Meme-Man.You are going to preach the gospel one day.Can't wait!

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"he bathong!" - a desert dweller with nothing to do after sunset but look at the rash of lights in the sky would naturally count them "as many as the grains of sand on earth" - there is nothing surprising or significant in that statement - so that, the fact I quoted an actual quantifiable estimate of stars (which is based on Newtonian physics and well established Keplarian orbits, incorporating doppler shift calculations which are themselves the result of spectral line analysis of the electromagnetic spectrum, and more), which I arbitrarily compared by analogy to something people might find interesting; that coincidently aligns with the vague musings of goat herders is of no significance.  Let's not forget that though the goat herders may have hit their vague analogy, they thought they were looking at other goat herders' camp fires - so; categorically "NO" - we are not nearly similar in our quotes.  A final thought - deuteronomy got it wrong - there is no message "in my heart" - my heart is a pump - my brain does the thinking; this is something they also didn't know; the authors of deuteronomy thought the heart did the thinking and the spongy stuff in the head was there to "cool the blood"... to "cool the savage heart".  Had they actually been talking to the designer, he may have pointed this fact out to them.

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"Anon@8.49am" - When you say "What surprises me all the time (in science) is that everything is never full proof " - I think you are misunderstanding science - the essence of good science is 'disproving' things; in science there are no golden calves - everything is up for peer review and dispute; that is what makes it vibrant and propels it. The physical world is immensely complex; the fabric of spacetime built on quantum-level sub atomic particles in a 10-dimensional environment is deeply entwined with knowable but mysterious interactions that will still take us decades and possibly centuries to understand.  But, we have made massive progress already. To draw on one example; had scientists dusted their hands off 200 years ago when Newtons equations adequately described gravity (at our mid-sized and mid paced human level); had everyone bowed down to those laws as immutable and not appreciated that at the cosmic and atomic level time and dimensions are completely different; we would not today have relativity, quantum theory, string or m-theory - we would therefore not have electronics or a computer screen for you to look at (let alone be communicating at light speed).  Only fools and religious folk get it into their heads that the world runs on magic and abracadabra simplicity.  There are very well understood reasons why people see ghosts, angels or demons - in many cases it is caused by Temporal Lobe Epilepsy; which can occur spontaneously or be brought about through exposure to magnetic or electrical fields.  So - please don't shrink from all the wonder and beauty science can reveal; it is infinitely more exciting and exhilarating than the flights of fancy that came up a hubbly bubbly pipe in a tent twenty to sixty centuries ago.

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"Anon@8.49am" - When you say "What surprises me all the time (in science) is that everything is never full proof " - I think you are misunderstanding science - the essence of good science is 'disproving' things; in science there are no golden calves - everything is up for peer review and dispute; that is what makes it vibrant and propels it. The physical world is immensely complex; the fabric of spacetime built on quantum-level sub atomic particles in a 10-dimensional environment is deeply entwined with knowable but mysterious interactions that will still take us decades and possibly centuries to understand. But, we have mage massive progress already. To draw on one example; had scientists dusted their hands off 200 years ago when Newtons equations adequately described gravity (at our mid-sized and mid paced human level); had everyone bowed down to those laws as immutable and not appreciated that at the cosmic and atomic level time and dimensions are completely different; we would not today have relativity, quantum theory, string or m-theory - we would therefore not have electronics or a computer screen for you to look at (let alone be communicating at light speed). Only fools and religious folk get it into their heads that the world runs on magic and abracadabra simplicity. There are very well understood reasons why people see ghosts, angels or demons - in many cases it is caused by Temporal Lobe Epilepsy; which can occur spontaneously or be brought about through exposure to magnetic or electrical fields. So - please don't shrink from all the wonder and beauty science can reveal; it is infinitely more exciting and exhilarating than the flights of fancy that came up a hubbly bubbly pipe in a tent twenty to sixty centuries ago.

