От известно време карам Теди да напише нещо за бала, но той си има по-важна работа. За да го оставя на мира ми даде домашното си по философия на тема “Съществуват ли извънземни?”, а аз пък реших да го публикувам. Заглавиете е закачка. Много му хареса историята за един наш познат, който яростно защитава тезата, че извънземните съществуват и той има неоспоримо доказателство, че това е така. Той е извънземно. Та, Теди го взе за заглавие, още повече, че има игра на думи. Alien значи също и чужденец, емигрант и подобни.
As Arthur C. Clarke said “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not.” Many people support either side of the argument for different reasons and beliefs. Some believe that aliens do not exist because their religion says so, because there is no evidence of life elsewhere, or make themselves believe it because they are afraid of what is going to happen if we are not the only ones and many more. All legitimate reasons to support the non-existence of aliens. On the other side of it, people justify their belief in aliens with an argument such as, that the Universe is infinitely big, extremely old, and conditions right for developing life as we know it, exist in other places as well as many more. Both sides have high, exciting and credible arguments that support their views but as we all know, there is only one right answer to the argument. I cannot give you the answer, but I can give you my opinion. I will say that the term Appeal to Ignorance plays a big part of the lives of almost all of us. There is no scientific proof that God exists, but people believe in him, there is no scientific proof that Aliens exist, but I believe in them.
Skeptics. They are a lot, maybe even more than the believers. They believe that we are alone in the Universe, that we are special. Life is only one and we are it. Proof, that is the one thing people want to start believing in aliens. However, it is not that easy to get it. It is ironic that the majority of the people that doubt and question the existence of aliens because of the absence of proof, believe in a different kind of species/person that does not have proof of existing. Religious groups around the world have very similar foundations. One of them is that we, as species are special, and that this world has been given to us by some Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omnibenevolent being. The majority of those who are faithful to these religions do not believe in the existence of aliens because it will mean that they do not believe in this supreme being. For example, lets pretend that God does exist. Then all the things written in The Bible must be true. If people do not believe that all of the species on Earth including us are the only created life in the Universe that will mean that they do not believe this Omniscient being. Tied to religion there is the argument about how did the Big Bang happened. The Cosmological Argument states that everything must come from something. Therefore this thing that caused the Big Bang is God and he created us. This again comes to believing what is written in The Bible and the word of God. For a lot of people including me it is really hard to imagine something that we are not so sure what caused it. This is why a lot of these people choose to believe in a being that offers an explanation of how everything came to be. Religion offers answers, unites people, but is also used to control them. Most faithful believe that what is said in The Bible is what actually happened. It is said that God created the world and we are the only ones. If people believe in the existence of aliens that will mean that they do not believe in the words of their God and that they will be punished. This punishment leads to fear, which causes people to be subconsciously forced to believe that aliens do not exist. Fear is a big reason people do not believe in aliens. As said just above the fear of the punishment of God people subconsciously force themselves to believe in the nonexistence of aliens. The fear of them existing and coming to invade us, kill us or worse also exists. It is seen through the years how many films about alien invasions have been made, they look absurd to some, but to others it is a genuine fear. Fear makes people do many things to get rid of it, believing or not believing in this case is one of them. Theories that explain the Big Bang and why we haven’t seen or heard from aliens such as distance, our neighbourhood, and time are just regarded as theories by those who do not believe in them. People in general want proof of something to believe in it. We do not have proof of the existence of aliens. We do not have proof of the existence of God but those who believe in him, like Pastor Nate see proof in everything. As Nate said he sees a tree and that proofs him that God exists, but on the other hand I just see a tree. Fear of punishment, death, being colonized and many more also have their toll on the believe of some people. There are theories for and against the existence of aliens, but people tend to be biased. In today’s society people are fed information and little of them question it. In today’s world the tendency is to believe what you have been told, there are solid arguments against the existence of aliens but questioning someone’s word that they do not exist is responsible for that many people in believing of the non-existence of aliens. We as humans are agnostic, we can not proof or disproof the existence of God and aliens.
