First off, you’re wrong about unicorns. There is no evidence in favor of the nonexistence of unicorns. Point me to it. It’s not there. HOWEVER, we also don’t have any evidence that unicorns do exist, and that is far more important, for reasons I will get to shortly.
Second off, I want to point out that I haven’t tried particularly hard to make a case for my own atheistic views, mainly because this is the science thread and whatever I believe is irrelevant when compared to that which is established fact. As such, I have done my best so far to couch what I’ve said on the subject in general rather than personal terms. I find it crass to divide other posters into camps such as atheists, the religious, or suchlike. Address the facts and the arguments based on those facts, not the character of the people advancing them.
(All bets are off outside this thread. Shitheadery will be dealt with appropriately.)
Third off, you have been accused of something that, if not trolling, is at least aiding and abetting trolling by somebody else. I want to make clear that I don’t care either way if this is so, and that I only discuss this because it’s a subject that’s interesting to me and that maybe other people might enjoy reading it if I talk about it a little.
Putting that outside, you are absolutely wrong with regard to the necessity of providing alternative hypotheses. Suppose that we have not so much as an inkling of how gravity works. We don’t have the discoveries of Newton or Einstein to back us up. All we have is the observation that if we drop something, it tends to fall downward. If you suggest that invisible fairies are taking that object from your hand and pulling it down to the ground, I am not wrong for doubting your assertion, nor am I wrong for asking you for evidence of the existence of these invisible fairies before I’m willing to accept your explanation as true. This has nothing to do with whether or not I offer you an alternative explanation. If it isn’t demonstrated to be true, it shouldn’t be accepted as true.
What you are essentially saying is that, in the absence of any competing explanations, the person who proposes the only explanation is the one who deserves to be believed–purely on principle that his is the only explanation. This is completely irrespective of what basis that explanation is made on, even if there is no basis at all, because nobody has offered anything else. It doesn’t take much imagination to come up with scenarios in which this approach goes badly awry. And, in fact, it is this approach from which many incorrect beliefs have stemmed that have since been debunked by the scientific approach of doubting everything on principle.
You may want to look up scientific skepticism, the null hypothesis, and the philosophic burden of proof for a more elaborate explanation of why what I’m telling you is so.
For the record, nobody, not even the greatest scientific minds on Earth, adhere to these strictures perfectly. For one thing, nobody’s perfectly consistent about doing anything. We can forgive lapses in anybody’s behavior so long as it doesn’t cause a homicide or a persecution or something like that.
For another thing, applying habitual doubt to every last little thing in a person’s everyday life is impractical. There’s a reason why we have rules of thumb, common sense, and so forth. But for the really important stuff–such as if your friend tells you that it’s safe to open the gas valve on your stove and huff what comes out of it, or if cigarette companies tell you that their latest product is good for your health rather than bad for it, or if an ancient blood cult tells you that everything in existence was magicked down from the heavens thousands of years ago by an omnipotent being that cares deeply about your masturbatory habits–you should probably think twice about what you’re being told and demand some sort of concrete reason for believing as such. It is not enough, nor is it a requirement, that you simply be told differently by somebody else.
The thing is, when skeptical thinkers mess up in any way that matters, it’s usually other skeptical thinkers who catch it–such as in the scientific community, because calling bullshit when you see it is one of the essential things that enable science to work. The best available information changes constantly, and science changes in response–not with 100% perfection, but with a far better track record than literally any other way of thinking I’m aware of.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, SHIT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF LIFE ON FRICKIN’ MARS. Let me point out that all our direct studies of the habitability of Mars have so far been localized to the surface of the planet. It seems like there hasn’t been as much interest in the environment below the surface, which may yet contain a presently hospitable zone for life. Mars is not currently a geologically active planet, but it was in the past, which leaves open the possibility of caves, geothermal heat, organic molecules, underground water flow, and so on.
I love Mars.
But Jupiter terrifies me for reasons I’m not sure I can fully explain.
