The Huffington Post is running a story that provides a bit of comic relief from today's mundane news. Creationist Ken Ham, who recently debated Bill Nye the Science Guy over the origins of the universe, is calling for an end to the search for extraterrestrial life because aliens probably don't exist—and if they do, they're going to Hell anyway. In this story, we learn that aliens, if they exist, are doomed to Hell where not even Jesus can save them. Spock would find this to be illogical.
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Extra-terrestrial Life is Damned, Search is Futile
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(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @06:58PM
So Bill Nye has resorted to simple flame bait trolling? Sad. I enjoyed your show in the 90s dude but come on...
http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/atheist.htm [flamewarriorsguide.com]
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:04PM
Err, when did he do that?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:33PM
I'd say Ken Ham is more the troll, and Bill Nye the unfortunate individual who took the flamebait.
It's a shame, really...I thought Bill was smarter than that.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:52PM
I don't believe Ken Ham is real. He's an android programmed by a bunch of right wing devil dodgers.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @06:59PM
If it's absolutely certain that we - given that we're all going to Heaven, right - won't be meeting them in the afterlife, we should double our efforts to meet them while they're still alive.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:31PM
For certain values of "meet."
If we ever do meet any extraterrestrial life, it'll be in the form of some prokaryote buried dormant under 1000 feet of ice on some overgrown space-rock. Scientists will cheer and make a big deal about it and there will be a resurgence of alien-themed Hollywood movies even though the discovery won't affect diddly squat, because we can already play god with genetics -- and would even more so by the time we actually do find extraterrestrial life.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snow on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:45PM
Seeing another example of life -- no matter how simple -- would be a huge discovery. What if it looks exactly like life on earth? What if it uses a completely different energy cycle?
I think it's too easy to downplay the significance of even a slingle celled lifeform bring discovered outside Earth. We know so little about space that pretty much any information is new.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 23 2014, @12:54AM
The odds are astronomically high that the first (dead) lifeform that we ever encounter in outer space will be very similar to us.
Because, really, a piece of earth, sent into space when we added a picturesque crater to our landscape, is the most likely source of life within our current reach. The odds of finding one are ridiculously low, but still many orders of magnitude higher than any genuine alien "life" (and we only know how to look for life like ours anyway)
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:45AM
Similar life would be the most interesting. Life that at a quick glance is familiar but on examination uses different proteins, has a completely different means of encoding genetics and subtly different ways of metabolizing.
That is what I would expect if life got started independently somewhere else. You are likely right though, alien life is likely to be related.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:36PM
And then the scientists will find out that the bacteria are uniquely suited to producing oil or energy or something.
Uh oh.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:05PM
Seriously, if you were smart enough to be capable of exploring the universe and you came across us would you even acknowledge us?
I sure as hell would not. Humans are dumb, dangerous creatures who spend most of their time polluting their only home and fighting each other.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:23PM
Placative but wrong. Explorers are interested in nearly everything. We are interested in virii, bacteria, insects, vegetables etc.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:27PM
None of those have nuclear weapons.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:37PM
Bacteria and Virii may not be nuclear powers, but some of them have biological and chemical weapons.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:25PM
After I eat enchiladas I seem to have biological and chemical weapons ... and no one is interested in me at those times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:53AM
I'm pretty sure that if we ever discovered bacteria using nuclear weapons, researchers would be extremely interested in that.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:46PM
I don't know what a virii is, but I do know what viruses are.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:50PM
And that is "bacterium", neuter nominative singular. Now write that 100 times.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by mckwant on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:09PM
Sigh. Even if the ETLs were explorers, they're not organic. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs [wikipedia.org]
Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away. Next closest star is 6, then 7, 7.2, and 8. So, until we can go faster than, say, .3c, we're talking generational ships. I'm not saying we can extrapolate directly from science fiction, but if keeping the US Colonies in line was a problem in 1776, and the round trip was only a couple of months....
So I suspect travelers are far more likely to be autonomous Borg-y things. Or, at best, scout ships a la Voyager or the Mars Rover.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:54PM
I know there's a lot of ageism in tech but I assure you I'm not only older than age 4, but my career in programming is a multiple of that. Although that's supposedly very rare.
Also almost all my ancestors come from this central European country although I've never been there and probably never will be there. My grandfather dropped bombs on the home country from a B-17 and later B-24 which must have been weird being only 2nd or so generation American.
Culturally I live in a country where medieval views on religion and sex predominate. Being a mandatory mere 4 years behind modern civilization culture (due to light speed limitations) would be a substantial upgrade, not a real problem.
There doesn't seem to be any particular reason a generational ship or similar can't work.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mckwant on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:28PM
Look, I'm with you. Were I single and without a family, I'd go. I just don't think it's feasible.
The fastest a human has ever travelled is something like 25,000 mph, or .00004c. Doing math in my head is always dangerous, but we're not talking four years, we're talking 100,000. One way.
Even should we somehow figure out how to go 10x faster, that's still 1,000 years, or the better part of 12-15 generations. And my understanding is that there isn't anything worth going to on Alpha Centauri.
