

Discovering Martians Could Be Disappointing - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/why-discovering-martians-could-be-disappointing

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ant6n
It's odd, I see a clickbait headline like "why (this and that)...", I start
reading and expect an answer to the question right away. If there isn't one in
the first three sentences, I scroll down and see 'this shit is long', and I'm
not so interested in finding the answer.

Point is, the title will get me to click on the article, but it's probably
very detrimental to my desire to actually read it.

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cactusface
Maybe you're addicted to random payouts. 1% of the time it is worth it. For
example, District 9 could have the exact same title, but that's highly
entertaining.

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ant6n
point is, if you ask me to read a novel, don't give it heading that makes me
expect to read three paragraphs.

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murbard2
The main disappointment would be that it would make us more likely to
disappear as a civilization, since life is then less likely to act as the
great filter
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)

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spiritplumber
I wonder what finding life away from Earth would do to the creationism crowd.

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drdeca
Probably not much?

I mean, I guess it would depend on the specifics of the life in question, but
it does not seem to inherently contradict anything, from any thing that
immediately comes to mind.p

(Speaking as a creationist)

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keedot
I would expect absolutely no change at all. If you're able to ignore science,
then why believe that a robot is actually on Mars anyway. Why believe that the
magic box that you connect to the computer exists at all. If you're going to
ignore science, then why would you try to rationalize at all. It's not like we
put the smart kids in computers, engineering, physics, maths, chemistry, and
physics; but then put the 'special' kids in paleontology. To believe a book
over hard science because you were told to demonstrates a lack of critical
thinking and a propensity to self delusion. I would expect a headline in a
Christian blog to be "Scientists fake Mars life" or some other such nonsense.

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baddox
> I would expect absolutely no change at all. If you're able to ignore
> science, then why believe that a robot is actually on Mars anyway.

You don't need to go that far. I don't think many creationists question
whether we have a robot on Mars, or many other scientific claims that don't
involve the distant past. I see no reason why extraterrestrial life has any
incompatibilities with creationism, apart from the already-existing
incompatibilities between scientific consensus and creationism (namely, the
age of the Earth and evolution by natural selection).

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mikeash
God created life on Mars for Reasons.

Seems like a pretty simple thing to reconcile.

