
So do you beat the market and by how much?
i’ll give you an example. in the case of BDCs i bought equal amounts of two cos. over the last few years one has performed -6% vs the index ETF, BIZD. the other has outperformed it by +138%. average the two and i win that race.
similarly with other sectors. but not as much.
SO you’ve never looked at whether your overall portfolio is up or down? LOL
“the mere fact that Earth has intelligent life means it must have started early enough for our complex minds to have evolved, so the fact that life started early on Earth is just another way of saying complex life exists on Earth. Still tells us nothing about the probability of complex or even simple life existing anywhere else.”
Suppose life on Earth started much later and intelligence evolved much quicker. Wouldn’t that imply lower odds of life in the rest of the universe, but higher odds that if such life existed it would be intelligent? So it doesn’t quite tell us nothing I think.
how could anyone say “jesus is God?” didn’t jesus shit and piss and have itching hemorrhoids? didn’t jesus fap thinking of bartholomew and his mother, marry?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/magnus-carlsen-ian-nepomniachtchi-world-chess-championship-computer-analysis-11639003641
yes he did!
obviously!
that’s not the point meine herren.
I am the way, the truth, and the life…
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God is a harder problem because evolution already has been solved, it happened. But with God that has to do with consciousness. Philosophically you must frame the question in platonic terms. Science and philosophy seem at odds because science has answers but fools just can’t fathom that questions exist beyond materialism. The hard problem of consciousness is beyond math equations. The God question is hard like you can’t understand so you think it’s stupid. No philosophy is still beyond science.
religion < science < philosophy
(faith(knowledge(wisdom)knowledge)faith)
All humans are fucking pussies. the species Homo Sapiens has the term “homo” in it for a reason.
i would not doubt that some extra-terrestrial life form would annihilate us within minutes of meeting us unless they wanted to exploit us for their purposes which i dont think humans would be considerable good at anyways seeing how much of a shit show this whole phenomenon of human existence has been.
Pepe can you[redacted by pp, 2021-12-24] I’m sick of these clowns
Everyone here leaves good comments except Mug of Pee of St. Shit, pill, and sometimes Cat. Mug of Pee of St. Shit is especially problematic because he comments more than everyone else combined, but now I’m moderating him more aggressively.
For the record I think Ganzir is an autistic clown.
Ganzir is the son I never had, so show some respect! When it comes to understanding women, you have the lowest social IQ of anyone here as proven by your idiotic view that smashing a guy’s head in with a beer bottle is a good way to pickup women. That is some hardcore severe social retardation on your part.
glad to know I am only partially incompetent.
I can’t believe you still want to show how inept you are with women by saying violence doesn’t work with women.
smashing a guy’s head in with a beer bottle is a good way to pickup women.
Correct.
Ganzir is the son I never had, so show some respect! When it comes to understanding women, you have the lowest social IQ of anyone here as proven by your idiotic view that smashing a guy’s head in with a beer bottle is a good way to pickup women. That is some hardcore severe social retardation on your part.
1. Tank u pepe
2. Do you want children? Are you incapable of having them? This is the greatest tragedy confronting humanity today, far worse than muh anthropogenic climate change. Those who ought to be reproducing lavishly have few children, or even remain “childfree,” due to such laudable intentions as environmental awareness, financial security, or general antinatalism. Meanwhile, disproportionate reduction is characteristic of people too stupid to apply a condom.
disproportionate reproduction*
Evolution has shown life can basically evolve from the bleakest of conditions. You don’t need the same conditions that exist on earth for it to evolve. Taking that as a fact, I expect life evolved or will evolve on many different planets and since the universe is very large theres a very good chance.
About god on the other hand, the Creator is limited by our imaginations. We tend to think of God as an analogy to how things are created by humans. I suspect we don’t yet have the technological sophistication to see how a universe would be created. But we have something called video games which gives us a clue how it could be done.
Puppy is of indian heritage. Tee hee.
peepee is an afro-pakistani. but she’s half afro-german.
sad.
hahaha.
low social IQ of this personality again.
peepee is a [N word redacted by pp, 2021-12-24]
Two mutually excluding discrete possibilities doesn’t imply they are (or should be considered) equi-probable (even when you can’t know them).
I wonder if you were joking with this one 😂
Happy Christmas Eve to you and to all readers of your blog.
I vaguely suspect the apparent fine-tuning of the universe provides some evidence against aliens within our observable universe. I.e. a linear increase in aliens requires a linear increase in fine-tuned parameters, and that becomes exponentially less likely with the number of parameters. But I’m biased because I like the idea that we hold sole judgement over the cosmos.