At least religious people have an excuse because their belief comes from a place of suffering, no one who thinks these sci-fi fantasy concepts are real is suffering, these beliefs come from a place of extreme comfort, nobody who believes in aliens is from the global south, how many times do liars need to stand in front of governments and say “aliens are real” for there to be some kind of explicit denouncement from atheists for these absolutely non-atheistic beliefs that get a pass because they are sci-fi. PURGE THE NERDS!

  • edge [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Aliens are almost definitely real. There are so many planets out there that there’s no way life only happened once.

    But aliens almost definitely haven’t been to Earth. Space is incredibly big and it’s basically physically impossible to traverse between stars in a reasonable timeframe. We have no actual proof of their existence, just probability pointing towards yes.

    • AndJusticeForAll [none/use name]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Alien aren't real. It's a coping mechanism for atheists to think the universe isn't hostile to them or life itself.

    • FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      2 months ago

      Hey I get it, but it’s plain unscientific to say “almost definitely” and “there’s no way” in the same breath.

      • Darth_Reagan [they/them, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Aliens existing is different than Aliens having visited Earth. There are sooooo many planets, is it unthinkable to imagine life developing on more than one planet?

        • RION [she/her]
          ·
          2 months ago

          I think it's more of a semantic issue. "No way" implies certainty which we can't have in this situation, just like you can't say for certain that aliens are 100% real, just very likely real in some fashion

        • FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          2 months ago

          Yeah but that’s not how probability works. I’m sure whatever model of the universe you’re using approaches certainty for aliens. It is indeed a big, big universe out there. But that doesn’t make it so. However unlikely it is entirely possible earth is the only life harboring planet in the entire universe. We have one observable example of life in the whole cosmos.

          • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            Yeah but that’s not how probability works

            If we're going to be pedantic with terminology, the gap between "almost definitely" and the negation is impossible is actually quite small. In probability theory "almost definitely" and "almost surely" refer to events with probability 1, and while their negations are not (necessarily) impossible, they represent sets of measure 0.

            Anyway, the language you repelied to is very slightly sloppy, there's nothing "unscientific" or "scientific" about it.

            • FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
              ·
              2 months ago

              Cool. If your model is almost certain that alien life exists, then who am I to question it? I’m just some dude with a different model.

              • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
                ·
                2 months ago

                I've said nothing about models or aliens, just pointing out some facts about probability theory, since we're being extremely pedantic with language apparently. Idk why it matters that someone equated A occurs almost definitely with not(A) = nullset, but it doesn't matter that the counter in this thread is "we can determine blueshifted signals from 13 billion light years perfectly" lol

    • readoncontradiction [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Joe Biden has found no evidence of election fraud in our solar system, there are conditions in America that are less harsh than places where Biden exists on Twitter that definitely could support the khive if they got there. We have found no signals or Biden spheres or anything to suggest that there is life within the visible the White House. All the theories like the Biden paradox, great cornpop, dark brandon hypothesis. Where is the evidence to suggest any of them are correct? From the liberal perspective biden is the only life out there, and third party is barbaric.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        We have found no signals or dyson spheres or anything to suggest that there is life within the visible universe.

        No electronic transmissions and no [thing sci-fi authors made up] is not a good argument against space amoebas existing somewhere

      • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        We have found no signals or dyson spheres or anything to suggest that there is life within the visible universe.

        How good do you think our detectors are? Lol.

          • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            It may be noticeable, it wouldn't be noticeable to a civilization of our current level of development. Even stuff as basic as "is a planet at a nearby system terrestrial or rocky" is challenging, the idea we're able to reliably say that systems even in our local group don't possess a certain structure, or dismiss coherent signals for the entire visible universe is laughable.

      • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        We understand how life came to be on Earth, and that the mechanics of such are mundane enough to reasonably occur elsewhere in the universe, and that's only with the form of life we're familiar with and ruling out any other possible forms of life that might use entirely different chemical processes than we do.

        In a functionally infinite universe, the odds that those same circumstances repeat somewhere is guaranteed. Whether that life is intelligent or not is anyone's guess, but it exists.

        • Abracadaniel [he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          hell, the cosmos might very well be infinite in size. if that is the case (big if), then somewhere very far away the initial conditions and chaotic dynamics of gravity repeated and a planet practically identical to earth has formed and beings indistinguishable from humans evolved. because it's infinite, this'd be repeated infinite times, but they'd be all unfathomably far apart from each other, on average.

          They'd all be well beyond the range of the observable universe, impossible to reach due to expansion of space, and not "real" in any practical sense.

