Meet an atheist ... who believes in God

[Humanist_Activist]

65. I haven't seen "Her" yet, I do want to see it, my problem is I don't, in general, like romances...

I find them mostly cliched and overwrought, this one seems interesting though.

I think, when you talk of "parallel evolutionary paths" that you are basically talking about convergent evolution. Its something that happens all the time on Earth, and I would imagine its being repeated many times throughout the universe. As far as how wide the diversity of life is in the universe, there really is no limit, is there. All things, confined by physics, of course, are possible.

To give an example, I would expect any alien species we encounter that evolved in an environment that has a source of light, will have some type of eye, whether as simple as an eyespot or as complicated as a squid eye, or even more complicated, like in a Mantis Shrimp. Eyes evolved independently on Earth at least 20 different times, because they are so damned useful for survival. The only exceptions would be environments such as caves, ocean floors, etc. I doubt there are any species living in the oceans of Europa that have eyes, for example, but they probably have excellent ears.

There are a few assumptions scientists do make about life, one is that life requires water in liquid form, at least in the initial stages of development, water is the best soluble liquid in the universe, its the place where the most interesting chemical reactions take place. Free oxygen may or may not be necessary for complex, multi-celluar animal life, it was required here, hence the Cambrian explosion, however, I will say that if we do discover life, particularly in the next few years, it will have oxygen as part of its respiration cycle, whether as a waste product or intake product.

I try to avoid terms like "highly evolved" because being well adapted is completely dependent on your environment, so there is no particular objective standard to follow. We humans, along with a few other species, evolved to help shape the environment to be better suited to us. If you are wondering about the others, I'm talking mostly about termites and ants, so not exactly high on the intelligence scale. We can even adapt the environment of space to be suitable to live in, for at least short bursts. In the future, we will probably be able to survive and thrive in even that environment, thanks to our technology.