What would you think if definitive proof of alien life emerged? Would it consign all religious thought to, as Mark Twain once predicted, the fate of a stuffed ornament in museums? How would suggestive confirmation of the principles of uniformity and plenitude - that if life can form on Earth it can form anywhere and thus will for everywhere - mix with confirmation of the principle of mediocrity (nothing special about humans)? Would mediocrity impact humans relation with technology and would plenitude turn science skyward?
Disclosure Day (2026), Spielberg: https://youtu.be/icDuEHSxE-w?si=jKBowVzx1K6IggNh
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Allan Kardec (born Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail) is the French educator who founded and codified Spiritism (Espiritismo/Kardecism) in the 19th century. His teachings combine the communication with spirits, reincarnation, and Christian morality into a structured philosophy intended to align faith with reason.
Poppa, plenty of scientists proclaim religious conviction. So my atheism or my bet that alien life exists are a) unrelated, really, but b) science alone won't answer such foundational questions. Or, at least, is insufficient. Science does demand material causation as prime evidence, so for me that helps with atheism, but it's the secularism part that is most dear to my heart. I don't want religious authority near social power.
I am not a cosmologists so not much help with your universe question. We live in a Universe. Universes plural is a neat fictional device to permit loose story telling immune to contradictions (more fantasy than Sci-Fi), but in physics I think of universes as a mathematical device to smooth over gaps in theory and evidence. But science has a fine tradition of instrumentalism in theory. What we now call quarks used to be called strangeness, for instance. Dark matter might go the same way.
The mathematics currently allows for the fact that there could be multiple universes, potentially unlimited numbers of them. Additionally, there are most likely to be at least 14 dimensions in our universe, though we can only detect 4 of them, and no amount of science over the thousands of years has detected more than this. What exists in the other 10 dimensions? We have some insight but can never know through science alone.
There is so much we don't know about the universe, and additionally so much we will never know because it is so vast. We can look at objects far away, but those objects we see today are no longer there as that is what they looked like when light left them billions of years ago. Could there be other intelligent lifeforms? Possibly, but it's also very possible that you need to build an entire universe to get intelligent life on one planet. Our own planet had to have several resets to get to where we are now with dominant mammals, leading to humans. If they didn't happen we wouldn't be here today.
4 universes Finny....what the chances of the Eels leading in any of those ......hmmm? 14 could get us in the top 4 LOL
One day we will probably pick up a signal from aliens and we spend 20 years decoding it and finally a translation is achieved and it says "don't do X". We then realize that civilization wiped itself out doing X and we have been doing X for ages. Ding dong the wicked witch is calling.
I saw it, went in with no expectatations (and I do follow the topic) and enjoyed it. There are numerous plot holes in there but overall I enjoyed it as a movie. It's not meant for people like me, it's for the uninitiated to at least start thinking about the topic. I think the disclosure movement has passed further than when this movie was made 2 years ago, so for many, it's a bit underwhelming.
There is a lot more than the nuts and bolts and little green men, but that is how they are approaching it as it's the easiest for people to understand. There are many layers to the onion. Jacques Vallee has a very different take on it than most, and from a scientific point of view, the number of sightings are too numerous for the phenomenon to be extraterrestrial, but rather home grown. It all ties into the paranormal, but it's easier to announce it as ET's and craft than the spooky shit from the X-files.
James Lacatski from the DIA (now retired) has confirmed that they recovered a NHI craft, were able to get inside of it and he personally was in it. This was cleared by DOPSR and covered in his book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon. Up until 2017, there was a denial that any of this was real. But that is now pivoted to a slow drip disclosure that it is real, and they don't know what it is. So for me, something external is forcing this, and who knows what that is. It might all be a massive psyop for all I know.
Brinfbacksemi, I've only followed the story you outline through a colleague. He is a believer. Cover up etc. he is otherwise sane so I let him speak his mind about it. He asked me questions which I remind him assume the burden is mine to prove a negative when the burden is his to prove the positive! Recall Hume's principle that a miraculous claim warrants an extremely high degree of evidence.
Sometimes conspiracies are right. Tobacco companies knew their product caused cancer. Merck knew Grunethal was not being truthful about Thalidomide. Just because UFO cover ups is a conspiracy theory, that's insufficient to dismiss it. My question to my colleague, which he has given zero satisfactory answer to, is why these claims are emanating almost exclusively from US mostly military sources? I simply don't trust these US sources. Why are these claims not more widespread? It's almost like the yanks are saying the aliens chose good old u s of stupid a to visit. So I'd love an answer do what I call the "over localization" problem.
PS: I still think alien life exists even if UFO's have not visited
Daz, I like what Carl Sagan said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The Sagan Standard seems almost identical to Hume's reasoning.
Who gets to decide what is and isn't an extraordinary claim? I'm sure Sagan and the people who quote him have a convenient answer to that one.
Great question, Pou. Often it's obvious. Compare these claims. I saw a dog at the park (ordinary claim). I saw an alien riding a dragon at the park (extraordinary claim).
I suppose mainstream science is the guide but not the Pope nor infallible. As we discover new things and broaden our understandings the bar for claims might change.
Who knows? A thousand years from now aliens in the park might be an ordinary claim. But not today.
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