Slashdot Mirror
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."
And this is in the 'science' section.
And it's nothing but a bunch of speculation about how to convert aliens to christianity.
My head is about to explode.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Despite the funny rating on this post, it probably is the truth. People will "interpret" the bible to mean that extraterrestrials are really angels; they're servants of God that guided us through the ages. Unfortunately, it is certain that there will be a bunch of loonies who also feel that extraterrestrials are obviously demons; man was made in God's image, after all. These are simply tests from above to see how we will adapt.
I should hope that a species more advanced than us wouldn't fall for creationist stories without a lick of proof. Okay, mod me down as flame bait... but if creationism wasn't so ingrained into our culture and upbringing every one of our religions would sound absolutely ludicrous.
That's funny, I have, several times.
Then again, if you go looking for them you'll find someone who believes anything you can come up with.
stuff
> The discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence would be catastrophic for organized religion. What if they have the exact same religion as one of the ones on Earth? Then it must be the correct one, and there's no such thing as faith anymore, and at least 80% of the Earth's population was wrong all along. What if they DON'T share any of our religions? Then ALL of ours must be wrong.
Europeans didn't find that problematic the last time they discovered a New World.
Religions tend to be very conservative about their beliefs, but they've always shown an ability to adapt when the chips are down. Encounters with extraterrestrials won't be any different.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If they do know the difference between good and evil, it's unlikely they'd convert to most Earth religions. Too much of a track record re: killing unbelievers.
We can't communicate with dolphins because we didn't have the need to do so.
:-)
If we knew they were trying to tell us a message and they actually tried to get the message across, resources would be made free so we
could communicate with them..
Communication is 2 ways, you have to make sure
you understand what they say, and they must also
make an effort to be understood and repeat if
necessary..
What about cats ? Do they say we can't communicate with cats ?
Sorry, I do communicate with my cats.
I don't know everything they say, and they don't
understand everything I say (I hope
but if they want to send me a message
(need food/attention/to be alone/go outside/..)
they get the message to me.
And if they do something they shouldn't, I also
make sure they get the message..
So yes to me that's communicating.
And now I'm thinking about it, yes, some
people can communicate with dolphins.
Dolphin trainers do train them and I assume
they will also learn to interpret the reactions
of the dolphins. They won't understand everything,
and we speak our own languages to communicate
(dolphins won't speak and we won't squeek),
but there is some limited communication.
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
Perhaps 'first contact' will spark a re-enacment of how so-called 'tribal' religions came to be replaced, violently or non violently by 'great religions.' (the Aiwa (sp?) in Japan were mostly replaced by the Japanese, the Hopi were replaced by Christians. Muslims spread over N. Africa replacing whatever proto-voodo gods were native there (I don't know) etc.)
The theme is this - religions for small, racially similar groups of people are replaced by religions for larger, less racially similar groups of people. Religion helps justify this takeover.
Great religions often deal more with conversion than tribal religions.
I wonder if this trend will apply to extra-terrestrial religions. Will such religions tend to be converting religions? Will Extra terrestrials have eliminated the notion of 'race' from their religion and culture?
If so, will such a culture focus on genetically assimilating creatures along with religious and cultural conversion?
Considering how universal Nietzche's 'Will to Power' is likely to be, I sometimes wonder if aliens will be like Nazis, but with forcible genetic engineering rather than gas chambers.
Furthermore, since religion and nationalism have always been strongly linked, what kind of religion will a space-faring race have, considering that they will be the first intelligent creatures who aren't bounded by nations and territory as we know it.
