On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 11:01:39 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:
On Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 7:05:30 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Sun, 7 Oct 2018 15:35:30 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

On Saturday, October 6, 2018 at 3:54:45 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Fri, 5 Oct 2018 11:03:12 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

We are here but that says nothing about how many more
Earthlike
planets there are in the rest of the universe.

The number is not important. All that's needed is ONE in
hundreds
of trillions FEW BILLION YEARS AGO.

Which makes the number important: you want it to be greater
than
zero. But if you drop the requirement of a few billion years
ago, we
already have one - that's us.

Which is proof of principle. If a process can happen once, it
can already
have happened given billions of years. You claim to be an
agnostic, but
you are behaving like a dedicated atheist in agnostic's
clothing :-)

I'm not saying it cannot have happened. I'm merely objecting when
you
claim we can be certain it has happened. We can **not** be
certain
about that! There are just too many unknowns involved...

I haven't said it's certain. I believe I used the term "virtually
certain"
once or twice, which isn't the same thing

A minor difference. You admit that in principle it might not have
happened but you believe the probability for that is negligibly low.

And if you agree that it could
have happened before then we are in agreement. That's enough to
place a
stumbling block in front of the dedicated atheist.

Advanced civilizations and supernatural gods are two very different
things. An advanced civilization has reached farther, perhaps
immensely farther, than we but still came into existence through
natural processes and must obey natural laws. A supernatural God, as
proclaimed in the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, created the entire universe and also created the natural laws
within it. Quite a big difference. An atheist merely does not believe
in that supernatural God but has no problem with the existence of
advanced civilizations.

Yep, if you think one single advanced civilization is enough,
why not
choose the single one we already know?

Ummm, we're NOT that advanced. If you think we are, that's
hubris.

At the moment we aren't, that's true. But what about our
descendants
in a million years?

IF we're given the time. Taking Chris's argument, maybe we'll
destroy
ourselves :-) I don't think we will, though, because we're being
watched
over.

Then why did WWI and WWII happen? Why did the holocaust happen? Why
did the Armenian genocide happen? And why were atomic bombs dropped
over Japan in August 1945? Did those watching over us turn away when
those things happened, or what?