Do you consider people closed-minded that don't believe in extraterrestrial life?

[walsufnir]

Jay520 said:

walsufnir said:
Another problem is that we suggest that "life" has to be similar to what we call life which could be entirely false, of course :)
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Well, "life" has to be what we call life since humans have invented the word. The word itself outside of human context is meaningless.

Yes, in some way you are right but there are also scientists who take the word further than most do. For example, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_life.

What we call "life" is especially derived from "living", so a being "starts", "lives" and "dies". It reproduces and behaves, it eats, it is in competition with other beings. This applies to almost known ways of life as we know it.