[sciguy125]

This is targeted more toward the discussion in general than the issue at hand.

We all live in a delusional state. Actually, I haven't quite decided whether it's a delusion or an illusion. We see the world however we want to see it. If I want to believe that Microsoft is an evil corporate conglomerate, I’ll be able to find evidence to support it and I’ll be able to find a way to counter any evidence against my belief. (Do some research on dihydrogen monoxide if you’ve never heard of it before) We have a limited view of the world around us. We use what we can see to construct our delusion of the world. Let’s consider the following situation:

Ed walks into the other room. You hear the chop saw spin up, then Ed screams. As someone opens the door, you see red splatters all over the walls.

What happened? Well, it would be easy to assume that Ed cut his hand off. However, he didn’t. He wanted to get the ketchup out of the bottle, but didn’t realize that it would splatter all over the place when he cut into it. You didn’t have enough information to find the correct solution, but you did have enough to make a very good educated guess. If you never saw Ed again and never found out about the ketchup, you would have gone on believing that he’s missing a hand.

Anything you see can be interpreted in many different ways. With something on a large scale, like whether life exists anywhere other than earth, the number possible interpretations increases. Until we’ve checked every planet in the universe (or just find life elsewhere) this discussion will continue forever.