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. 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.

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.