I'd be rooting for them, but betting against them.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:42PM
Generation ships don't make economic sense. That doesn't mean they don't exist, it means that you won't find a civilization that isn't centered around them that makes a practice of building them. Personally I expect that some place HAS built them, probably as large outer system mining ships that got into a political or religious argument with the central government, and took off. Given a relatively complete cultural package that means a pretty large ship.
The thing is, when a generation ship gets to a new system it won't be interested in the planets. Everybody will be used to living on the ship. What they'll do is build another ship or two, and then probably weigh anchor...unless it takes long enough to build a ship that they get used to living around a sun. Unlikely. Or SOME of them get used to living around a sun. Still unlikely, but more likely. Solar systems are relatively high in materials.
The problem with this scenario is that by the time we can build such a ship (probably another 30-60 years for a really primitive version) robotics will be so advanced that having a crew aboard won't make much sense. So that's a low probability scenario. You'll probably need 1000 races building space ships before you get one building a generation ship. Robotic explorers are a lot more likely. But then again, the cost-benefit problem arises. It takes a LONG time to go between systems at any reasonable speed (remember, you also need to slow down at the far end, so a launching laser doesn't solve the problem. Only a "star wisp" seems at all feasible for returning information within the lifetime of the launching civilization...and it depends on the launching laser starting up again as it nears the destination system. Not a reasonable bet for any human civilization. So the robot explorers aren't economic because they can't send information back quickly enough. Self reproducing explorers are even worse, as they MUST travel at a slower speed. And the messages back home come from an increasing distance, which means extra time before they are received.
FWIW, I consider generation ships more likely than self-reproducing explorers, but not because either is impossible.
Note that these arguments presume that substantial automation doesn't make it so cheap to build a generation ship that a small group could afford to do it. They also assume that there is no short-cut between systems, and that high speed collisions with interstellar dust is quite dangerous. Etc. These aren't guaranteed truths, but seem quite reasonable beliefs.
OTOH, I can imagine variant social systems that operated by segregating those with different ideologies to avoid conflict. Space colonies might well be a useful way to do this. (See colonization of Australia.) That could evolve into a system which emitted lots of generation ships as a moral way to reduce internal frictions. I have more trouble envisioning a society in which robot explorers are created as a side effect.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 23 2014, @11:16AM
"when a generation ship gets to a new system it won't be interested in the planets"
Finally, we can make an even bigger ship.
Finally, we can make another ship and get rid of the separatists.
I always thought triply redundant ships traveling side by side (ish) was a good idea for safety and when we lost one half way here it turned out to be a good idea. Of course now we need to build a 3rd one to regain redundancy.
Also its assumed for sci-fi purposes there will be exactly and precisely one ship on one route. I think far more likely is some kind of "space station" interstate like travel line with ships traveling in between the sorta motionless stations. Reaching a new star means great resources for the network and opportunities for everyone involved. You only need 1% of the population to want to become rich to staff a mere "pirate" ship that visits solar systems.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:46PM
No, what's assumed is that they'll be so far apart that it's difficult to come to one another's assistance. This is quite a reasonable assumption unless you're in orbit around the same planet. Even if you are intending to follow the same route, there aren't any route markers, and it's a VERY long distance. And if your velocities or accelerations are even slightly different, you either won't be anywhere near each other, or you'll be traveling as such different speeds that you can't make a connection. The one exception that I might make to this are a set of ships that are traveling tethered together. And I'm not sure that I'd count that as multiple ships rather than as one ship, rather as a catamaran is one boat. (I'd have said outrigger, but in the outrigger the secondary boat is so much smaller that it's not a good comparison. Do note, however, that where the sea is calm enough there is a strong tendency to "pave over" the separation between the parts of the outrigger. And a catamaran is essentially an outrigger canoe that has the deck to the outrigger made complete, and the sizes of the "two boats" made effectively the same.
All that said, I'm not making much in the way of assumptions as to what the ship would look like. There's no friction to coerce a streamlined form. It could well be a chain of habitats with one or two modules specialized for propulsion. Etc. This would make splitting the ship into chunks and building up again quite simple. My real guess is that there won't BE any hefty engines, that the desired speed will be just a bit different than whatever the general speed of fotsam is in the neighborhood. Enough different that they'll encounter it frequently, and enough the same that capturing it or mining it is practical. It is my expectation that the number of loose planets is to the number of red dwarfs as the number of red dwarfs is to the number of blue giants....or something like that. The smaller something is, the more of it there seems to be floating around the universe. These ships started out as miners, and they'll stay as miners. They just won't depend on a sun that was too distant to really care about even when they were first built. I picture them at taking several centuries to go from one star to another, or possibly not even bothering much about stars. How often do we return to the sea?
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:49PM
There may be a very simple reason for generational ships: Population growth.