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@Meme-man 08h44am."In a handful of beach sand there are around 10,000 grains - and on a clear night, out of the city, you can see just under 10,000 stars. In truth though, there are more stars (or suns and now we know; solar systems with planets) in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of earth." I know you don't know this but you have just quoted "the fairytale book" from Genesis22:15-17.You paraphrase it here but same nonetheless.In this You have fulfilled another ure in Deuteronomy 30:14 that says:'The message is very close at hand;it is on your lips and in your heart so you can obey it'

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What surprises me all the time is that everything is never full proof as science would have us believe or is expected to be. Models always carry a huge amount of uncertainity. Trying to fit the universe into a computer model is very amusing at the very least. Well I guess it keeps some of us busy. The universe is way too big and complex for our brains to comprehend. Earth out of all the planets is for us humans and not any other. All the explorations into space can only reveal what God has already created in his infinite wisdom. You dont need a telescope to know that galaxies are expanding and that other life forms are out there - what we call angels and demons and other life forms - in fact they always pay us a visit from time to time - if you have the Godlike character you know (and can encounter the good ones) and people of the old who did not have the sophisticated equipments knew that -yes I know you ll call that mythology. Science can only work with what God has already created to verifydiscover existing things that were previosuly hidden to us though the physical senses. Man cannot and does not have the capability sciene or not to create life from scratch. Only God can. Stop trashing the bible - it is real and alive.

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To emphasize what Blackfoot @8.26pm said: Our sun is a star close to us, the stars are suns far away. In a handful of beach sand there are around 10,000 grains - and on a clear night, out of the city, you can see just under 10,000 stars. In truth though, there are more stars (or suns and now we know; solar systems with planets) in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of earth. But how much space is there? Well - to get a ratio - if you took all the matter in the universe - all the stars and their planets - and represented their total volume as a single grain of sand - how big a 'room' would you need to put that grain into to represent space? Well - you'd need a room 32km wide, 32km deep, and 32km high (about the size of False Bay and 3 jumbo jet altitudes high)... and in all that space there is a single grain of matter - which is then shattered into a trillion pieces and spread about evenly into galaxies and clusters. The sizes are something you can't easily comprehend. One thing is certain though - a bronze age desert tribe of nomads didn't have "the better connection" to figure out and record the realities of the universe.

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For the christian faith to be correct, it means that their god would have had his son crucified on each of the inhabited planets. Don't make me laugh even louder than I do at present. Why is it that after thousands of years of evolutionary progress, some still feel the need to believe in faity tales ? Carl Sagan and Ivor Shklovskii did the maths years ago, but few realised the true magnitude of the work. There is simply no way that we are alone in the universe, even in our galaxy. What far too many fail to grasp is the sheer magnitude of the universe, our galaxy or anything related to interstellar space.

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"he bathong!"@04:01 - "truth"? Truth by what measure? Don't say "the bible" - that old book has been debunked loooooong ago as a collection of fairytales. The only "truth" that exists is the one that you're looking at - electricity driving a computer running on electronics with this; my response to you; beamed from my computer via satellites to you; this 'truth' is theorized in physics and quantum physics - it is manifested by science and in no way connected to the delusion of 'magic', superstition or supernatural nonsense.

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"he bathong!"@04:01 - "truth"? Truth by what measure? Don't say "the bible" - that old book has been debunked loooooong ago as a collection of fairytales. The only "truth" that exists is the one that you're looking at - electricity driving a computer running on electronics with this; my response to you; beamed from my computer via satellites to you; this 'truth' is theorized in physics and quantum physics - it is manifested by science and in no way connected to the delusion of 'magic', superstition or supernatural nonsense.

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@Chris.Right on Bro.God is the beginning and the end.i find it interesting that the name Michael means "Who is like the Lord?" Meme-Man , no one is like Him.the sooner you embrace the truth the better.