          In this way, there very well may be "parallel" universes. There's also the quantum "many worlds" version of parallel universes but I think that one's been touched on enough by pop culture, I don't feel like explaining it.

    • stigsbandit34z [they/them]
      ·
      2 months ago

      💯plus a lot of the uncertainty around it is humans thinking they’re extremely special

  • Vampire [any]
    ·
    2 months ago

    nobody who believes in aliens is from the global south

    wtf

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Half of the Chinese population believes in UFOs, including China's former foreign minister, Sun Shili. Some of the most infamous sightings in history occurred in Brazil and Zimbabwe. The former president of Kalmykia (part of the Russian Federation), Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, believes in aliens and claims to have been abducted.

        • TankieTanuki [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          For sure. I'd have to look up the specific cases though. The Dyatlov Pass incident is the only one I can remember off the top of my head.

          Edit: Also the Salyut-7 cosmonauts' "angels".

          • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]
            ·
            2 months ago

            If they had interest, then there's the Second World right there, which at least gets rid of this tired trope that only Westerners think of UFOs. I'd at least like to see other prosaic explanations outside that vein of thinking like: "Maybe both the Americans and Soviet citizens saw their respective country's secret Cold War military projects and called them UFOs."

      • TankieTanuki [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        That chart uses data from an English-speaking US-based org. Chinese people are not going to call them to report a sighting; they would report it to one of the several Chinese orgs.

        “[I]t’s worth mentioning that the NUFORC is an American agency (“N” stands for “National”). They make an effort to record international sightings (phone banks staffed 24/7), but I’d guess that sightings in the USA are still over-represented. Honestly, I’d bet that the NUFORC being based in Seattle is the main reason we see so many more sightings in the States.

      • Vampire [any]
        ·
        2 months ago

        ask your friends if they believe in aliens

        "nobody who believes in aliens is from the global south" is one of the wildest sentences I've read in a while

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Yeah but Posadas, for instance, had most of his following in Latin America.

      • dannoffs [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        No, most recorded reports of UFO sightings are from the imperial core.

  • Balefirex [he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    There are 1 billion planets for every grain of sand on earth.

    Believing Earth is singularly unique in having life is closer to a religious belief than the negative.

    • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Believing Earth is singularly unique in having life is closer to a religious belief than the negative.

      It irks me that those who insist on it as a dogmatic tenant of atheism speak with the zeal of a latter 16th century Roman Inquisitor.

    • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      ·
      2 months ago

      I would not be surprised in any way if life similar to earth existed, exists, or will exist along the exceedingly large time frames and scale of ‘every planet’. Aliens as theorized by any earth based life form I have any familiarity with is rooted in the same exact baseless bullshit that religion is.

      • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        A good reason to doubt any supposed higher power is how anthropomorphized the being is, especially if they strongly mirror the concerns and the attitudes of believers. It always makes me suspicious when I see something that is so obviously rooted in a specific historical context that is taken by some as representing a universal truth. You could make a similar argument with UFOs being rooted in the context of the Cold War, especially given the experiences of contactless who said these higher powers were primarily concerned with the threat of nuclear war and environmental (read non climate concerned) degradation.

    • FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      2 months ago

      I think so. A lot of people want there to be aliens because universe big and stuff.

      I don’t want them to be real because I want to be a very special boy.

  • RION [she/her]
    ·
    2 months ago

    what exactly have UFO cranks done to you? you hold more hate in your heart for them than religious people despite the immense harm the latter (mostly Christians) have caused because... they're a little silly? they haven't suffered enough?

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      They are annoying and self assured. Like, no man. I don't care about what some retired general who cares testified in front of a bunch of boomer congressmen about "something being out there" then not giving any sources because they're "confidential." Honestly, anyone who is so self assured that god or aliens do or don't exist annoy me because I can't find the energy to care about far fetched things one way or another, unless I'm forced to sit through church. X-Files is fun to watch because things actually happens. This is the real world. Nothing good or interesting ever happens.

      And this is coming from someone who is a believer in aliens and some UFOs.

  • Aradina [She/They]@lemmy.ml
    ·
    2 months ago

    If you existed before the earth had been mapped you'd be denying there were other continents. Deeply silly position to hold, literally requires you to lack knowledge.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    ·
    2 months ago

    I am certain multiple dimensions exist.

    For instance, there's at least three spatial dimensions. Quite possibly even a time dimension!

    😜

  • buckykat [none/use name]
    ·
    2 months ago

    A lot of the ancient aliens shit specifically comes from guys thinking that brown people can't build cool stuff

  • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
    ·
    2 months ago

    nobody who believes in aliens is from the global south

    You would be surprised. Most people when asked if aliens exist would go "probably idk".