I once heard Hugh Nibley (LDS scholar) remark that the great, compelling thing about science fiction is the idea that anything is possible out there in the vast cosmos, or words to that effect. Patrick, I wouldn't worry about one guys wacky notions. I'm pretty sure he represents a TINY minority of "believers". --- On Fri, 7/24/09, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:

From: Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Sigh... To: "utah astronomy listserve utah astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Friday, July 24, 2009, 4:12 AM I'm just back home after my talk last evening at Bryce Canyon National Park and I'm a bid saddened.

This is my 23rd year of doing monthly programs at Bryce and my favorite part has always been the interaction with the audience afterwards.

But after last evening's talk a guy came up to me saying he wanted to play devil's advocate.  I told him "Great!" and asked what was on his mind.

At the end of my talks I always close with the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and use it to come up with a rough idea of how many stars there may be in our Universe and then note that with all of those stars out there made up of the same stuff as our Sun it's hard for me to imagine that we happen to be so lucky to have the only star with the only planet with life.

Well, the guy took exception to that.  He was calm, collected and well spoken, but thought that since God had created only us (here on Earth) there's no reason to believe that there is life elsewhere.

We went back and forth for a minute or two and finally I said we'd just have to agree to disagree and he walked away.

My one bit of consolation was that the small crowd that had gathered around us was vocally on my side.

But it still bothers me that otherwise rational people will place religious beliefs over those of science without even giving science a chance.

Ok, time to get News out so I'll stop here.  I just needed to vent.

patrick

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