Fear of things not easily understood are often refuted. My thought is that he is using "religion" as a front for the fact he isn't able to fathom the idea that there are other people out there. Religion doesn't say "Sorry, but M31 has no life in it. Neither does M81, M82... ... ..." But it does say God created the heavens and the earth. If everything was made for a reason, it's stands to reason that either God had to practice and had many failed attempts before getting it right (which any religious person would respond that God is perfect and would not have failed attempts), or that the celestial objects we love so much were created for a grander purpose. If anything, religion would lead a person to believe IN life out there!
To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com From: danielh@holmesonics.com Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:42:52 +0000 Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Sigh...
It was just practice. Seventy-gazillion-trillion tries makes perfect.
When I was living in Denver, my neighbors wouldn't let their kids look through my scope after I told them how far away m31 was.
Dan Sent from my BlackBerry. Please excuse any mispelings or typos.
-----Original Message----- From: Julie Chorley <jchorley@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:49:11 To: Utah Astronomy<utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Sigh...
Well, to quote one of my favorite books.. "What a waste of space." How can anyone believe that we could be the only living beings in such a mind-bogglingly huge universe? Even from a religious standpoint, does it make sense for God to have created all this, just for us? It's not logical, no matter how you look at it.
Julie
On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 4:12 AM, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com>wrote:
I'm just back home after my talk last evening at Bryce Canyon National Park and I'm a bid saddened.
This is my 23rd year of doing monthly programs at Bryce and my favorite part has always been the interaction with the audience afterwards.
But after last evening's talk a guy came up to me saying he wanted to play devil's advocate. I told him "Great!" and asked what was on his mind.
At the end of my talks I always close with the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and use it to come up with a rough idea of how many stars there may be in our Universe and then note that with all of those stars out there made up of the same stuff as our Sun it's hard for me to imagine that we happen to be so lucky to have the only star with the only planet with life.
Well, the guy took exception to that. He was calm, collected and well spoken, but thought that since God had created only us (here on Earth) there's no reason to believe that there is life elsewhere.
We went back and forth for a minute or two and finally I said we'd just have to agree to disagree and he walked away.
My one bit of consolation was that the small crowd that had gathered around us was vocally on my side.
But it still bothers me that otherwise rational people will place religious beliefs over those of science without even giving science a chance.
Ok, time to get News out so I'll stop here. I just needed to vent.
patrick
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-- Julie Chorley _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com
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