//But there's precisely no evidence for extraterrestrial life.//

That's just what the Reptilians want you to think.

//It'll be evidence when someone has a picture of a bacterium or such-like from some other world or when SETI hears ET's radio signal.//

I take it you're not a believer in the Wow! Signal then mhaze?

I have to say I'm not either. It's never been replicated.

Anyways, I don't see the point of discussing the existence of little green men out there in space when everybody knows that there are big green lizard people living inside the Queen and Donald Trump and so on. Aliens are definitely real, and they definitely walk among us, and there is at least as much as evidence for those claims as there is for most of the tripe that people put forward on this forum.

Now, gentleman, as much as I hate having to put on my anorak... I believe the topic was religion.

mehaze, where ever the colonizing European went, first up the beach were the soldiers with their muskets, closely followed by the missionaries with their bibles. What the musket couldn't convert, the bible did.
A ready supply of heathen souls, primed for conversion from their sinful ways. Not to mention the added bonus of control that Christianity brought with it.

"Well either your family member is the oldest person on the planet", to say that you only view ancestry in pure European terms, being totally ignorant of how Maori and other indigenous people relate to their ancestors. Can you recite your "tupuna" back to those who came before the time of Captain Cook? No I am sure you can't.

Don't worry early Christian missionaries could not understand indigenous people either.

Toni,

" there are big green lizard people living inside the Queen and Donald Trump and so on."

And I for one, welcome our new lizard overlords.

" I believe the topic was religion."

Well the topic is more about belief.

Paul,

"where ever the colonizing European went, first up the beach were the soldiers with their muskets, closely followed by the missionaries with their bibles."

Well as usual Paul, your historic knowledge is abysmal. That's not even close to true. Indeed its the exception. In most places the first "on the beach" were the merchants and traders, followed by the missionaries. Only later did the military arrive, in order to protect the traders and missionaries. In some places, eg North America, the first arrivals were the immigrants. In only a few places were the military in the vanguard.

Although I know my ancestry back into the 8th century, I can't recite it. I don't need to since its written down, paper and writing being one of the wonders of civilisation. Stone age peoples, not having such things needed to recite their history as the only way to record it. But needing to do so is hardly cause for admiration.

AJ,

"the comparison of such chances [of extraterrestrial life] with the chances of a god existing"

But I wasn't making such comparisons. I was drawing attention to the similarity of davidf's surety that such such life existed with NNS surety of God existing when neither had evidence.
Another attempt to change the terms of my point? How many is that?

(fyg, we have no way to even make a wild guess as to the likelihood of life elsewhere since we have no data about how difficult it is for life to exist even here. For example, we don't know how unlikely eukaryotic life is. We know, or think we know, that two prokaryotic cells forming one eukaryotic cell occurred only once in several billion years despite the fact that such interactions occur billions of times a day. So extraordinarily unlikely).

" there are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the universe"

I specifically said I was talking about our galaxy cluster. Changing the terms of the discussion again? Just can't help yourself?

FYG, the next nearest galaxy to us is 2,400,000 light years away and its further away now than when I started this sentence. We'll never get there unless everything we think we know about the universe is wrong. So speculating about what might or might not be there is beyond fruitless. Which is why I concentrated on the Milky Way. If we continue to expand or knowledge and technology, there's every reason to think we'll visit every potential life sustaining rock in the galaxy in the next 50000 years. That no other civilisation has done it is one of the reasons people are coming around to the notion that no other civilisation got as far as we have.

" given that you have failed miserably on ...whether or not ”the deity” can be disproven"

oh you mean the discussion where I started off saying the deity couldn't be disproven because it couldn't be defined and you ended up showing me how the deity couldn't be disproven because it couldn't be defined. Yeah you really got me there </sarc>

Although I know my ancestry back into the 8th century

oops ......18th century

although,come to think of it, I am a descendent of Charlemagne

To Yuyutsu.

[I am surprised: you would be the last person I would expect to hear this from.]

That's fair. I didn't mean to come off that way. I know I've been pretty heavy on the aspect that It's resonable to believe in God, and that there is evidance for Him if a person is willing to look. That said, I'm sorry if that's all anyone saw.

[Don't you hope in God?
What other hope need one have?
What need is there for other life when we can have eternal life in God?
Do we need to find out that we are not alone when God is always with us?]

I do hope on God. I wish I could say that God is my only hope. He is one of my biggest hopes that I have though.

As for other life, haven't you ever looked up into the stars and be filled with wonder? So much in the universe. Just the scope of eternity reminds me of the vastness and diversity of the cosmos. Stars, beautiful nebulas, planets of so many kinds. One discovered is apparently made mostly of diamond. Meteorites blazing into shooting stars. Everything about the cosmos invites the imagination. Some hopes go into being able to travel into space. some hope to find other life. A new civilizalation when all of earth's civilizations have been found. Some hope to test the boundaries of knowledge and physics. See what is different in space.

There are other hopes. Especially for those who are young and don't know how the world works. They hope and act on what they believe the world to be like. Some people go out into an adventure completely ignorant on how hard (or easy) it really is. But they make it through because of the starting hope and by getting better.

Hope is a fascinating thing.