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Despite a Pool Room purpose, this topic really belongs in the Debate Hall, the way it's going. By the way, your post about the English assignment is, besides hard to read, confusing. People seem to have gotten the message, but, really, it's hard to know what you're talking about. Please try to be more clear, it's really annoying to read a post twice trying to interpret it.
Anyway, aliens. A broad topic. In fact, a topic we know nothing about. We have nothing but theories, denials, and fantasies to lead us to a logical explanation for this debate. In other words, we're pulling **** out of our asses.
There's one thing that we can be almost sure of. The Universe is massive. Grossly massive. Infinitely, grossly, massive. If our perceptions of what life is, and what is required for its sustainment were correct, it doesn't matter. The Universe is too **** big for there not to be another planet similar to ours. It happened once, and with this much room, it's bound to have happened again.
However, our perceptions of what is required for life is wrong. I bet there's a species out there that breathes Carbon Monoxide. We can't say that a life-form needs oxygen to breathe, or that it even needs to breath. How can we say that something we know nothing about needs what we do? They may be like nothing we've ever imagined before.
One reason we are as unadvanced as the aliens in our movies and TV shows is our narrow-mindedness. We find something that works for one thing, and we make it a law. Our inability to accept the prospect of change puts us light-years behind where we could be. We think because we need air, all life needs air. We think because we need nutrients, all life needs nutrients. We set a standard to everything, and think that everything must measure up to that. We are nothing but mildly intelligent, egotistical snobs. If something couldn't support us, we say it couldn't support anything else. How's that for thickness?
Look at a planet like Saturn. Massive amounts more gravity than we could handle; we'd likely be crushed to a pancake. So, we say, bless our narrow minds, that nothing could live on Saturn, also pointing out the toxins in the air that would kill us, and therefore anything else. But, we exist on Earth because we were built to tolerate oxygen and Earth's amount of gravity. Why couldn't something be built for Saturn's gravity and atmosphere?
Also, our definition of life. It seems to make sense, but then again, let's break it apart. It's as narrow as any other Earth philosophy. Breathing, reproducing, it's things that we do, and so, we say everything else must do the same. It's truly, utterly, moronic.
Now, as much as we can contradict all the beliefs that make extra-terrestrial life impossible, it's even more impossible to support the opposite. Mainly, because we have no idea what the opposite is. Every image we get when we think of aliens is simply something that derives for being raised on Earth, and there is nothing that can change that. Our minds simply cannot grasp the concept of what alien life would be like, because, don't even truly know a universal definition for life. All we have is our philosphies.
And it may be that way for some time.
-I