We are in the very initial phase of space travel, where few selected people just stay in orbit for a few months. However, the next step is already on the horizon: Space tourism. One day there will be space stations which exist solely to attract space tourists who want to have the unique experience of space. Initially only for very wealthy people, but like with every other touristic endeavour, the cost will likely come down to a point where a larger number of people will be able to afford it (not necessarily everyone, but at least everyone with an higher-than-average income). At that point, cost saving will be a major issue, while at the same time, you'll need quite a bit of staff up there to keep the business running. And for cost reasons, part of the staff (especially the low-paid part, like people doing the cleaning) will be left in orbit as long as possible (because each transfer from/to earth will come with an inherent cost). Of course, at the same time, also the amount of supporting material (water, food, air, etc.) to be brought up from earth will be minimized, so the space hotels will become as autarkic as possible.
Ultimately this will inevitably lead to people living on space stations permanently. And as the number of people living permanently grows, so will their average income. But a holiday trip to earth will still be expensive (just as a holiday trip to space is for people on earth). But transfer between different space hotels will be relatively cheap, and therefore there will emerge a new form of business, namely space hotels for people living in space. Of course their attraction will not be just being in space (after all, the typical people visiting there will be there all the time). No, the attraction will be that it is an affordable place for people in space to enjoy the advantages of a hotel (you don't have to care about everything yourself, unlike at home). There will probably also be specific attractions built there (just like tourist places on earth build special attractions which are not really related to the place where they are). Maybe some hotels will offer an artificial earth-like experience (remember, the target group of those hotels will be people who cannot afford to get to earth). Of course these additional space hotels will cause an even larger amount of people living in space. Also, these lower-cost space hotels will have an even higher pressure to become independent from expensive materials brought up from earth. So if a completely autarkic space station is possible at all, this will be the point where it will be reached.
So now you have people living for generations in space, in space stations which do not depend on earth for their basic needs. This of course means that they also will not consume earth resources, thus earth population will probably get to use basically all of the earth resources; that is, even if the space people one day decided to all go back to earth, they couldn't without reducing earth population first. So a growing space population will have to be accommodated by building more space stations (including space stations which are not space hotels any more). Given that by that time, robotic asteroid mining probably is quite standard, and when in space, asteroid-mined materials are actually cheaper than materials brought up from earth, this will not consume any earth-bound resources.
That way, the earth will get surrounded with a growing number of space stations. At some time, the number of space stations will grow enough that it is no longer feasible to keep them orbiting earth, so they'll orbit sun instead. Initially not too far from earth, but exponential growth will eventually cause them to fill up a substantial part of the solar system. Which will be the point where it starts making sense to think of colonizing the space around other stars.
Now of course they will not directly go to far-away stars; they first colonize Proxima Centauri, and continue with other of the closest stars. But over time, farther and farther stars will get colonized.
Note that the speed of the front of colonization will be much slower than the speeds which we can achieve already with current spaceships. BTW, it's likely that they will "settle" near stars because the stars are an excellent energy source.
Of course, if there's an intelligent alien species in the galaxy, it is very likely that this alien species will also start colonizing space. And during this colonization, they'd inevitably, sooner or later, reach a place with humans (either earth before space gets colonized, of some outer space colony. The only thing which could prevent that, apart from the possibility that there are no aliens in the galaxy to begin with, is that they are stopped by yet another species (but in that case, it will be that species we will get contact with, again unless they are stopped by yet another species).
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:04PM
Sorry, but that's unlikely. Emigration even on Earth has never been a way to reduce population. It "sort of" works for getting rid of dissidents, because they are relatively rare. But not as a relief for population pressure. And in space such emigration would be a LOT more expensive than it is on Earth. Population control will be needed even in-system, and as a generation ship....You want a doubling time that is less than the time that it takes you to go between large chunks of resources. Now I admit that I expect that there are a lot more free planets and asteroids than people normally assume, but they still aren't going to be very close to each other, and they're going to be quite difficult to detect at a distance. So I expect the "population doubling" to happen DURING the process of building a new ship, and that the population will be held stable at all other times. I expect that in this kind of controlled environment the right to procreate will be rigidly controlled. (In fact, that's a plausible source of corruption that would lead to the kind of social friction that will end up destroying the ship. Which is one reason a fleet of small habitats linked together by tethers and a common drive/navigation module is a plausible scenario. That way social unrest in one module wouldn't kill everyone. It also makes it easy to split the ship in half for the rebuilding process when you encounter resources.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:57PM
Did you even read further than the first sentence of my post?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday July 26 2014, @05:52AM
Yes. Even giving a population already living in space (which I presumed as a prerequisite) you can't use it to reduce population pressure. The ships are too expensive. I don't see space getting packed in the foreseeable future. And I see no reason at all why a habitat should prefer to orbit a planet, or even to be in the same solar orbit. (It won't have the same albedo unless you really work at it, so a different orbit would be better from an energy standpoint, but I expect them to be so well insulated that that won't be significant.)
As to whether they will be wealthy...this depends on lots of social choices that can go several different ways. It also depends on what you mean by wealthy.
