Religion in all its Forms

Stacks of it then, given the odds :slight_smile:

Buddhism is a strange one. Nirvana is the breaking of the cycle of rebirth yet many followers of Buddhism do not seek it and instead look to achieve favourable karma to aid their life and lives to come.

Ah sorry, no problem.

Iā€™m in

very appropriate Gif for this thread also

Challenge Thumbs Up GIF

The more we know, the more we know we donā€™t know. I like this graphic. Whereā€™s it from?

Didnā€™t Darwin convert to Christianity on his deathbed ?

Apparently not. I got this from https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/59/9/800/248702**

" Like his father and the rest of the males in his family, Darwin had little use for established religions because he thought they were authoritarian and discriminated against those who did not accept them. He was never an outright atheist, however. His statements on religion ([Barlow 1958](javascript:;)) suggest that he was a deist, like many cultured Englishmen of his time ([Wilson 2002](javascript:;)) and the American founding fathers ([Holmes 2006](javascript:;)). That is, he accepted the presence of some kind of Creator, but avoided the words Christ, Savior, or Redeemer. Darwin could not conceive how the universe could have been the result of ā€œblind chance and necessityā€; all this must have had a ā€œFirst Causeā€ with ā€œan intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of manā€ ([Barlow 1958](javascript:;)). Nevertheless, like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others, Darwin did not identify with any religious denomination in traditional terms. After the death of his 10-year-old daughter Annie, he lost his faith in Providence (the idea that everything is divinely ordained for the best), as many have done after similar tragedies. As he grew older, questions of religion simply ceased to interest him ([Barlow 1958](javascript:;), [Desmond and Moore 1992](javascript:;)).

*The deathbed conversion story is a myth started by a profiteering woman who never actually met Darwin, as far as can be told ([Moore 1994](javascript:;)). The legend is still repeated by fundamentalist Christian preachers and radio hosts, which prompted Darwin scholar James Moore to write his book The Darwin Legend

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No.

Life, yes. Complex life, maybe not.

I think weā€™ll find life in the solar system - maybe Mars, maybe Europa, Titan or Enceladus - but only microbes and bacteria. This, coupled with the fact that life on Earth started pretty much as soon as it can, would indicate that simple life is abundant.

However, the jump to multicellular life took billions of years on earth, and needed so many factors to be just right. That might suggest that multicellular life could be incredibly rare.

As far as the Milky Way goes, it might just be us and Bacteria. Fingers crossed it isnā€™t.

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As far as I know, Jews donā€™t believe in an afterlife. Happy to be corrected if wrong.

Jews do believe in an afterlifeā€¦

And to further this point, whatā€™s more terrifying? We are the only evolved lifeforms in the galaxy or we are not?

These stats really surprised me.

Does it matter when the speed limit of the universe kind of prevents travel over the distances needed to even get to your neighboring star.

Not saying that it isnā€™t possible to crack this but that reduces the possibility of such a civilization by a massive amount Iā€™d say.

A quite intentional cage imposed by a god? I suspect that as and when we crack C it will bypass the limits of C. Cox recons not but what does he know?

The difficulty in finding an advanced species on another world isnā€™t limited to the distance and signal time needed to get there and back but also in the age of the universe. Earth is currently 4 and bit billion years old and our ability to gather signal intelligence is measured in the decades. Given that the habitable envelope surrounding a star shifts and evolves with the luminosity of that star it pretty much means that any planet that can host life has a shelf life, some longer than others, some with an extremely short window, others with longer windows but later beginnings etc.

Signals from an advanced civilization could have been obtainable a billion years ago but maybe their planet has been engulfed by their star in the meantime without them finding another home, or the means to get to one is just one scenario. Perhaps a civilisation is active and developing but they might be in their version of the Middle Ages or earlier and by the time theyā€™re able to receive our signals we have returned to the dust ourselves. I personally doubt we are the only life in the universe but I also think that unless they find us first, finding that life ourselves is going to require a massive stroke of luck.

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Or one day we could discover communication method ZZY ( :face_with_monocle: ) and find millions of intelligent planets. Could just be that weā€™re currently barking at the moon, not listening to the metaphorical music.

Billions of galaxies, weā€™re not alone.

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I do feel itā€™s unbelievably arrogant to think weā€™re the only intelligent lifeform.

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I do feel itā€™s unbelievably arrogant to think weā€™re an intelligent lifeform.

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Yep. Couldnā€™t agree more.

Iā€™m of the view thereā€™s life out there and probably far more diverse and complex than we think. But I agree that there are so many obstacles to us actually getting any proof of their existence and its those things that make the chances so low.