Aliens? Existent or NON-existent [warning contains religion]

flamingspinach · 06-9-2006, 04:23 PM

No offense, but I think you're being a bit closed minded by suggesting that any spacefaring species would HAVE to be similar to us. We truly have no idea what strange forms and abilities aliens might have. Our own "cognitive" ability is a manifestation of a highly advanced nervous system. Who's to say that other sorts of organs couldn't develop in aliens, to a point that they become some defining characteristic to them which is unknown to us, just as we have our "intelligence"? There's no way to know... And that doesn't just mean species "billions of years more evolved than us" - why would they even have to go through our particular waypoint in evolution? What makes our particular flavor of cognitive skills so special compared to any other hyperadvanced (even to an entire different level) trait? It just so happens that humans are the only species on our own planet that we consider to have "transcended" the animals, by dint of our intelligence. But maybe that's just because decision-making and other cognitive skills (i.e. our nervous system) is the only thing that happened to evolve that highly among the species on Earth. We really can't say anything whatsoever about what alien life could be like.

-fs

06-9-2006, 04:23 PM	#27
flamingspinach FFR Player Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 270	Re: Aliens? Existent or NON-existent [warning contains religion] No offense, but I think you're being a bit closed minded by suggesting that any spacefaring species would HAVE to be similar to us. We truly have no idea what strange forms and abilities aliens might have. Our own "cognitive" ability is a manifestation of a highly advanced nervous system. Who's to say that other sorts of organs couldn't develop in aliens, to a point that they become some defining characteristic to them which is unknown to us, just as we have our "intelligence"? There's no way to know... And that doesn't just mean species "billions of years more evolved than us" - why would they even have to go through our particular waypoint in evolution? What makes our particular flavor of cognitive skills so special compared to any other hyperadvanced (even to an entire different level) trait? It just so happens that humans are the only species on our own planet that we consider to have "transcended" the animals, by dint of our intelligence. But maybe that's just because decision-making and other cognitive skills (i.e. our nervous system) is the only thing that happened to evolve that highly among the species on Earth. We really can't say anything whatsoever about what alien life could be like. -fs __________________

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