P.S.: I'm NOT expecting the wandering ships to stay in ANY solar system. A few years, perhaps, if there are some supplies that it's hard to pick up en-route. I'm expecting, however, that they will travel at a slow enough speed that they need to be well adapted to living on wandering asteroids and cometary bodies. This may well mean that controlled fusion will be needed for an energy source. In which case 60 years is grossly optimistic. (The primary energy source needs to be a well developed technology that can be depended upon. Fission is energetic enough, but it's not clear how many fissionable ores are available in wandering asteroids.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:34PM
Thats just the neocons. The rest of them aren't so bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:36PM
I really like how so many "smart" people decry religion and yet believe there are little green men out there that we'll meet soon or are watching us.
Keep believing your fantasy, we are alone and will never find life beyond this solar system, not without some bend around Einstein. And those for the forseeable future are wank mindgames.
Frankly Jesus is a whooooooole lot more logical than spacegreen things.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 23 2014, @01:49AM
At least "green men" have a probability above zero.. :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:55AM
So has Jesus. After all, people claiming to be the Messiah is not that unusual, nor is people making others believe they can do "wonders". Note that very few people have seen (or claimed to have seen) Jesus after the crucification, so it would be entirely consistent if Jesus was dead, after all, and the body was just stolen from the grave. Of course there's also a small, but non-zero chance that people thought he was dead while he actually wasn't. Note that there are people even today who have been "clinically dead" and then "came back to life". There's no reason to assume that people back then were better in determining death than we are.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gman003 on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:19PM
Is Ken Ham an atheist plant to try to discredit religion? Because that's what he seems to be good at.
God is supposedly benevolent - infinitely so, in fact. How can that jibe with him creating a multitude of thinking, feeling, sapient beings (with souls, since that's the only part to survive to the afterlife), then damn them, literally, to eternal torment because of the actions of two people on a planet halfway across the universe?
Obviously that is not the act of a benevolent god. Which I suppose solves the question of theodicy, but you'll have a hard time recruiting to your church that way ("Come worship Jehovah - the lawful neutral god!").
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:37PM
"God is supposedly benevolent"
If a close reading shows "he" never said so, and/or theres some "lost in translation" such that we say that because it makes us feel better but it isn't actually true, then that explains a lot. Or at least there's fewer resulting paradoxes if you try the opposite of your assertion.
In D+D notation a somewhat lazy lawful evil god would explain a lot.
(Score: 1) by unauthorized on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:38PM
You need to read between the lines. God sent his one and only son explicitly for the purpose of saving humanity. At very least, he wants us to be saved, which is not something a malicious deity would do.
As with all things religious, this can be rationalized. The original sin could be a metaphor for using knowledge to evil means, and us being sent here might be a method to remove us from our old mistakes. When the bible speaks of punishment, it means that god took away our "toys" because we weren't mature enough to use them responsibly.
Ah, it's so easy to argument yourself by making shit up.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:40PM
> God sent his one and only son explicitly for the purpose of saving humanity.
Just to argue against the people who actually believe this shit:
God created one son only and sent his one and only son to save us that he created from going to Hell that he created that he damns us to because are exposed to and become evil that he also created.
God sounds like me playing The Sims:
"Oh, what's that? You didn't know that I was going to remove that door when the house caught fire? Too bad, jackass!"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Lazarus on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:50PM
You're thinking of something other than the violent Christian god. Christianity is not what you want it to be, it's a lot closer to what the right-wing lunatics like Ken Ham claim it is, though they miss the fact that the supernatural is imaginary.
(Score: 2) by Oligonicella on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:27PM
Before you get all high and mighty on the left/right political thing, I suggest you talk to some crystal-rubbers who are pretty exclusively lefties, with many holding degrees. Idiocy knows no boundaries.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:30PM
Sure they do. They just think that they are always on the correct side of them.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday July 23 2014, @01:35AM
At least they're not actively harmful to others.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:52AM
Really? Is a person who "heals" by selling crystals in place of real medicine not as actively harmful as someone who sells Jesus to accomplish the same thing? Is the medium who tells an auditorium full of people that a warrior-god from ancient Atlantis has given him the secret to eternal life (to be shared for a modest donation) somehow better than the preacher who tells a church full of people that a carpenter-god from ancient Judea did the same? And to further muddy the issue, there's left-leaning Bible thumpers and right-leaning homeopaths. The flavor changes but the poison is still the same.
Mysticism and magical thinking and taking advantage of stupid or desperate people aren't a matter of left and right, and trying to make it partisan just diverts resources and leaves ignorance to flourish in the darkness. Your brains will leak out just as fast if you watch "Spirit Science" or "Shockofgod".
So, to everyone here: Drop the left/right bullshit. Everyone's sharing their faction with nutters. You want to do some good? Clean your own house before you start criticizing your neighbor for the state of his.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:12AM
> Is a person who "heals" by selling crystals in place of real medicine
> not as actively harmful as someone who sells Jesus to accomplish the same thing?
That is only half the story, maybe even only a third. Yes, everywhere there are swindlers and con-artists preying on the naive.
But:
(1) The number of luxurious mega-churches built with the money of evangelical suckers vastly outnumber anything on the new-age side. Scientology is about as close as it gets to an organized fleecing operation, but despite their ~$500M/yr in revenue they are a drop in the bucket compared to the megachurch phenomenon which have somewhere in the neighborhood of $10B/year in revenues.