I think living in space will have a profound impact on nationality, and thus religion, because it will eliminate the notion of fixed land, which is the basis of nationality. If sattelites can become self-supporting it will allow people to redefine how they organize themselves and choose citizenship.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Illogical, Captain. S is huge, but every other value is completely unknown. It's quite possible that L and I are so small that intelligence arose only once in the whole universe. Just because we're here doesn't mean that anyone else is.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Can you really evangelize as an AC? Now there's a moral question.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The spiritual truths in all Earth's religions are basically the same:
1. There is a [higher being/a collective of higher beings/a higher force] which must be [revered/worshipped/honored].
2. You should be nice to people who profess to hold the same spiritual belief as you.
3. People who do not fall in the previous category are [doomed/below your standing/misguided] and should be [ignored/converted/killed].
Personally, I don't see how any religion could exist that does not hold these principles. Principle 1 must hold, otherwise it's no religion. Principle 2 must hold, because religions must bind people into groups or they will perish. Principle 3 must hold, because if someone believes his religion does not make him superior to others, he will convert to something that makes him feel better.
So, if anything, finding an alien religion that holds the same principles only shows that the aliens have the same sociological and psychological make-up as humans. It says nothing about the existence of God.
Actually, I think that if space-faring aliens believe in God, they will probably have a better concept of God than we do, and it is likely to be closer to the truth.
Ah, bonjour M. Pascal! It's been at least ten minutes since I last heard that one. Of course, the problem with this is that it applies to the beliefs of every other loony on the street, not just to yours.
Personally, I don't go around believing things just because they come with big threats attached to them, and I think that pretending to believe in a god on such dishonest grounds is a far worse insult to that god than simply not believing, in addition to being quite reprehensible moral cowardice to boot.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Yes the Jews and the Romans physically killed him, but it was ultimately His choice to die, and to that end we all killed him by failing to be perfect.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Hmm. So Jesus died for our sins but didn't die for their sins, and they didn't have their own Jesus either? This can only mean that god loves us so much more than he loves them.
I don't have to tell you what that kind of thinking usually leads to, do I? (hints: crusades, 9/11, war, torture, genocide, holocaust, terrorism)
Free as in mason.
I'm a linguist who spends a fair bit of time thinking about these sorts of things (I have a cat, of course!), and I just wanted to say that your post was very well-written and raises a few questions that I enjoy thinking about.
Your first point, that we haven't ever needed to communicate with dolphins and vice versa is a very good one that many professional linguists really don't get. Communication only comes about when it is an advantage to both parties.
One thing that is important here I think is to clearly distinguish communication from language. Most animal species can and do communicate with each other (and in some cases, with humans), ranging in complexity from ants to chimpanzees, but it is yet to be proven that any animals use language in any ways outside of a purely functional manner. Humans use language in so many ways - as a functional, communicative tool, as a system of recording facts, as a social construct for building groups of humans... I could go on. I don't think there are all that many documented cases of animals showing these kinds of behaviours.
But, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence! I personally have a feeling that cats do understand what humans say very, very well. Down to the word level. I'm not sure what their syntax is like (i.e. whether they can interpret meaning above the word level, as phrases or sentences) but Aristotle, my cat, picks up on quite a lot of phrases, such as 'vet', 'bad cat', 'good cat' and all those mundane things, including the name of every kind of food he likes. I also have a bilingual friend whose cats understand his English and Spanish very well. Of course, all this isn't very scientific, but there are reasons to suspect that cats do understand us very well. They have been hanging around us for a long, long time... perhaps since the dawn of farming techniques and granary construction, 2000 bce or earlier. You could even say we have a symbiotic relationship with cats, i.e. a mutually beneficial relationship. They eat the mice, birds and insects that come after our food, which is good for everyone. Except when they hunt the neighbours pigeons, stupid things. (Pigeons, not cats!)
I think there's still a lot we don't know about this kind of thing, but I'm always looking into it!
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
No, according to the Bible, works ("living a good life" in your words) don't count, no matter how great and wonderful you think you're being. Faith, and only faith gets the job done. It's an incredibly simple requirement: profess your faith in Jesus as your savior, accept the gift of redemption offered by his death (and proven valid by his resurrection). That's it. Nothing else to it. It's in black and white in the Bible. You'd have to actually read it to know that, though.