Believers. The people that believe in extraterrestrial life. Not all believers are atheists, but most of them are. The believers relay on scientific evidences and theories that explain natural phenomena instead of stories and myths of how the world was created. Some of the theories that believers support are the theory of the creation of the Big Bang, the neighbourhood theory, how time and space have not allowed us to communicate, not enough technology to make contact. Of course there are many more, but these are the theories that will be mentioned in this essay. The Big Bang according to a lot of religious people was the way how God created the Universe. The scientific response to that is that the Big Bang was caused by a singularity of infinite mass and infinite density that collapsed. Assuming that this theory is correct, it will mean that God has not created the Universe. This will cause a contradiction in what he/The Bible says. How are people gonna believe in everything else that is written in the Bible then? There will still be people that will believe that God has caused the Big Bang, but a lot will start questioning this story. This eliminates the fear factor of hell in the afterlife if by scientific methods it is proven that God does not exist. If God has not created us there must be other life in the universe. The Neighbourhood theory gives a very believable scenario. It states that if conditions for life have formed on Earth there must be other places in this infinitely big universe that they have occurred. Since the launch of the Kepler telescope in 2009 there have been 30 confirmed exoplanets in the habitable zone’s of their stars that could support liquid water on their surface and possibly life. A while ago we thought that time was relative. One minute her is one minute on Jupiter, but that is not true. Time is proven to not be a constant. Depending on the force of gravity applied and the speed of moving time could change. The Universe is approximately 13 Billion years old. This raises the question if life has existed and has disappeared, or life is just starting to exist, and we will be long gone before we see it. Time might run differently for these beings and one hour on their planet could be a decade, century or even millennia on Earth. This means that we have really small chances of ever encountering them. The other problem is distance. The Universe is so big that even with the speed of light years will be needed to reach some places. Our neighbourhood is pretty calm and spread. Compared to other places in the Universe we have significantly less planets and suns around us. This could be one of the main reasons for not encountering extraterrestrial beings. Lets say that the closest habitable planet is 5 light years away from us. With the speed of light we will need 5 years to reach that place, but we are far from traveling with the speed of light. With our capabilities we will need thousands of years to reach a place that is so close in the grand scheme of the Universe. This leads us to or technological abilities. We think that we are intelligent and developed life forms but we might not be compared to other species. They might have more technological and mental abilities and that could mean that they do not want to do anything with us. They might think that we are not intelligent enough to contact us. It could be the other way around. We could be one of or the most developed species in the universe and everyone else is still not capable of detecting our signals in space. We might have different frequencies on which our signals are sent. We might get a signal but not know it because we think differently from the other species. The possibilities are endless. We would need to develop new technologies that will allow us interstellar travel and then we might have some luck of f inding other extraterrestrial species. Scientific theories do a fantastic job of explaining how the Universe was created and how life could form on other planets as well. New scientific breakthroughs occur daily and they help explain things better. Soon these theories will not just be theories.
Me. I am a believer in the extraterrestrial life, and I am an atheist. Being raised by a family that does not believe in any supreme being has influenced me, but I did ask myself the question, is there such being. I went through a period that I believed in God, and now I do not. I wanted logical answers instead of just being faithful. Religion answered my questions with miracles, on the other hand, science answered my questions with evidence. I know that my belief in aliens is based on theories that have not yet been proven, but I would rather believe in them instead of religious writings because the scientists today are actively seeking for the answer instead of taking the words of those who wrote The Bible, The Qur’an or other religious texts. I do not know much about physics, but the scientific explanation of the Big Bang sounds pretty accurate to me. A singularity if infinite mass and infinite density collapses and creates the Big Bang. I find this theory to be true because other space objects have similar faiths. The stars. If they are big enough at some point they burn through their hydrogen and helium and they start fusing heavier elements. This causes them to expand and collapse. Which later creates a supernova or a black hole. Something similar happened before the Big Bang but it was so massive that it created the whole Universe. As we know know time is not a constant. It is really hard to imagine and explain but time does not look like an arrow. It does not have a beginning like most think. This makes me question if there was a God that created everything. I do not believe that there was such God. Thinking about time and how it runs differently in other parts of the Universe makes scientists and me believe that we might not live with aliens at the same time. They might have lived before us, or they might live long after us. The large distance and the pretty calm neighbourhood in which we live in also contribute for not hearing from aliens. Our neighbourhood is pretty calm and has few star compared to other places in our galaxy. This makes it nearly impossible to reach these places with our current technology. Not only that but maybe our technologies are not sophisticated enough, or too sophisticated for other beings to detect them. Maybe we are not intelligent life forms compared to others and that is why the extraterrestrial beings have not communicated with us. There are endless possibilities. Obviously I do not believe in all the religious explanations because I am not religious. Also the quote “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” by Epicurus entirely summarizes my thoughts. Not only the miracles that have been used to explain me my questions are not compelling enough for me but what is happening in the world makes me not believe in God. All the misery, suffering, and inequality makes me an atheist. Not knowing does not mean that it does not exist. It goes for aliens as well. The theories and scientific proof that I have so far seen makes me believe that there must be other life forms other than us on a different planet.
There are two sides of the argument and only one answer. No one knows the answer yet, but in my opinion, yes, there are aliens. Religion explains the creation of the world with miracle sand myths. The theists believe that God caused the Big Bang. That that is how created the universe. There is no evidence of that. It is only the believe. Science tries to answer that by giving us theories tied to the knowledge we have acquired so far in our history. The Neighbourhood theory, the significant distances, time, technologies and many more give logical explanations for why aliens must exist, but we have not found any evidence about it. They do exist, and it is just matter of time till we find them.
Expat Bulgarian Mum 