You might argue that there are simply waaay more megachurch goers than there are new-age suckers, but that doesn't really mitigate the amount of damage done, just that there are less new-age types trying to con people.
(2) The new-age guys are much less likely to use their religion as a weapon. Swindling their own is one thing, but justifying the marginalization of others is almost solely the domain of bible-thumpers. Scientology (again) with their anti-gay agenda is basically it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:59AM
Well, the point is: The church had much more time to build up its business.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:46AM
The crystal healers and Jesus healers are about balanced, but when is the last time the crystal healers actively campaigned for laws to discriminate against some group? Have you ever seen a mandate to teach crystal healing in science textbooks?
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:03PM
That the drugstore nearest my apartment has a homeopathy aisle (placed so anyone walking directly from the door to the pharmacist will pass through it) and is still allowed to operate is quite enough regulatory permissiveness for me. It's all evil, one's just got home court advantage.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:47PM
Have they passed a law forcing you to use the homeopathic remedies or are they open to your freedom to choose?
(Score: 3, Informative) by umafuckitt on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:35PM
God is supposedly benevolent
Which version? The old testament one was a right bastard. He only became soft and luvy in the new testament.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:27PM
A bit myopic, are we? For your consideration:
Are you sure you know what you are talking about? Are you sure?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:22AM
Those who believe in the second coming of christ have a problem with the whole peace and love image. In the book of revelation (last book of the new testament) jesus really gets his chuck norris on.
"He will rule them with an iron rod. He will release the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty, like juice flowing from a winepress." (19:15) [biblehub.com]
Here's a broader interpretation of passages in revelation: [gotquestions.org]
Jesus' second coming will be exceedingly violent. Revelation 19:11-21 describes the ultimate war with Christ, the conquering commander who judges and makes war "with justice" (v. 11). It's going to be bloody (v. 13) and gory. The birds will eat the flesh of all those who oppose Him (v. 17-18). He has no compassion upon His enemies, whom He will conquer completely and consign to a "fiery lake of burning sulfur" (v. 20).
It is an error to say that God never supports a war. Jesus is not a pacifist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @10:07AM
Why not just quote Jesus directly?
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law-- a man's enemies will be the members of his own household" -- Matthew 10:34-36
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @10:26AM
It isn't a literal sword. He's talking about converts from judaism to christianity. It's am idealogical split within a family where the old people are set in their ways and won't embrace the new gospels that the young ones do. It's rhetorical flourish, nothing more.
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Friday July 25 2014, @06:36AM
I'm -4 in both eyes, how did you know? Seriously, though, on balance the message in the New Testament is pretty different to the old testament. Yes, it's no homogenous, but that's not surprising given that it's written by multiple independent co-authors over a span of centuries.
(Score: 2) by compro01 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:28PM
He more than makes up for that in Revelation. The lake of blood in 14:18 would require the deaths of approximately 21 trillion humans. That's killing every single human that has ever lived about 200 times over.
(Score: 2) by TK on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:26PM
How are we supposed to shore up those kinds of numbers without expanding to new planets? Ken seems to be on the wrong side of this issue if he's a biblical literalist.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:50PM
Stupid and misguided Christians have done, and will do, more damage to Christianity than Atheists ever will.
I have my opinion on which one he might be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:34PM
Sigh. As a Christian, I fear that you are all too right. I know that Jesus forgives us. I just hope that someday atheists, agnostics, and all the rest of humanity will one day find it in their hearts to forgive us.
*Hanging my head to weep*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:39AM
As an athiest I don't blame you. I don't blame muslims for al qaeda and I don't blame christians for their extremists, nor the buddhist extremists [foreignpolicy.com] either. Extremists are defined by their asshole-nature regardless of their professed religion or lack thereof.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:22PM
Solution: Procreate with the aliens.
(Score: 4, Funny) by gman003 on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:27PM
Well that certainly brings a new meaning to the term "missionary position"...
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:06PM
That would imply there had once been a different meaning...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:27PM
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:40PM
I thought there was Rule 34 of this on Cinemax just last week.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:56PM
"I thought there was Rule 34 of this on Cinemax just last week."
Captain Kirk was there first, although no pix
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:12AM
On a sunday?
Oh boy, now he's going to hell also.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by metamonkey on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:29PM
1) Dear God, please save us from "christians." Yours truly, a Catholic.
2) Nowhere does it say the fall caused every race in the universe to die. Only man. There could very well be alien races who looked at the tree of knowledge and said "Pffft, ef that noise, ignorance is bliss!" and they're still frolicking in alien paradise today. Or they could have their own fall and their own salvation.
3) "Not even Jesus can save them?" Jesus is God, the Almighty, the great I AM. He can do anything he wants.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:37PM
Indeed, and by his logic, not only is every alien race in the universe doomed to eternal damnation, but also every non human species here as well. There must be an entire circle of hell reserved solely for sparrows, or fish, or particularly unrepentant butterflies.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:46PM
I think that the only dogs that make it to the 7th level of hell at are the ones full of lust that hump human legs.
