Why is the concept of extra terrestrial life so difficult for some people to comprehend?

Question

Why is the concept of extra terrestrial life so difficult for some people to comprehend, when they them self’s are proof it has happened before!

Citation ALH84001

Clarification
I’m not referring to intelligent life at this stage though it could very well be possible.

I am asking why do people find it so difficult to believe that extraterrestrial life (such as the evidence found by NASA in 1996 [ALH84001]) can evolve in the universe (including our solar system eg: Europa, Mars )

Life can independently evolve; we are living proof of that!
The odds dictate that life has independently evolved on other planets just as it did here on earth.
At one stage of our solar system mars occupied the thermal ratio that the earth has at present; and liquid water flowed on Mars as it does on earth now. The conditions have existed before and do so somewhere out in the great expanse of the infinite universe.

Scholars agree with this principle and billions of your tax pounds/dollars are hard at work on the SETL programme as we speak and millions more being spent each year. (Search for Extra Terrestrial Life)

Answer 1

Because they are looking for something, proof of something quite different than the human beings we are use to seeing every day. Yet many people believe in some kind of religion, which teaches that life in another universe or realm does exist. I know only the details of the Christian religion, so will use that as an example. The bible talks of extra terrestrial life on a different planet. They call the planet heaven. This planet is supposedly occupied by God. There with God resides angels. If one is to believe in the bible, then we realize that those from the planet called heaven, have been making trips back and forth between heaven and earth for a long time! Angles are said to have been sent to earth and they were visible to mankind! God himself said he has walked on earth but man wasn't allowed to actually view him/her. God sent Jesus to the earth, if one is a believer. Jesus left, but it is said that the human body cannot live on the other planet, so he left his human body behind to be returned to dust. So even though many people stumble over the words 'extra terrestrial life form' many across the world do believe and don't realize it.

Answer 2

Sorry to answer your question with a question - but reading through some of the answers here ..... I would like to know why we humans seem to only acknowledge another 'life' if it has evolved on this planet using the same needs for growth and multiplication as we need ....... why are these people so arrogant and narrow minded to refuse to accept there are unknown factors that could support and develop alternate forms of life - even here on earth that we don't know or know yet - we don't even know the full extent of the all the living forms of and on this plant Earth, nor their growth or development needs ..... therefore it could be entirely possible for the same principles, but maybe using a different set of life-supporting growth factors, for other life to exist elsewhere either on Earth or on another planet ...... we should not be so arrogant as to believe that we are the ultimate example of 'life' - that something bigger and better and far more advanced could not exist, or potentially exist - if not here then somewhere .....
it's this same mentality that creates wars in this world ......

Answer 3

The arguement is moot. The reason they dont believe is the same reason that they DO believe in alot of even more ridiculous things. They believe the symbolism in the bible to be historical facts, and believe scientific evidence to be a bunch of BS. They dont understand that someone being created from dirt symbolises the concept of evolution, they think someone just stood up from a pile of dirt. Ignorance is imbedded into the brain for generations and people dont know how to break free from what therir parents taught them about life. So therefore centuries of religious abuse of power and of the brain will forever carry on.
What a huge galaxy among many other galaxies. To believe there are organisms somewhere else is not hard to believe at all. There are organism living everywhere here, on the tip of your fingers that you were typing your question with, in the water you drink and swim in, in everything. While there is no proof of intelligent life as of yet, doesnt mean that there isnt life. Organism may be surviving in different kinds of atmospheres that we dont even have the technology to pursue. Our technolgy works great, HERE, it was greated by oxgen breathing creatures, who's feet stay planted on the ground, who use a series of 103 different elements in different combinations to create. Perhaps we are not prepared to explore correctly other universes. But it doesnt mean we're the only "living" things. That ridicullus. But your arguement will fall upon many deaf, dumb ears. People who can not accept what you are saying. I hope that your feelings do not get hurt easily, because you are going to catch some bad comments from people. Good Luck!

Answer 4

Addressing the subject of extra-terrestrial life is very delicate, and skeptics will argue that, having never been in outer space, or seen (physically) extra-terrestrials, I have therefore no authority to speak on the subject. However, most of us have never seen a proton, which forms the nucleus of the hydrogen atom, and yet, we believe it exists, because our scientists said so. If it is true that most of humanity, have never seen an intergalactic ship, or what is called a mother-ship, it is equally true that millions of people, in America and abroad, have seen, in our skies, the scouts of these mother-ships, commonly called flying saucers. If we believe that the mother Mary appeared to the children of Fatima, because a group of very 'sane' people have seen the signs in the sky, why should we shy away from a manifestation, which, to all intents and purposes, is part of earth's evolutionary process, and will become an accepted fact, as the earth shifts into the transformational changes that will affect all the galaxies of the Universe seen and unseen.