There's no ass-kissing involved. There's no difficult list of rules, either. The majority of the New Testament is philosophical explanation of Jesus' words, and guidelines for behavior given by the early apostles, not the direct handing down of a list of rules by God (like the Ten Commandments). The implication is that if you have faith, you will do your best to do God's will, as best as you're able.
The Bible reflects over and over that the default behavior of man is evil, not good. From person 1 straight on down, everyone screwed up. Person 2 disobeyed God, Person 1 colluded, Person 3 killed Person 4, etc. As simple as the list of Ten Commandments seems, have you kept them? Everyone says what an excellent set of rules they are, but I don't know anyone that has managed to keep them.
The Mormons had a solution to this problem: they imagine that Jesus visited North America, too. The "no fall" explanation is used in Lewis's books, particularly *Perelandra*. I'm afraid that the fundamental problem here is that those who imagine any kind of theodicy didn't have a grand enough vision of the scale of the universe: Christian theology (specifically the concept of the Incarnation) really wasn't designed to cope with a planet with separated hemispheres, let alone planetary systems separated by trillions of miles. You have to imagine either that there is no other life in the universe, or that only Earth Fell, or that the whole Universe Fell, but God figured that Earth (and specifically the Middle East) was the most important place to fix the problem and that it was ok for generations of millions of men and women (and maybe trillions or quadrillions of alien intelligences) who lived and died in a Fallen state, but without knowledge of Christ, and died after the Harrowing of Hell, to be denied the face of God because of the problems of interstellar geography.
As an aside, if you think that cats are impressive, try owning a dog sometime. Both I and one of my brothers go to college, and yet when my mother says one of our names, the dog immediately stands up and wags her tail. This is after not seeing us for months. Yes, household pets are quite adept at recognizing words, but can they string those words together to form more elaborate concepts? I would argue no. In the example of my dog, she can relate names to individuals (when we are actually present, saying "go to [name]" will produce the correct response), but she can't understand that a name can refer to someone who is not present. She certainly understands "would you like to go for a walk?" but can't understand "walk" in any context that does not involve taking her outside. Likewise with your cat, would it be able to understand it if you said something else was good or bad? Probably not.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Those who think they can disprove God by finding alien life better think again.
;)
There is NO REASON whatsoever to believe that Earth is the only creation, or even this universe. I happen to be Roman Catholic. The discovery of aliens would not shake my religious foundation one bit.
I see science not as competition for religion, but as complimentary. When we discover how things work, we discover more about God.
I have no problem accepting evolution as the PROCEESS that was used, for example.
I don't like the extremists on either side on this debate. On one side, you have the atheists, who think science can replace religion. Then, on the other side, you religious nutcases who think the Earth is only 5,000 years old, who scream BLASPHEMY! at you when you mention Mars is closer than it's been in 600,000 years.
But those types of nutcases aren't Roman Catholic, but they are a lot of my neighbors here in Easern Kentucky
We should be seeking to discover other life for many reasons, none of which have to do with proving or disproving God. Either task is impossible, BTW.
Corporatism != Free Market
It's still the same. At least morally. Do something for no good reason other than a threat.
How would you feel if someone walked into 7-11 you were in and said he was going to shoot everyone who didn't say green was thier favorite color, but those that did could leave right now and he'd pay them $50? Saying green is your favorite color wouldn't really hurt you and get you $50 in bargain.
You'd be ticked as all hell, and you wouldn't believe this guy liked you even if he said green was better for you in your everyday life.
Personally I'd rather be around people who do thier best to be good people than ones who half ass it, yet meet this special requirement for a better afterlife.
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to start believing in a being that behaves worse than a spoiled child, threatens those he says he loves, posseses contradictory powers, and has the morals of a sociopath. Especially when there are several such, all claiming to be the only one. And each on is running a different racket than the next, with the only major items in common is that the head believers all get special privilages here in this life, and a series of directives that make not believing a good way to get killed, or in more 'enlightened' cultures/times, meerly treated like a second class citizen and a leper.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Based on the information I've read, chances are fairly good that the first life we encounter will be bacteriological, not something as sophisticated as Mankind.
No, according to the Bible, works ("living a good life" in your words) don't count, no matter how great and wonderful you think you're being. Faith, and only faith gets the job done. It's an incredibly simple requirement: profess your faith in Jesus as your savior, accept the gift of redemption offered by his death (and proven valid by his resurrection). That's it. Nothing else to it. It's in black and white in the Bible
And in black and white in the Bible we find the exact oppposite:
"What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?" (James 2:14)
You'd have to actually read it to know that, though.
Let me guess: you also have to 'interpret it properly'.
Of course, the problem with this is that it applies to the beliefs of every other loony on the street, not just to yours
Yes, but if that looney does unquestionable good, why patronise him? Does that make you a better person?
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
Or we could go on a blood-ridden crusade for empire, leaving behind an endless stream of destruction and innocent deaths, which enrages the victims who start to believe that in the name of revenge, they posess the "right" to attack innocent people too. Oh wait, that's happening right here.
So if an alien species looks like us (has a mouth that serves respiratory and ingestion functions, a tongue) they probably evolved in similar circumstances and therefore have a basis for understanding.
But an incredibly different species could be extremely intelligent but we wouldn't be able to communicate (verbally, maybe even electronically) with them because their medium for thought transmission evolved in a completely different manner
Imagine a species that used special appendages to communicate, kind of like sign language. We wouldn't know where to begin because we don't have those appendages, and it would look like a bunch of flailing to us.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Most religions would fall over backwards for the chance to teach you about what they believe. Scientologists would rather that you didn't know what they believe, but want you to join anyway. And people think this is a real religion?!
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
And suppose we contact some alien civilizations; and some humans send them one of our Bibles; and the aliens say: "yeah! the same Savior came to our planet, too!"
Evidence works both ways, you know.
Personally, I'm an atheist, but I acknowledge that my atheism is falsifiable.
It's easy to point at other people's beliefs and say "look! they are gonna have such a crisis of belief when we expand our circle of knowledge!" But intellectual honesty and humility compels me to consider: what kind of evidence would make me change my mind about atheism?
The scary thing about the parent comment was that it was modded "informative" rather than "funny". There are some hardcore Subgenii out there I tell ya.
Praise Bob.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Everyone says what an excellent set of rules they are, but I don't know anyone that has managed to keep them.
Why do people keep pushing the Ten Commandments? Half the problem with Judaism at the time was that it was "function" lacking "form". After all, what happens when there's a conflict between two of the Ten Commandments (your parents tell you to kill someone, for instance)? That's why Christ simplified it in the New Testament.
Even Judaism realized that later on - What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.
(Yes, I know that Matthew 6 says that Christ said that the old rules still apply. Of course they do. They always will. The problem was that somehow people managed to miss the meaning of them - to God, they were obvious. To man, apparently it was too much.)
There's no difficult list of rules, either.
Yes there is - it's all through Matthew 5-7, though it boils down to the above - Love God above all others, and love your neighbor as yourself. That's it.
And those commandments are much easier to understand.
(So why are people pushing so hard for the Ten Commandments in courts? The Golden Rule is almost completely universal in almost all religions, and it has a lot less "wiggle room" - you're still a dork if you think about killing someone and don't do it, for instance)
Anyway, my point is that if you're pushing Christian doctrine, you shouldn't be pushing the Ten Commandments. You should be pushing the Golden Rule.
Note that I'm not commenting on what's necessary to get into heaven - that's a matter of belief in my eyes, though I firmly believe that any religion that believes that just saying the magic words "I believe in Jesus Christ" saves me, and the converse (not saying it means I can't be saved) is crazy - function without form. I can believe something without stating it. Heck, I can have faith and belief in something without knowing it.
But I'll stop there.
Nope, not everyone says they're an excellent set of rules. I don't. I for one think they're just about on par with any other ancient code of behavior or law -- a mix of obviousness and muddled ambiguity handed down by yet another set of self-appointed spokespeople for God.
We had a brief thing with the 10 Commandments at my kids' Public school, actually. Supposedly the existing "Code of Conduct" was all too "PC" -- a term mostly used to attack things you disagree with nowadays -- and we had a few parents who asked why we couldn't also post the Commandments instead (or failing that, also). So, we got a good chance to examine the two lists.
The current behavior code was full of stuff like "Show respect for others" and various words about becoming a good student and a good citizen -- an emphasis on learning how to be a good person and how to participate in American society. There was an interesting strain of "Civics Lesson."
The Commandments, well... We don't actually have a problem with students murdering each other at our little school, and as far as coveting our neighbor's wives goes, there isn't much danger of it among the grade schoolers I happen to know, and I'm not sure an advanced warning was all that useful for them. As a public school, Noble doesn't encourage idols of any sort (that being one of the several reasons for which the idea of posting the Commandments themselves was voted down). And so on.
In short the Commandments frankly didn't seem relevant to my kids' school lives, or really to their lives -- surely not more than any other list of advice. Not nearly as relevant as the existing conduct code, anyway. Where they did apply, they were mostly staggeringly obvious (Don't kill anyone). They reflected social mores of 2000 years ago; the "neighbor's wife" thing is more about women as property than about being faithful to your own spouse -- note that it doesn't mention husbands or tell you not to fool around with single college girls if you're married. (How many wives did Solomon have, again?) Granted, this was the KJV translation, but then nobody asked us to post anything in Aramaic or Hebrew or Greek.
That's leaving alone the whole "We're all evil by default thing, which is just so very Christian and so very not useful in figuring out how to live a moral life. If God wants to blame me for my inherent flaws, I defer to God entirely -- but not to a human spokeperson for God. No - Thank - You.
So no -- brzzzt -- not everyone says they're such a great idea. I personally think you'd do much better reading a Cliff's Notes version of Kant, as far as leading a moral life.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The act of faith, in itself, is a work. That is why "salvation through faith", while hugely popular, is in itself heretical. It's just a bolted-on idea with little Biblical basis. The comment that James is not canon is nonsense.
If you rewrite the grandparent post to say "salvation through irresistable grace", things start to make a lot more sense. If you accept the idea that Man is fallen (as it taught in the Bible), and is only redeemed through the grace of God (i.e. it is not by any work of ours that we are saved, as is taught in the Bible), then James starts to make sense. Faith, by itself, is only one manifestation of salvation--not salvation in and of itself--and works are an external expression of faith and salvation.
The inevitable question is, "How do you know if you are saved by grace, then?" Well, if you have faith, and you do works, it's a fair indicator.
Discussions like these are why I get so annoyed with religious discussions between believers and non-believers. Non-believers tend to lump all Christians under a single rubric, when Christian-on-Christian oppression is at least as significant as Non-Christian-on-Christian. We're hardly a homogenous group. (The same goes for Hinduism, Buddhism, and just about every other -ism, BTW, so the idea that "Hindus" won't have a problem with aliens is likely total nonsense.) It's intellectual laziness backed by raving bigotry when a non-believer lumps a Catholic with a Jehovah's Witness with a snake-handler. There is just as many key differences between them as there are between Perl and Java and Tcl/Tk hackers.
In reference to the news post itself, why is the Vatican speculating on alien civilization? We have less than adequate proof of alien life. We have no proof. When you look at the Hubble deep-sky photos, it's easy to say to yourself, "Gosh, all those galaxies, surely there's a civilization in at least one!" Who knows? I do know that there is less evidence for alien life than that Jesus walked the earth; but Jesus' existence is less than universally accepted among non-believers, while alien civilization is given serious thought.
Think about that--we have Old Testament prophecy concerning the coming of a Savior; we have New Testament witnessing to the fulfillment of those prophecies; we have new prophecies that the Savior will return with ultimate judgement. All of this is based on pretty reliable historical documents, and consistent over at least 4000 years. But we ignore this, and instead concentrate on wondering about alien civilizations and how they'll affect us? Even assuming that they do exist, what sense does it make to think they're even aware of us, or can ever reach us? So there's bug-eyed monsters in galaxy MCC-435PDQ, or whatever. Unless they have faster-than-light travel (another leap of faith that is bolder than the goofiest Christian Scientist praying for God to heal their kid's cancer), they will never get here. Generational ships and interstellar travel make fun science fiction, but the odds that ET is heading here because he's jonesing for Starbucks... well, it's just silly.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
This is the argument put forth in the book of James. Too bad it doesn't jive with Paul's argument (who argued that faith and faith alone would save, and that there is no work that will save). It also conflicts with Jesus at some point, who also argued faith and faith alone. But Jesus wasn't consistent on the issue of salvation at all.
I've found that the Bible becomes a whole lot less contradictory the more I work to understand what it says.
Take this example you've addressed here. In order to understand Jesus, Paul, James, and the various Apostles and their biblical teachings you have to know a fair amount about who they were, that is to say, the environments they came from and the missions they were called to fulfill.
I'll start with Jesus himself. Jesus' ministry was primarily to the Jews. In Jesus' time the Jews were the ancestors of God's chosen people Israel. It was correctly assumed that the Jews would the ones through whom the commandments of God and their teaching would be practiced and perpetuated. However, as it turned out, and this not unforeseen by God, Jesus found more evidence of faith in the Gentiles (read -- people excluded from God and the old covenant) than he did in Jews.
When I talk about faith or belief as Jesus did, I mean to do so in the context of what Jesus meant in identifying believers. Specifically, Jesus expected people to recognize him as being from God not in an unreasoned or necessarily blind manner as is commonly taught by many Christian religious of today, but rather as of evidenced by the healing, supportive, and often corrective nature of the works he performed. The fact that these works were often miraculous was really of secondary importance in that regard. Jesus spoke ill of the Jews when they attempted to castigate him as demonic on the basis of their extremely limited understanding of the Scriptures they were entrusted with. That, and of course, they wanted to kill him. So when modern 'Christians' tell people that they are going to hell because they are unbelievers, they usually don't know what they are talking about any better than the old Jewish authorities did.
So since Jesus ministered to both Jews and Gentiles, you have to interpret what he said to those very different audiences accordingly. Please stay with here; I think it will become more clear later what I mean.
Jesus called the Apostles to minister almost exclusively to the Jews. Paul is the only Apostle, aside from Peter perhaps, who had any significant presence among the Gentiles. And there was good reason Paul was chosen to minister to the Gentiles. Understand that the Gentiles had been throughout history excluded from participation in God's covenant relationship with Israel. This meant they did not even have the law let alone any assistance in obeying the commandments. As a result, Gentile societies evolved such that murder, theft, trickery, sexual perversion, coveting and venerating supernatural power (be it holy or not), and other evils became not just an aspect of their civilization, but an integral part of their culture. As a result, the typical Gentile couldn't even hope to identify a good work from an evil one let alone perform one. And these were the kind of people Paul was called to minister to. Now why would God have chosen Paul?
Paul himself was a Pharisee, a Jewish religious authority descendent from a line of Jewish authorities. As a Pharisee, Paul sought out and persecuted Christians. In fact, in God's eyes, he was no better than the Gentiles and understood who God was little more than they did. At least that was so until the Lord appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. That was the turning point Paul's life - Paul's experience of justification and the beginning of his salvation. So here we have a Jew that by his own experience of salvation, could relate with and teach Gentiles who were as 'dead' in the faith he once was. If your traditional enemy comes to you with a different message than his forebea