(Score: 1) by Cactus on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:07PM
My childhood [imdb.com] was a lie!
(Score: 2) by DrMag on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:11PM
Dear God, please mod parent up. Humbly yours, a Mormon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @10:11AM
God would need enough Karma to get moderation points. But Karma being a Buddhist concept, God obviously doesn't have it. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:41PM
Actually, the version I am familiar with is known as the atheist's prayer: Dear God, please save us from your followers.
(Score: 2) by yellowantphil on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:48AM
C. S. Lewis covered this in his (rather strange) story Perelandra [wikipedia.org]. I think the book ended with the Adam and Eve on Venus still frolicking around naked, with Eve having avoided the temptation.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:03PM
Never heard of that one. I'll check it out. Thanks!
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:17AM
> 1) Dear God, please save us from "christians." Yours truly, a Catholic.
As a catholic you might be surprised to learn that these sorts of people generally believe that catholics are not christians (nor do they believe mormons are either).
> 3) "Not even Jesus can save them?" Jesus is God, the Almighty, the great I AM. He can do anything he wants.
Getting off topic... If Jesus is God, then what was so special about him dying on the cross? For an omnipotent dude, dying on the cross is like having a bad hair day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @10:16AM
Well, isn't it obvious? If Jesus was God, and Jesus died on the cross, then God died on the cross. Which means, afterwards God was dead. But if God was dead, he cannot have done anything afterwards. Which explains why we haven't heard of him for quite some time. ;-)
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:24PM
He showed us pure love and sacrifice, in a way that none could doubt his sincerity that yes, sins are forgiven.
The hardest thing for any of us to do is to forgive ourselves. Satan is known as "the accuser of our brethren" (Revelations 12:10). That is where all guilt and shame come from. He tempts you into sin and then beats you over the head with it. First thing after the fall, Adam and Eve saw that they were naked, and felt shame.
Christ brought us the message that we are forgiven. That God loves us, and forgives us our sins, including the original sin in the garden. And Satan would say to you, "Oh, not you. The things you've done are unforgivable." But God's love is a perfect love, that forgives all things. And how do we know? Because He came down from heaven and took the bullet for us. Because of sin, and the shame we feel from it, man dies. But not anymore. He shed his blood so that we would know the depths of His love for us. He loves us even to His own torture and death. He has proven proven His love and forgiveness, and you know it, you can forgive yourself, and Satan, whose weapon is guilt and shame, has no power over you.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @02:23AM
> He showed us pure love and sacrifice, in a way that none could doubt his sincerity
I don't expect this is going anywhere, but my point is that it was no sacrifice at all. Dude's omnipotent, he could die and be resurrected a hundred million times without breaking a sweat. There is a fundamental contradiction between omnipotence and sacrifice. They are mutually exclusive.
(Score: 1) by RobotLove on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:58PM
...anything except being able to keep millions upon millions of humans from infinite torture. You'd think that would be a priority, but it apparently rates lower than making sure people don't use condoms.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:13PM
That's exactly what he did. That's the whole point of the dying on the cross thing, to save mankind from damnation.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 1) by RobotLove on Tuesday July 29 2014, @03:25PM
...except for the millions who lived and died in complete ignorance of that "dying on the cross thing"...
If an omnipotent deity had the power to concoct a plan that would save everyone (and he surely would have that power) but didn't (and he surely didn't concoct that plan), doesn't that make him evil? I think it does. Fortunately for us, he almost certainly doesn't exist so it's irrelevant.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:33PM
My understanding is that the reason people are going to Hell in the first place is because of the whole "Fall from Grace" thing with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And the only way out is to accept JC as your Savior because he paid for our sins and set up some deal so Humans can get back into Heaven again.
So unless an ET race also fell they would be automatically going to Heaven anyway. Though the article says the Adam's fall effected the WHOLE universe but that ET's where not part of the redemption plan.
If Ham is right God, being omnipotent and knowing that the Serpent would convince Eve to eat the fruit and then get Adam to also take a bite right from the "Let there be Light" line, has let an entire Universe (Multiverse?) full of beings that had nothing to do with Eve/Adam and their naive nature (having no knowledge of Good/Evil in the first place) go to Hell.
Well, so much for the kind, merciful and loving God that I keep hearing about.
Joseph Campbell once said something to the effect that the biggest obstacle to our truly understanding the Divine was our preconceptions of what the Divine is, because by defining it we put limits on that which is limitless and thus fail to fully define it.
Right of wrong, say what you will, but only speak if you have the courage to put your name on it.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hubie on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:58PM
I always liked Shaw's summary of heaven and hell from Act III [bartleby.com] of Man and Superman (start about line 149).
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:34PM
Thanks for the link. I'll have to read it later though, have to go take care of some stuff first.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1) by turgid on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:20PM
Joseph Campbell once said something to the effect that the biggest obstacle to our truly understanding the Divine was our preconceptions of what the Divine is, because by defining it we put limits on that which is limitless and thus fail to fully define it.
