It seems to me that belief in God and belief in intelligent life on another planet are inversely proportional, so I wanted a poll to find out.
clarification...your post says "intelligent life"...the poll says alien life....those aren't necessarily the same. i think it's possible there's intelligent life out there....i'm near certain there's at least microbial life out there somewhere. And I'm a Jesus Freak...so which do I choose?
Believe is a rather strong word... Accept the idea of God and Aliens, sure, I can easily say that both are possible and plausible, but to outright say with certainty that I believe both exist (or just one) is a hard step for me to take. At best I could say I would like to believe we are not the only organized group of lifeforms in the universe and that we were not assembled by random disorder and chaos. Can I say that with certainty? Nope...
We're working on possibility percentages that can scale into the millions. Let's say there are million to one odds for proving that there are sentient aliens able to be contacted in our small small small piece of the universe. Really extreme odds (million is generous) considering the age and size of the universe and our sub to near light forms of communication. For the possibility of a Father in the Sky god to be proven, I'm guessing you add another magnitude of 1,000-100,000. But with numbers in those sizes, it all becomes lumped in the really huge category and "near equal". In fact, the all knowing, all interfering, time transcending (from a fraction of a big bang nanosecond to several billions of years...and much more) and all judgmental God should be closer to us....which should make the odds of consistent human contact much much smaller, but I'll assume we're talking about the universal, omnipresent, faith-driven metagod for ****s and grins.
Agnosticism deals with knowlege, not belief. I can believe something with all my heart and still take an agnostic stance because I don't *know* it to be true. Therefore the poll choices are not accurate.
No it doesn't. It exactly deals with belief. Otherwise, for concepts like aliens and God, it's not meaningful at all, because neither are likely to be proven.
The question also says intelligent life. I didn't mean for it to be confusing. For the sake of the poll, go intelligent life.
In Islam, the Quran is ambivalent about other life forms and says something along the lines of 'God scattered life throughout the universe'. Specifically only three have been mentioned: angels, jinns/genies, and human beings. But if there are other life forms, humans haven't been given any revelations of them. Note: The Quran is only the tip of the iceberg of all knowledge, which is the Divine Tablet of Knowledge/Umm-al-Kitab (Mother of the Book), that resides with God. If there are intelligent life forms several megalight-years away, they are only mentioned in that body of knowledge.
I think you're wrong on this one. Agnostics themselves are considered a belief system now. Much like atheists are.
So far, I think the results are showing weslinder to be wrong about the inverse correlation. You're too wound up from being in the D&D. He's using the term in the looser #2 definition: not willing to commit to a yes or a no on the question.
I don't know. I'm somewhat surprised that no one disbelieves in aliens, and the correlation is weaker than I would have predicted, but it's there: 36% of theists believe in aliens, 40% of agnostics, and 71% of atheists. Obviously the sample size is really small, but it's confirming my bias so far.
No evidence exists for God. But there are billions and billions of planets, so it's statistically probable that there are more planets with favorable conditions for facilitating intelligent life. Thus, I believe in aliens. Whether aliens have visited Earth is something I don't believe in, for a similar reason -- too many planets to look for life on.
The poll has answers to the question at hand. That makes your statement more of an opinion than a belief.
Yes, it does. I'm not. <object width="480" height="390"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/j2Py1Bz8XOo?fs=1&hl=en_US&start=20"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/j2Py1Bz8XOo?fs=1&hl=en_US&start=20" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="390"></embed></object> I can agree with the second definition in terms of not knowing the answer to a yes or no question, sure. And I wouldn't say I'm wound up. I just think that if people are going to be throwing around labels that carry such weight, then they should at least know what they actually mean, and not just what most people think they mean as a result of widespread misuse. For example, I'm an atheist and I gladly wear that label. It just means that I lack a belief in god up to this point due to a lack of evidence. However, the misuse of the label causes people think I claim absolute certainty, which in turn makes my position look just as arrogant as religious fundamentalists. I'm not OK with that, so when possible I try to spread the correct definitions.
I think the smoking gun would be the 'no aliens' answers. I see three interesting theories you could try to prove with this: 1. Something about believing in intelligent alien life is a threat to beliefs about God. The cognitive dissonance prompts believers to deny the possibility of aliens. That obviously is not happening here, because there are no No Aliens answers. 2. Atheists are preoccupied with how immense the universe is and how mundane and insignificant humanity must be. 3. Agnostics are a bunch of wafflers who can't commit on signficant or insignificant questions. :grin:
