Ain't you heard? There's flowing water on Mars!

[CindySue22]

Pretty big news, I think, although it, of course, has nothing to do with Iraq.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/12/06/mars.water.ap/

[quatoria]

How is this political? Or is it just that this is the only forum you know?

[CindySue22]

How is this political? Or is it just that this is the only forum you know?

Sorry, wasn't trying to make waves (LOL), just thought it was interesting. Still, NASA is a political, as well as scientific orginazation, so maybe it does belong here?

[Bill Hiles]

Hmmm... need some way to get some of that water. Bottle it up. Sell it at Walmart. Make a fortune.

[freethinker]

You could say it's religious. If there's water then that could mean Levins experement in the 70s wasn't a false posative and there really is life on Mars. Some religious groups might have to rethink their position if that's the case.

[Menzo]

There will always be a way to rationalize life on another planet, as long as it's not smart enough to be offended by the rationalization.

Amoebic life on Mars doesn't (or shouldn't) challenge any religious beliefs.

[Flowers]

If there's water then that could mean Levins experement in the 70s wasn't a false posative and there really is life on Mars.


Let's hope so Bowie, because, There's bugger all down here on Earth!

[shift6]

There will always be a way to rationalize life on another planet, as long as it's not smart enough to be offended by the rationalization.

Amoebic life on Mars doesn't (or shouldn't) challenge any religious beliefs.
It's true that most extra-terrestrial life can be rationalized away, but any intelligent life outside of earth will cause major shake-ups. When people have asked me what objective science would disprove my own beliefs, extra-terrestrial intelligent life has always been one of the answers.

[Midnight Son]

Did Jesus say there was wine on mars, or what?

[noun]

Nah. Any intelligent extra-terrestrial life would simply be another part of God's creation in need of learning about Christ their savior. It would cause the biggest evangelism movement in recorded history.

[Midnight Son]

Nah. Any intelligent extra-terrestrial life would simply be another part of God's creation in need of learning about Christ their savior. It would cause the biggest evangelism movement in recorded history.

Good, they can leave us the fuck alone and bother aliens.

[Charles]

Good, they can leave us the fuck alone and bother aliens.


If only!

[drewl]

"Now what we need is an argon crystal laser so we can spread the word of Jesus throughout the galaxy"

[shift6]

Nah. Any intelligent extra-terrestrial life would simply be another part of God's creation in need of learning about Christ their savior. It would cause the biggest evangelism movement in recorded history.
To finally turn this into a P&R thread ;) that's actually exactly the problem. Christian Theology teaches that the Messiah/Christ was both God and human united together in one. The unique duality who was qualified to act as mediator between the perfection of God and the sin of man. This means that any other beings, including angels and intelligent extra-terrestrial life, would not have received any form of reconciliation through the Messiah.

Therefore, the theologian asks, since the Bible says only God is holy, meaning any intelligent extra-terrestrials are fallen in some sense, but Christ was God-man and not God-man-alien; how shall those aliens be reconciled to God? To relate to your final sentence above: how would an alien be evangelized?

[Woolen Horde]

To relate to your final sentence above: how would an alien be evangelized?

Sprinkle them with Holy Water. Duh.

[Kalle]

To finally turn this into a P&R thread ;) that's actually exactly the problem. Christian Theology teaches that the Messiah/Christ was both God and human united together in one. The unique duality who was qualified to act as mediator between the perfection of God and the sin of man. This means that any other beings, including angels and intelligent extra-terrestrial life, would not have received any form of reconciliation through the Messiah.

Therefore, the theologian asks, since the Bible says only God is holy, meaning any intelligent extra-terrestrials are fallen in some sense, but Christ was God-man and not God-man-alien; how shall those aliens be reconciled to God? To relate to your final sentence above: how would an alien be evangelized?

I predict someone will feel quite up to the task of writing new scripture and setting up a church that covers all that. Under "divine inspiration", obviously. Humans are adaptable. We're also petty, territorial and don't trust humans with a different skin colour or culture so Aliens will have all our instincts flaring. Aliens could bring us puppies, proof of god and salvation in one neat little package and we'd still nuke them.

[Moore]

Sprinkle them with Holy FIRE. Duh.

Fixed. If we ever meet any life that is smart enough to suffer, I pity it, because the fundies (of all the popular religions) will want it dead dead dead. And they are always the ones aiming the guns and such.

[freethinker]

Anyone got any predictions? I think they'll find some rock eating pond scum as soon as they send a good enough probe.

This could deal a serious blow to religious types. It would mean that the origin of life was nothing special. The rest can be explained by evolution. It puts a spanner in the "God in the gaps" strategy of some christians where they argue that if science can't explain it yet, God must've done it.

[Lunch of Kong]

This could deal a serious blow to religious types.

I think it would only be a blow to religious literalists. You know, the folks who believe the Earth is 6000 years old. To those who view religious texts as largely allegorical, this does not conflict with anything God may have done.

For example, I know a hardcore Christian couple who are scientists (one an astronomer, his wife a physicist). In their belief system, dark matter, neutrinos, and so on are still part of God's heavenly design.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

"God is pulling the super-strings" ...

For some reason, the idea of über-Christian (or actually, even vaguely Christian) scientists rubs me the wrong way. If you leave room for unsubstantiated faith in your perception of reality, you're simply not being objective enough. How can you be a physicist, a chemist or even a mathematician or biologist and believe that Jesus walked on water, changed water into wine and rose from the grave three days after his death? How can you believe in immaculate conception, which is pretty damn integral part of Christian faith? How can you double-think so thoroughly?

[shift6]

I am a mathematician. My answer is: faith like a mustard seed.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Tiny and yellow?

[Menzo]

"God is pulling the super-strings" ...

For some reason, the idea of über-Christian (or actually, even vaguely Christian) scientists rubs me the wrong way. If you leave room for unsubstantiated faith in your perception of reality, you're simply not being objective enough. How can you be a physicist, a chemist or even a mathematician or biologist and believe that Jesus walked on water, changed water into wine and rose from the grave three days after his death? How can you believe in immaculate conception, which is pretty damn integral part of Christian faith? How can you double-think so thoroughly?

That's easy. Miracles.

I'm not religious at all, but I can definitely see how one could be religious and scientific at the same time. A miracle exists outside the bounds of known science. Also, you could believe that God reveals the parts of his creation that he wants mankind to know about and no others. That we know about gravity is because God wants us to know about gravity. That we don't know how Jesus turned water into wine is because God does not want us to know.

[mouselock]

If you leave room for unsubstantiated faith in your perception of reality, you're simply not being objective enough. How can you be a physicist, a chemist or even a mathematician or biologist and believe that Jesus walked on water, changed water into wine and rose from the grave three days after his death?

How do you go from a behind-the-scenes meta-explanation to "Jesus walked on water?" in literality.

As for changing water into wine, fuck, give me a concentrate of the proper tannins in compact enough form and I can do that trick.

But really, we've done this discussion before. There are multiple ways for science and faith to coexist. Not all of them involve schizophrenia or other mental disorders.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

Also, you could believe that God reveals the parts of his creation that he wants mankind to know about and no others. That we know about gravity is because God wants us to know about gravity. That we don't know how Jesus turned water into wine is because God does not want us to know.
Problem there is that if you accept that God's will defines what you are able to learn and/or discover and accept that God occasionally interferes with the world, causing a miracle to happen, statistical verification of research grows a little hairy. I'm not saying that researchers routinely smooth over statistical exceptions by calling their results miraculous, but that Christianity basically disproves impericism. If God wants something to happen, it can happen. Thus, there is no such thing as certainty.

But really, we've done this discussion before. There are multiple ways for science and faith to coexist. Not all of them involve schizophrenia or other mental disorders.
I agree. And that's the only agreement we'll ever come to in a discussion like that anyway. However, I still think it is strange that logics and religion can walk hand in hand like that. Once you know enough about physics, for instance, and you're starting to approach the bounds of our knowledge, is it comfortable to think that X = God, rather than "Gee, I just don't have any idea of what's going on here"?

[Menzo]

Thus, there is no such thing as certainty.



Well, yeah, if you're searching for certainty. However, if you've decided that the only certainty is God, then you're golden, and that's totally fine with me.

[shift6]

Tiny and yellow?
Close. Try: Little. Yellow. Different.

[AlanT]

Fixed. If we ever meet any life that is smart enough to suffer, I pity it, because the fundies (of all the popular religions) will want it dead dead dead. And they are always the ones aiming the guns and such.
If it's intelligent life that came to visit us, I wouldn't worry about it. It'll have mastered numerous technologies which will no doubt be able to turn the Earth into smouldering embers. Now, if we're the ones who go calling, then yeah, your point stands.

[mouselock]

Once you know enough about physics, for instance, and you're starting to approach the bounds of our knowledge, is it comfortable to think that X = God, rather than "Gee, I just don't have any idea of what's going on here"?

I don't know that it's necessarily just that it's comforting. Physics is a wondrous, wondrous beast. The simple elegance with which a few simple equations and more than a handful of universal constants seems to derive everything is, well, stupdendous. Especially when you consider that if this constant was tweaked this way, or that constant was tweaked that way, you get nothing at all like what we have now.

Frankly, I can't imagine how you could stare full-on into the face of physics and see a small number of basic interactions and systems that open up into everything we know in the entire universe, and not instantly wonder what's behind it all. If it's as simple as a set of equations, then how the hell did those equations get set up? If we believe the most fundamental theory out there, then where did those building blocks come from? It seems pretty clear at this point that the universe isn't infinitely divisible; quantum mechanics keeps getting broken down but only into smaller and smaller quanta, which isn't at all the same thing as a continuum. Something, somewhere, had to make all the elementary bits that form the universe, be it energy or probability waves or what have you.

How you could not see the face of some "higher power" in that is, frankly, beyond my belief. Now whether it's the Catholic God, or Islam's Allah, or Buddah, or a giant turtle carrying around 4 columns (well, okay, it's probably not that so much), or some sort of projected collective consciousness from Ryzom 7 is pretty inscrutible. After that, you're left with the same question as everyone else who's not a scientist and follows some sort of religion: Which of these resonates most closely with my worldview.

But I just don't get this innate idea that science and religion ought to mix like oil and water. If you dig deep enough, my "objective" scientific reality comes down to the confluence of probability distributions that make up, well, everything. That's pretty fucking ephemeral, if you ask me, and not at all objective. I don't, however, tend to explain the rain falling as God weeping for our sins. That doesn't mean I don't believe in God (or a God at least), but rather the one I believe in is incredibly more subtle than the Sunday school caricatures that generally get tossed around in the public view.

[Sebmolo]

Well put. I think there's a difference between religious experience and religion. Religious experience is accessible to anyone, anywhere and, for me, is just a transcendent sense of how absolutely fucking extraordinary the world is. Religion is all the 'Shem son of Habbeth begat Slobsy and by the way everyone but you is going to MOTHERFUCKING HELL" stuff.

Religion is the RIAA, religious experience is the best song you've ever heard.

[bigdruid]

Mouselock, it's the fundamental difference between how religion and science treat the unknowable.

Science, when faced with the unknowable, refuses to conjecture - it's literally meaningless from a scientific standpoint to even discuss an unanswerable question, as your very answer is inherently unscientific (since it makes no testable predictions).

Religion is all about the unknowable. And every time Religion tries to extend its reach into the knowable, it gets its ass kicked by Science, because as it turns out, Science is very very good at ferreting out knowledge.

Trying to combine the two *is* like mixing oil and water - there's in impermeable boundary between the two. That doesn't mean they can't coexist side-by-side, and that a reasonable person can't be both scientific, and religious - but they fundamentally deal with different things.

[BrewersDroop]

If it's as simple as a set of equations, then how the hell did those equations get set up?

While I agree that physics is awe inspiring, bear in mind that the mathematical equations are only descriptive. A mathematical description should not be mistaken for the thing itself.

[Aeon221]

I find it interesting that the one epistemologist I've met says that science in its early stages was greatly assisted by the orderly world view promoted by the Judeo-Christian system. Apparently, being able to take as a premise that God will make sure that things will happen the same way every time is handy.

Or something along those lines. It was a 8am logic class and I was concerned with my drool puddle.

[shift6]

While I agree that physics is awe inspiring, bear in mind that the mathematical equations are only descriptive. A mathematical description should not be mistaken for the thing itself.
You may not know what mouselock does for a living, but I'd say he's more than aware of this.

[Kalle]

How you could not see the face of some "higher power" in that is, frankly, beyond my belief.

Wondering what's behind it all is just basic scientific curiosity. Deciding that what's behind it all has to be a deity is just wishful thinking. "Where did the building blocks come from" is a question that just begs the question of what made up the force that made the building blocks, and so on into infinity. Why people can't accept the universe for what it is without looking for some sort of purpose to it all is, frankly, beyond my belief. We exist, there doesn't have to be a reason. And I'm ok with that.

[WarrenM]

Kalle

That's something that annoys me about religious explanations. We're supposed to accept that God created everything but you can never ask where God came from. You're told to accept God at face value.

[Charles]

Wondering what's behind it all is just basic scientific curiosity. Deciding that what's behind it all has to be a deity is just wishful thinking. "Where did the building blocks come from" is a question that just begs the question of what made up the force that made the building blocks, and so on into infinity. Why people can't accept the universe for what it is without looking for some sort of purpose to it all is, frankly, beyond my belief. We exist, there doesn't have to be a reason. And I'm ok with that.

This is often my view too. It's interesting to consider the options of "where everything came from" but the simple answer is that there cannot be a root. To say there is ever a root is to say that something has always existed. As EpicBoy said, even if our universe came from god's mind, then where did he come from? And if he's always been there, why can't that be true of our universe without him?

Curiosity is what keeps our interest going in to the beginnings of things, and I think it's that same curiosity that makes us unable to accept the idea that there may simply be no beginning at all.

[JeffL]

Hard core Ph.D. scientist and Christian here.

Nowhere have I ever read anything in the Bible that says or implies the earth and humans are all that there is in the universe. The Bible was given to man for the purpose of teaching man. Christ came as a man because he was dealing with man. It wouldn't bother me a bit if Christ came to Shazbot as a Shazbottian electrical pulse if that was what was needed.

One of the things you learn over the years as a scientist is just how laughably little we know and understand, how arrogant we are in thinking we know it all, like an ant that discovers that the dirt from the anthill and the dirt on top of the anthill came from the same place and Eureka! we know everything we need to understand about the universe. Our descriptive equations of the "infinite" nature of the universe and the concepts of before the big bang and where did everything originate, etc., our ability of our minds to grasp the concepts of 10 or more dimensions necessary to explain things today, and so on only result in understanding how limited our knowledge is, the deeper you get into the science.

That's not an argument for a belief in God, by the way. Just never as a scientist (counting school and career, around 30 years) run into anything that shook my faith or belief.

[Rollory]

This could deal a serious blow to religious types.

No, it really wouldn't. Not even the literalists.

Some would find ways to fit it into their preconceived notions. Some would simply deny it is true at all.

[Supersport]

I was watching this thing on Naked Science last night about Earth's inner core and how the exterior mantle is the piece responsible for generating our magnetic field thus keeping those nasty solar winds away from our atmosphere.

Then they talked about how Mars has a solid core and no magnetic field. This means Mars gets pelted with tons of radiation from the sun.

This leads to the question. Even if there is running water, would it be possible to terraform Mars. Would it even be worthwhile? The radiation from the sun would kill pretty much anything right?

[LesJarvis]

One of the things you learn over the years as a scientist is just how laughably little we know and understand, how arrogant we are in thinking we know it all, like an ant that discovers that the dirt from the anthill and the dirt on top of the anthill came from the same place and Eureka!

But isn't religion the truly arrogant view? I'm a hard agnostic/materialist, and I will freely admit to not knowing the nature of the universe, and I'm well aware that science can't currently (and may never) offer an answer to whatever ultimate question we can come up with. Religion, on the other hand, claims not only to know the answers, but also provides a convenient, anthropomorphized narrative to go along with it. To me that is the absolute height of arrogance.

And, just to be clear here, I'm only speaking philosphically. There are many arrogant scientists, and many humble religious people in the world.

[Saxman_72]

How you could not see the face of some "higher power" in that is, frankly, beyond my belief.
This what baffles me. Science has shown that we've gotten to where we are through evolution - life started off as something incredibly simple and evolved into something much more complex. It seems to be a pretty logical and sensible pattern.

So, to say that the origin - the very beginning of life as we know it - actually started off by something so incredibly complex as God seems unfathomable to me. It just begs the question all over again as to where this God came from.

So either life began with really simple building blocks and evolution took its course, or this highly complex supreme being just started it all through his/her divine will. The choice, to me, of which one seems most likely given the scientific body of evidence we have available to us, is a no-brainer.

[Sidd_Budd]

But isn't religion the truly arrogant view? I'm a hard agnostic/materialist, and I will freely admit to not knowing the nature of the universe, and I'm well aware that science can't currently (and may never) offer an answer to whatever ultimate question we can come up with. Religion, on the other hand, claims not only to know the answers, but also provides a convenient, anthropomorphized narrative to go along with it. To me that is the absolute height of arrogance.
Hardcore fundamentalists of any religious faith may be arrogant, but I don't know if religion is inherently any more arrogant than science. I think you believe that science doesn't offer answers, and religion claims to. As practiced, however, many scientists *do* offer answers. They may not have an answer to ultimate questions, but they do offer solutions to many practical concerns -- for example, which steel design process is more efficient, or which drug of a group of ten is safest & most effective. Some faiths answer some ultimate questions, but don't delve too deeply into others. For example, there are both Jewish and Islamic traditions that don't speculate on the mystical nature of God, because He's beyond any human conception. Similarly, many Jewish traditions have little or nothing to say about an afterlife. Both religion and science can provide answers for some areas, while acknowledging the limits of current understanding in others.

The difference, of course, is science allows for the answers changing over time, as new evidence is gathered, and more complete theories are developed. Some faiths do give the impression that the answers were laid down in the past, and aren't open to revision. I agree that those seem arrogant. But other faiths allow for new interpretation; there are plenty of interpretations of God that involve everchanging revelation in new forms and in new ways (see Hinduism, for example). Nonfundamental Christians believe that the Bible was created by nonperfect humans at a certain historical time period, but they were attempting to document glimpses of a eternal, perfect God. In this view, you use the Bible as a set of guidelines, but in dialogue with other committed folks, there may be new interpretations that work in new time periods with new understandings (for example, the increasing number of Christian churches who accept gay and lesbian folks).

The more I study the principles underlying both science and faith, the more reasons I have to be humble rather than arrogant. It's a shame that people committed to one view often see the other side as arrogant and unflexible. It seems like extreme fundamentalists (of both science and religion) are often the loudest, but I believe both camps are mischaracterized by focusing just on the most visible examples.

[Sidd_Budd]

So either life began with really simple building blocks and evolution took its course, or this highly complex supreme being just started it all through his/her divine will.
Or, ten thousand years from now, assuming we don't blow up the world or render the environment unliveable, we may realize that we were going about framing this question in the wrong way, and neither answer really fits.

The choice, to me, of which one seems most likely given the scientific body of evidence we have available to us, is a no-brainer.
This is a very common answer given by my scientifically-minded friends, but there's no more evidence against divine will than there is for divine will. As other people have pointed out, nonmaterial forces that are not capable of empirical testing simply can't be explored using the scientific method.

You can argue that since science has given us more useful (i.e., logical and empirically repeatable) theories in some areas that were once answered by religion, it will continue to do so in the future until there's nothing left for religion to explain. But that itself is an unverifiable hypothesis, since we can't make observations forever, so we can't demonstrate it empirically. This isn't a logically valid argument either; Hume pointed out the logical problems with using the past to predict the future 250 years ago.

Don't get me wrong -- anyone who ignores the scientific evidence we do have is showing errors in critical thinking. But when we get to the end of what we do know, and speculate what's behind it, I think any answer -- rational or spiritual -- demands a leap of faith (or use of [nonprovable] inductive logic, if you are philosophically minded).

[JeffL]

But isn't religion the truly arrogant view? I'm a hard agnostic/materialist, and I will freely admit to not knowing the nature of the universe, and I'm well aware that science can't currently (and may never) offer an answer to whatever ultimate question we can come up with. Religion, on the other hand, claims not only to know the answers, but also provides a convenient, anthropomorphized narrative to go along with it. To me that is the absolute height of arrogance.

And, just to be clear here, I'm only speaking philosphically. There are many arrogant scientists, and many humble religious people in the world.

That's a valid question, certainly when you look at religions today and what many have become.

Here's the basic tenet of Christianity: nobody is perfect, there's not a magic line of bad at which if you do one less bad thing you're OK, but one more bad thing and you're not OK, i.e. we vary as humans but no one is good enough to be ablt to point fingers at someone else as "worse." God provided a path in which imperfect humans could be resolved, which was via Christ. None of us can completely understand God or Christ while living here on earth - thus so much of the writings talking about how we can only see things and God imperfectly while here on earth, like the reflections on a blurry mirror, and how we as humans can only think as a child. We have no right to hold ourselves over anyone else, and since God is willing to forgive us we have no right to withhold forgiveness over anyone else, and anyway you should be loving your enemies just as Christ asked for forgiveness for the people who were torturing him to death.

Now, I don't want to go down the path in this thread of all the "but why does it say this?" and arguments over whether people think Christians are idiots (hint: many of us are idiots. Not because we're Christians, just because all Christians are humans and many humans are idiots.) But rather, someone who is a real Christian should be the opposite of arrogant. And someone who is a Christian certainly cannot with any Christian authority claim to be "better" or less a sinner than anyone. The basis of Christianity is that only he who has not sinned can cast the first stone - you think gays are "wrong?" Fine, but no more "wrong" than you if you ever told a lie. I.e. - this is a belief that should - should - be the antithesis of arrogant.

I mourn what so many visible and vocal people have created in terms of the image of Christianity. I wish people like my friend Jerry, who has brought homeless people into his home for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, and Bobby and Alicia, who spend all of their spare time working for free in AIDS clinics, and many, many more TRUE Christians, were more visible.

[Trashcan]

Frankly, I can't imagine how you could stare full-on into the face of physics and see a small number of basic interactions and systems that open up into everything we know in the entire universe, and not instantly wonder what's behind it all. If it's as simple as a set of equations, then how the hell did those equations get set up? If we believe the most fundamental theory out there, then where did those building blocks come from? It seems pretty clear at this point that the universe isn't infinitely divisible; quantum mechanics keeps getting broken down but only into smaller and smaller quanta, which isn't at all the same thing as a continuum. Something, somewhere, had to make all the elementary bits that form the universe, be it energy or probability waves or what have you.

How you could not see the face of some "higher power" in that is, frankly, beyond my belief. Now whether it's the Catholic God, or Islam's Allah, or Buddah, or a giant turtle carrying around 4 columns (well, okay, it's probably not that so much), or some sort of projected collective consciousness from Ryzom 7 is pretty inscrutible. After that, you're left with the same question as everyone else who's not a scientist and follows some sort of religion: Which of these resonates most closely with my worldview.
Oddly enough, among scientists, physicists are the most likely to be atheists. If you also consider that roughly 90% of the members of the NAS are atheists/agnostics then you might even come to the conclusion that the deeper ones understanding of physics, the more likely one is to profess disbelief.

*emphasis is mine.

[wildpokerman]

So does this mean global warming has gotten so bad that it's melting the ice caps on Mars?

[CindySue22]

So does this mean global warming has gotten so bad that it's melting the ice caps on Mars?

Yes, that's exactly what it means.