Our biggest obstacle to truly understanding the Divine is our continual insistence that it exists.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:00PM
kind of proves the point doesn't it. We define that it exists, and by doing so we fail to define that which can't be defined.
I've seen enough weird stuff in my life to know that Shakespeare was right when he had Hamlet say "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy".
There may be nothing but I choose to believe that there is something, what it is I don't know, I don't think I will ever know, the human mind can't comprehend of it at this point in evolution. I do know that I will keep looking for answers to my questions and try to take what I learn and understand how it all fits together. Maybe there isn't a God now, but who can say if after another few 100 billion years of cosmic evolution the Universe itself will not become sentient in a way that today would be called "God".
read this; http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html [multivax.com]
Or, in a 100 trillion years the Universe will just be an endless, nearly empty expanse filled only with the occasional sub atomic particle with a temperature close enough to zero that it makes no difference, and everything that had happened up to that point was meaningless. You may be able to live with that belief but I can't.
I think what is important is that no mater what we believe we must all be free to believe in and follow our own paths, and my issue with people like Ham is that they want me to follow their path, even if I don't want to.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1) by turgid on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:29PM
I think what is important is that no mater what we believe we must all be free to believe in and follow our own paths, and my issue with people like Ham is that they want me to follow their path, even if I don't want to.
Amen.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by strattitarius on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:42PM
Ask yourself if you, as a christian, would approve of beating children until the behave correctly? Whips, chains, it's all good. What if the definition of behave correctly was completely up to the parents and could include getting nothing but 100% on school work, getting into Harvard, and being the All-State running back? Ask if the support the death penalty? Ask if they believe slavery is a good thing?
Hopefully the answers are no, and then ask why god cannot exhibit the same amount of compassion and love as a simple human being? Really? ETERNAL suffering if you live a good life but don't WORSHIP the son? Humans are not that conceited. Humans are not that vengeful. Humans are not that evil. Well, at least not those that refute religion.
I do not believe in a god. I believe that we have been lucky enough to be part of a conglomeration of atoms that has allowed amazing interactions and the ability to give meaning to life. The most amazing thing about having no god, is that we can take credit for all of that which humans have created. HUMANS have made meaning out of a void. We are god.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:02AM
ETERNAL suffering if you live a good life but don't WORSHIP the son?
For some Christians it's even worse. You could live your whole life doing good and accepting Christ into your heart but if on your deathbed you have second thoughts, to hell you go. And the opposite, the worst person ever, responsible for so much suffering that it almost makes evil believable, but if they accept Christ on their deathbed, to heaven they go.
Me, I'd rather go to hell then associate with such an evil God. The Christian heaven seems pretty boring as well, no plants or nature of any kind, little well sex, just gold, jewels and the glory of God.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday July 28 2014, @08:04AM
I'm not Christian. I was exposed to that faith when I was growing up but as you point out there are many reasons to turn from Christianity if you actually bother to think about what is written in the Bible. The hypocrisy and inconsistencies where more than enough for me to look for a path of my own. I think it is one of the reasons why there has been so much effort put into undermining education programs that teach objective critical thinking, like the sciences, because if everyone actually started to think for themselves it would cause real trouble for those who run the religions.
I have to laugh that first you say "I do not believe in god." but then your last line says "We are god.", showing you do believe in a God. I'm not trying to troll you or belittle what your saying but I have found that even "Atheists" have faith, not in some grey bearded dude in robes sitting in the clouds, but in Life and the Universe, and all its wonders.
We are the consciousness of the Universe seeking to understand itself. Does that make Humanity god? Does that make all life, everywhere, God?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 23 2014, @10:01PM
Right of wrong, say what you will, but only speak if you have the courage to put your name on it.
Says PinkyGigglebrain...
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday July 28 2014, @08:08AM
whoops. Large fingers and small keyboard keys do make for some interesting comments.
Good catch, I may have to start sending my comments to you for proof reading before posting them. :)
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday July 28 2014, @08:11AM
And I totally missed your jab until after I hit submit.
Touche
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by chewbacon on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:05PM
A theologian said: a philosopher is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there.
The philosopher replied: but if he were a theologian, he'd find it.
I'll give it to the guy: he's a scientist. He's not a very observant one, therefore not a good scientist. My favorite point Bill Nye made was considering frost lines. Nye argued for so many frost lines to exist in one region of the world, there would've been a winter every couple months. He asked why no one talked about this in history because someone certainly should've noticed. Ken failed to rebut that argument (and many others) almost as if he didn't understand the concept of frost lines. Or he may have ignored it during a quick prayer asking for answers.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:08PM
This is your chance to do what so many brave Christian missionaries did shortly after the Europeans invaded^Hdiscovered other parts of the Earth, spreading the Good News of Christianity and saving their souls from eternal damnation. You say they are damned because they've never heard of Jesus, so why not fix that, build churches on alien planets, and convert the heathens?
