Here's an odd, theological sort of question for debate

[Answer]

Originally Posted by Witty

I think you're missing the point tho, nobody worthy of calling themself a scientist should be saying they believe in aliens, they should not be dealing in belief, a real scientist would just observe and draw conclusions based on those observations, that is their profession. Belief is unneccessary and it doesn't have any worth as far as I can see, if you can't prove something to be true then don't speak it as truth. Why would you convince yourself something is definitely true if you do not have any evidence for it? That is very unscientific, all a real scientist should be saying is 'based on the evidence, other life forms must exist' they can not claim to believe it until they see it, at which point belief is useless because it becomes knowledge. Making an hypothesis is not the same as believing something, because if the evidence shows this hypothesis to be wrong they will change it, people with beliefs will not do so because they have no evidence in the first place.

You focusing too much on semantics and the word belief. I could say "I believe that if I leave a full bottle of water in the freezer, the liquid will eventually expand, causing the bottle (or at least part of it) to "explode" and that would have a scientific basis.

You're correct - no real scientist would EVER state that life on another planet is a certainty, but they CAN say that based on observational data in regards to the Earth's conception and organism evolution on this planet, respective to the similar conditions appearing in millions of other pockets of the universe, that they *believe* that life on other planets is *probable*

[Witty]

Originally Posted by Answer

You focusing too much on semantics and the word belief. I could say "I believe that if I leave a full bottle of water in the freezer, the liquid will eventually expand, causing the bottle (or at least part of it) to "explode" and that would have a scientific basis.

You're correct - no real scientist would EVER state that life on another planet is a certainty, but they CAN say that based on observational data in regards to the Earth's conception and organism evolution on this planet, respective to the similar conditions appearing in millions of other pockets of the universe, that they *believe* that life on other planets is *probable*

In that case they would be using the word belief incorrectly.