On Wednesday, January 3, 2018 at 2:51:47 AM UTC-7, Phillip Helbig
(undress to reply) wrote:

In article , Gary
Harnagel writes:

It WOULD change that of 99% of the world's population just if an
advanced civilization wore confirmed to exist on a planet around
Tabby's star.

Why? How? What worldview is committed to the lack of extraterrestrial
civilization?

I was mostly thinking of born-again Christians. Their belief system
seems to be very geocentric, but there are many more Christians that
share that worldview. And then their are Muslims ... well, they (as
well as some Christians) might denounce the evidence. And then there
are those that would start new religions based upon the aliens ....

Has evolution shattered their worldview?

No. They just don't believe it.

Modern cosmology? Geology?

No, they just don't believe them.

By definition, faith can't be perturbed by knowledge. On the other
hand, while of course many religions are geocentric (in more than one
sense), they don't necessarily exclude extraterrestrial life. It is
also not necessary that Jesus be crucified on every world. Not all
beings need salvation. Think of the angels. Perhaps angels are
extraterrestrial beings. I've heard born-again creatures say that UFOs
are manned by demons. So even here, I don't think that the discovery of
extraterrestrial intelligence would shatter any worldviews.

I guess I underestimated the ability of some people to fool themselves :-(

Right (and contrary to what you wrote before): if you can find evidence
of extraterrestrial civilization, then you confirm it. The reverse is
not true: while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, neither
does it mean that one should assume that extraterrestrial civilization
until proven otherwise, since one can never prove it otherwise.

Well, that depends upon your psychology.

It depends on logic.

A scientist is trained to be
skeptical, and skepticism argues for your viewpoint.

Skepticism argues that one should not believe anything without good
evidence.

So why believe that God doesn't exist without good evidence?

But ... is
skepticism the "right" position in all areas of inquiry? It has led to
hidebound resistance in the past. Each of us has developed a model of
the universe over our lifetimes that's hard for us to modify because
it's based upon what we have seen and experienced. I'm not sure why,
but mine has been undergoing some major revisions in, um, vision over
the last few years.

Any skepticism which leads to hidebound resistance is not what is
normally understood under skepticism.

But it has happened in the scientific community many times.

[Moderator's note: Followups should address astronomy, or at least
science. -P.H.]