In fact, I like this idea so much, I'd be willing to kick in my own money, once aliens are discovered, towards ensuring that you and other like-minded individuals make up the majority of the first manned mission to those distant alien-populated planets. I am certain that like the wise Christian residents of Murrieta, CA, your alien hosts will treat you according to Exodus 22:21: "Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:12PM
You can't. By his logic, aliens are not descended from Adam's seed and therefore lie outside of the realm of salvation. How you can argue that Adam's actions affect any possible sentient being, even those not of his blood, but cannot be saved because they are not of his blood is beyond me.
Personally, I think that if god exists, he is as flawed as us. One, we are created in his image and are flawed, so therefore he must be as well, unless we are an imperfect copy.
Two, any 'perfect' being will also only be capable of 'perfect' creations. To create an imperfection implies an imperfection in the creator.
But then again I am a flawed mortal. We are all stardust regardless.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:43PM
Ham is Australian! Not a Kiwi! See, the whole descendants and salvation thing makes sense, and god must be English!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:42PM
News
or People
Shame you give these ass-holes time in my mind.
I require that you be more responsible with my attention next time.
Scientist
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mendax on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:00PM
Apparently, this religious moron has not read Ray Bradbury's poem "Christus Apollo", which tells of Christ's past, present, and future appearances with extraterrestrial civilizations. You can find it here [blogspot.com]. Jerry Goldsmith, the late film composer, also wrote a cantata using the poem as lyrics. The CD I have of it has Anthony Hopkins as narrator.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:25PM
I wonder if there are a bunch of different Gods, and they have the Universe split up into many little fiefdoms. Maybe the Christian God got control of only Solar System, and its surrounding area. Seriously, spending more time on making Earth, than all the other astrological bodies? God could be all powerful, and all knowing, just within the Solar System. Being God of a solar system is still quite prestigious.
The Quran is explicitly limited to humans and djinn. What would al qaeda do if aliens came to Earth? Aliens are exempt from sharia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @12:22AM
Great - another schism and thousand years of bloodshed about whether djinn == aliens.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:02AM
The Huffington Post is where confirmation bias runs wild asfaik and where inconvenient parts of reality is ignored.. :P
I propose to call an end to any further use of cognitive capacity on creationists because not even a infinite supercomputer can make any use of their babble. In fact such computer would probably suggest that the data source should be recycled to optimize the use planet resources ;)
The big question is why is this "news" is even allowed any resources at all?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:54AM
Guess you missed the part abut "comic relief" in TFS?
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:20AM
C.S. Lewis wrote a trilogy of books collectively known as the Space Trilogy [wikipedia.org] (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), where he speculates what the spiritual life of extraterrestrials might be like. The first book [wikipedia.org] has Elwin Ransom leaving Earth on a space ship to Mars (or Malacandra as its dwellers call it), and finds that the Martians, rather than being the malign aliens most commonly depicted in other fiction, are actually peaceful and kindly creatures. They are "unfallen", and don't have the same tendency to sin and evil that humans do. Earth, on the other hand, or Thulcandra as it is known elsewhere, has been isolated from the rest of the Solar System because its Oyarsa (ruling angel, or Vala as Tolkien would call it) had rebelled.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Fall affected the entire universe, and it's pretty damn hard to see that the Fall should have affected anything besides the human species and by extension the planet it lived on. C.S. Lewis didn't think so, and given his status as a Christian apologist he must have had sound theological reasons for this belief. I've heard it said by others treating the same topic that other alien species, had they fallen as well and required the same sort of salvation humans do, would have also been sent the Son by the Father to accomplish the same thing for them as Jesus Christ had for the human species. All that an honest theologian can say about this topic is: we don't know. The Bible is not concerned with what God might have done elsewhere in the universe.
This Ken Ham fellow sounds like some sort of troll provocateur par excellence.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1) by Freeman on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:12PM
According to the Bible we were created in God's own image and thus look like him.
"Genesis 1:27New King James Version (NKJV) 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
God very well could have made many, many, many more "Alien" species, before he created Humans. He at least created the Angels, before he created Humans.
The Bible doesn't say anything about other beings, except for the Angels, and God.
Christians believe that God and the Angels exist. Angels = Aliens. Aliens exist. The end.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by Freeman on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:36PM
'heh, I had forgotten what the Original Article was about. The original two Humans were the ones that sinned. God in His mercy gave them a way to be saved. The problem is that every child born after them was born with a sinful nature. The exception being Jesus as He was a Miracle child. The whole point of Jesus being born as a Human was that living a life free of sin was an option for Adam and Eve. Him giving his life for us as both Human and God is what saved us. He gave us a gift, you have to accept it. You can still choose not to accept the gift.
In answer to Ken Ham, Aliens Exist as stated in my previous post and they already live a Sin Free, Death Free, and Eternal Life. The exception being the Fallen Angels that were cast out of Heaven with Lucifer/Satan.
The Bible also talks about a Final End. There is no everlasting fire that will keeping burning the wicked forever. You can take the Bible out of context, but taken as a whole you will not find evidence of that.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @01:42PM
Aliens have their own Jesus Christ and Bible stories quite different our own, but carrying the same message.