Um... because...  this thread won't last very long if you don't care!    

Well put, Stathei. That is one of the things that makes me doubt the existence of God, myself...

Can I get an opinion from the other side of the fence?

I am not aware of the Bible stating that Earth is the only place God created intelligent life.

True, true. (I was agreeing more with Stathei's first paragraph than with his second, but...)

Quote

I am not aware of the Bible stating that Earth is the only place God created intelligent life.

That's because the concept of alien life hadn't even been considered by the dudes who made up the Bible, since that was beyond human comprehension at the time.

Another interesting point...

(...this is gonna be GOOD...!   )

Quote from: ChristianNoMore made a meaningless referance to the bible and

I am not aware of the Bible stating that Earth is the only place God created intelligent life.

I am not aware of the Bible stating that earth was not the only place God created intelligent life.

This one... was actually quite immature... -_-'

The Bible doesn't actually say it either way, so...

This one... was actually quite immature... -_-'

The Bible doesn't actually say it either way, so...

I was demonstrating the irrelevance of CNM's post. Your earlier reply of "True, true" gave the impression that you thought that reply of CNM's had some kind of relevance.

And I would agree with such a thing. If there is a creator God then he/she/it could have created many forms of life spanning the universe. My "bash" on your post was your referencing the bible when it doesn't say either way.

Even if it did, it would still mean nothing.

Great idea for a thread, Deep Thought... heh... maybe I can smuggle in an argument for God's existence in the back door.  If Deep Thought doesn't like this idea, then I'll respectfully copy/paste this post to a new thread.

Why do we NEED to know the meaning of life, and why is the idea that life may have no meaning at all so scary to so many people? I place this question in the Atheism section because it immediately brings up the question of "Why do we have to believe in gods?"

Two reasons come to mind:

1.  If there is no meaning to life, then there is no reason for you to live, for your life is utterly meaningless.  You're about as special as an ant.  This means if you have a reason for living, then your reason is actually wrong.

2.  If there is no meaning to life, then this crushes objective moral values existing, which leads to good not existing anywhere above a subjective level.  This means Hitler can be seen just as much "good" as "bad" and Dahmer can be seen as a healthy-minded individual.

Now, atheism and even agnosticism entails that life is meaningless (I'm staying on subject with this, btw) and so atheism is all about belief in the above (2).  Every athiest in this forum will jump on me for that (I welcome it), because they don't want it to be true... they want a comfortable belief, but the truth is that they are holding a belief that entails the destruction of moral values as we know them.

Before any atheists or agnostics reply to me, I'd like to deal with what they are more than likely thinking.

Response 1: You can be an atheist and believe in objective moral values! Sorry to bust your bubble, but you can't.  Objective moral values require a foundation for the moral values, but atheism doesn't have such a foundation since they reject any supernatural explanation.  What atheism has is evolution as the foundation for moral values, but this leads to absurd conclusions.  Professor Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at the University of Guelph,

"Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth.  Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory.  I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves.  Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation.  Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction...and any deeper meaning is illusory." (Craig-Curley debate)

Notice what this means.  This means that, if morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, then your raping someone can be a GOOD thing... survival of the fittest remember?  Your killing someone can be a good thing.  You might not like.  You might not want to believe it.  But it's true.

Response 2: But I know atheists who believe in objective moral values!  Well, so do I.  It is intuitively obvious that those athiests hold self-defeating positions.

Response 3:  Are you saying atheists can't live moral lives?  I'm not saying that I lead a more moral life than that of an atheist.  Nor am I saying that atheists cannot lead moral lives, because I believe some of them do.  The question is: If a foundation for objective moral values does not exist, then do objective moral values exist?  I think demonstrably not.

I'll pause here without pressing forward.  I'd rather deal first-off atheism and its relationship to moral values before going on to Christianity or theism.

There is no arguement here. Elisha is correct in saying an atheist cannot claim objective morality.  Morality is subjective. Yes, true enough that one can say Hitler was a good person, within the confines of Nazism, he was. To the Jewish community, he was not. See? Subjective.

And I dont give a rat's patooey what Professor Michael Ruse says, evolution as a foundation for morality does not automatically lead to absurdity. It may pass it along it's path but it still has the logical possibility of leading to objectivity. Namely the continuation and survival of the species.  

Now the theist objective morality also has had, and some are continuing to have, it's absurdness. Thw inquisition, the crusades, the secretarian  killings going on here in Iraq.  The massacres that are yet to happen involving Iran (my prediction there).  Remember, these were/are/will be all "objective morality" proponents.