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Vatican Astronomer Comments On Extraterrestrials
An anonymous reader writes "There's an Astrobiology.net interview up with a Vatican astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, who also curates one of the world's largest meteorite collections. On the possibility of a non-terrestrial lifeform, he says initially 'I don't know', followed by three scenarios. First, he argues: 'We find an intelligent civilization and there's no way in creation we can communicate with them because they're so alien to us. We can't talk to dolphins now. In which case, we'll never know.' Secondly, he suggests: 'We find the intelligent civilization. We can communicate.' As agents of free-will, the aliens are self-aware of good and evil, thus convertible to some terrestrial religion. Thirdly: 'We find a dozen civilizations out there, and a bunch of Jehovah's witnesses go up and convert them all.' The question of whether an alien civilization might convert Earth to their religion, or become a religion unto themselves, is left unconsidered. This compares to the many reasons people give for hosting a SETI@home client, including that ET contact would unite humanity, challenge religion, or all of the above."
See the video. Check out Wired.
The video looks pretty convincing, and according to AP and Reuters, the Mexican military is standing behind the story.
The detailed information is at Rense.
The interesting thing is that the Mexican plane was a drug interdiction aircraft with advanced radar and forward-looking infrared. It was designed precisely for the task of finding, intercepting and identifying unidentified aircraft, and it sounds like the data was handled in a way that would meet legal evidentiary standards (for obvious reasons: it was designed to convict drug smugglers).
Maybe the Vatican missed a fourth option: they're already here.
There is, of course, an existing tradition of Christian thought on extraterrestrial life.
C.S. Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy is probably the best known example: Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra took H.G. Wells as its point of departure and speculated upon other world in which the corruption and redemption of humanity and nature had followed different courses. (I never got far into Vol. 3, so I can't recommend it.) Probably both are in a library near you.
Going back a little farther, the poetry of the Catholic writer Alice Meynell (1847-1922) touched on a few of these themes, e.g. in 'Christ in the Universe':
Meynell's works are available online.
This material's been done.
Since the calendars have been fucked around by the Conspiracy, 1998 hasn't arrived yet and the space critters from Planet X are yet to arrive (or "Bob" fucked up and transcribed 8991 as 1998, the year of the Rupture). However, once they do, they're only concern is to take this planet as the valuable resource it really is. They rescue all the Subgenii and whisk them off the planet to have sex with space goddesses with three pussies and fifteen tits, and destroy all the Pinks infesting
Earth.
Anyway, that's what it says in The Book of the Subgenius. You decide.
Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.