Answer 5

Extra Terrestrial relates to other worldly beings i.e. not Earth. I don't know of any martians living nearby and fail to see how "they themselves" are proof. I, however, do not find it difficult to comprehend but can certainly understand that seeing is believing. If we don't see and yet believe then surely it becomes religion.

The Citation you quote it is widely believed that the bacterial spores found are as a result of contamination once on Earth. Even if they were lifeforms they would have been killed instantly due to the vastly different atmospheric conditions. We did not evolve from Mars I'm afraid.

Answer 6

Lot of reason BUT

Look at the sky on a clear night the amount of stars you see count, you cant but imagine 5% of the stars are Sun's 5% of the suns have a planatry system 5% of these have 7 planets 5 % of these have a 5th planet with water 5% of these are actuall habitable then 1% have life that os still 100 planets and that is just in your field of view

Answer 7

I have no problem with the CONCEPT... I even like the ODDS...

I guess some still adhere to this idea like other ideas of the past: the earth is the center of the galaxy, the world is flat, the world was created in 7-days...

Then again, I'm the son of an Electrical Engineer, raised on math, science, and possibilities.

Answer 8

Because many people simply don't have the ability to open their minds and study a little cosmology and see that the odds that we are all alone in this universe are slim and none.
There are 100 billion stars in our Galaxy, and at least another 100 billion galaxies out there. And at least half of those stars (suns) have planets revoloving around them. So do the math: if even one tenth of the stars had planets and even one-tenth of the planets had life and even one-tenth of THOSE planets had intelligent life, you would still be looking at tens of millions of life-sustaining planets.
(For a more accurate math formula on the odds, Google the "Drake Equation." It will blow you away!
Many religious people, of course, are threatened by ET life, because it would diminish their belief in Jesus being God, or Son of God. After all, wouldn't it be absurd that God would only chose this one planet out of billions others with life? So they just put on their religious blinders like they do with other science.
BTW--the almost certain existence of life out there does NOT mean they have visited us! The distances are probably too bast for that. SO: Alien abductions and UFO's? NO! But ET life out there? YES!

Answer 9

people rely too much on what the bible says when it comes to such things. just because it is not in the bible doesn't mean it doesn't exist! this kind of closed minded mentality only hinders a persons ability to explore and expand the many dark corners of their mind, so if they were to meet an ET they would just beome catatonic or comletely dimbfounded. i. for one, agree that there may be more intelligent life forms, so intelligent that they can hide from us whenever we look for them, so that is why we haven't and maybe will not, find them. We are but i tiny infenitisimal speck in this multiverse, who knows how many more universes there are? maybe ours can fit on the pinpoint of an alien grandmothers needle! we may never know....

Answer 10

It's an interesting question because, should Jesus, Father Christmas or an Alien arrive seek to have their presence acknowledge in order to open negotiations for the salvation of mankind and the planet (for example), the chances are that HUGE numbers of people would simply not believe in this.

The chances are that some individual would attempt to 'Knock Him / Her off' for threatening to dare to interfere in the Great Eternal Plan (or for some other personal and seemingly quite rational justification - to their particular way of thinking).

When the Wright Brothers in the US were trying to get their Kittyhawk into the air, the field they were doing their test flight was sandwiched between a railway line and a main road. Hundreds of people saw their short test flights and wrote to local and other papers asking for information about it / them. but, as everyone knew that 'manned flight' was an impossibility, none of the newspapers took the writers seriously and therefore didn't send anyone to investigate this ....until the President got to hear about it ('Experts' do not like to be proven wrong).

Quite Why or How minds 'close down' and see things like the horse wearing blinkers ...is open to all kinds of conjecture and tests.

A long time ago I saw the lines (which people were asked to look at and read...........

'Paris in
the the
Spring.'

Most people, and I tried this myself, showing it to a number of people, read it 'differently' to how it is written (the missed 'seeing the extra ''the'' in there').

It has to do with (in this case) 'expectation,' but this area you are referring to, I think may well have something to do with a sense of their own 'safety.' Just think what it would mean to them to be having to step outside their own comfort zone ....similar to the scientists who were faced with the threats to their understandings of physics when 'cold fusion' was orginally announced to the world a few years ago.

Sash.