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Hello Chris; No - not I'm not Glen - I'm Michael - I disagree that it's to find another planet to colonize. If that were the case we've already found it - Mars; If we had the technology (and we won't for at least 50 years - that's only *if* there was political will to do so), we'd have to terraform the planet to our needs, and that would take 200 years. With current technologies even the nearest planetary system is 4.5 light years (or 45-trillion KM away; chemical rockets would take almost 100,000 years to cross that distance; and we don't even know if it has a planet in the habitable zone. Estimates are that the nearest is 20 light years - 5 times more distant. Your mention of "10 to 50 years" is a blink of time - scientists will most definitely still be working on many things, I agree; but we will be a lot closer. Life is very complex, we have to first define what life is and that is not entirely clear (it is self replication and it is 'intelligence'), then we have to understand it in order to create it; but we are much closer now than ever before; eventually we will get it right, though perhaps not in our lifetimes. Let's presume that god does exist; he or she has to be very very complex; so where did god come from? You can't say "he's always been there" because that is not an answer; that is just deferring a challenge

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Meme-man - is you real name perhaps Glen ? PS - just posted a new comment below, dont know if the moderators will post it or not yet.

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This whole idea of trying to find life on other planets is mainly connected to trying to find a planet that humans can colonise - ie that is "hospitable" to us humans. You might call my theory outrageously simplistic, but in 10 years or 50 years when scientists are still searching what will you say then ? Scientists have been trying to "create" life for quite a while now as well and so far all they can do is modify or duplicate existing cells. This is because only God can CREATE life from dead matter (like a rock or clay), we need to have existing life first to play with. This is because all life emanates from God, he breathed the breath of life (himself) into dead matter when he created life. All life emanates from him and that is why we are made in his image. Its almost like we are clones of him, or his children (as he calls us). It all makes scientific sense !

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@Chris 7.44pm; I echo Cobus & Madhir comments; to get a version of earth as we know it with life as we know it; yes... the probabilities of all factors occurring make it highly unlikely to duplicate. That said - with >100-billion chances of this occurring in just our galaxy (Milky Way), it is possible and probable (though statistically so far away it's unlikely we'll ever have contact with known physics). However, there are likely beings out there derived of extremophiles using, say, silicon (rather than carbon) as a base to life; free 'swimming' mid way into their super-dense atmosphere (rather than being surface dwellers); not using visible light (portion of the electromagnetic spectrum) and eyes as primary senses, but rather, say a bias and shift to infrared or ultra violet; living at at a vastly different pace of life (slower or faster) and size (dictated by inherent gravity on that planet). They may be more like colonies (as jellyfish are in the sea) than individuals. We just don't know till we discover them. The message is - don't get so hung-up on finding 'identical' life and beings to ourselves - there will be life; guaranteed. The myth of a god existing and making just us in all the vast extent of the universe is outrageously simplistic.

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IOL - I agree fully with @Chris 7.51pm - your comments section NEEDS A FACELIFT - allow us to register (you then have faithful subscribers - and can re-market to us!0, post rules and do away with moderator for every comment (save money and user frustration); give an 'abuse' button that flags rule breaking comments to moderator for review. Please - because the nanny-system you're using is 10-years behind any other site in the world and you will lose readerscommentators.

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@Chris - all that 'perfectness' you are talking about lead to life as we know it on earth, however it does not mean that those conditions are the ONLY conditions that will cause life to develop elsewhere. @1Syntra1 - mate, you want a photo to show you a planet that is trillions of kilometres away??? I can only say wow....

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@Meme-Man.Shocking.Ithink I'll fast for you instead.He bathong metlholo!

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Eugene Terreblanche came from one of those planets, ... hence "ET".

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The blueprints of life far and beyond do not depend on our mundane measurements and grossly limited scope of perception. But mankind is so egotistical that his narrow-mindedness forces him to think that life can only exist outside this planet only if it conforms to his scientific models of existence which are present here on earth.

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