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Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible
An anonymous reader writes "According to BBC, the director of the Vatican Observatory stated in an article titled 'Aliens Are My Brother' that intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space. 'The search for forms of extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God. — Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God.' Mind that this is not the same director who said that evolution is more than a mere theory — that was Father Coyne. I myself agree. There might be intelligent beings created by God in outer space even if there are none here on earth."
But of course only WE were created in His image, right?
I'm glad that the Catholic Church is taking an educated view of the sciences, with the support of evolution, and now this. Of course this will also lead to many useless comments about pedophilia, non-existance of God, and other useless flame wars.
Scientific illiteracy here in the states is really bad, and I'm embaressed that my church has a more progressive attitude than our current administration. This should change with the next admin thankfully.
This is Slashdot, and everyone needs to get their 2 cents in, but please try to submit meaningful/useful posts.
..........FULL STOP.
It's the same old problem of infinite regress when you try to state that a complex thing has to have a more complex designer. An über-powerful deity has to be much more complex than a human (or alien) and you end up with a bigger problem than the one you started with and you have explained exactly zero. And that's without even mentioning that there is no evidence of any form of supernatural creation of living beings (or anything else for that matter).
If god is omnipotent than he(she/it) can appear in any form (say a burning bush).
Therefore god must have created us in the image of the only part of him that doesn't change. His morality, his way of thinking and his personality. We have a dim image of this immutable portion of god.
Therefore aliens COULD look very different but still be created in his image.
The only remaining question is how did they get so many light years from eden?
Well, I would prefer it if they made policy changes that actually changed people lives, like dropping their stupid stance on condoms.
They also argue that if you pray for something really really hard, the invisible man in the sky might make it happen. So which is it? Is prayer useless because god never interferes? Or is god an egomaniacal prick, who'll let thousands of people die for no particular reason, but will intervene in human affairs when you ask him real nice like?
There are two main theories groups that attempt to explain the creation of the Universe and the origin of life and humanity.
Group 1. Big Bang & Evolution. Essentially this version says, it all just happened, mostly by accident but with the amount of time and mass involved it was inevitable.
Group 2. Created by God (or gods). Essentially this version says it all originated from the imagination of a being with virtually unlimited intelligence and power.
You know what I find cool? That under both scenarios it's almost inevitable that we will encounter other intelligent life, somewhere out there.
Why? Because accidents tend to repeat when the conditions allowing them are also repeated. Sul isn't that uncommon a sun type so why shouldn't other Yellow dwarfs have wet rocky planets? And why shouldn't some of those mud-balls have critters on them ? Even intelligent critters?
As for the creation version. That makes it even more likely that the universe would be swarming with intelligent life. Religious people believe the Earth is teeming with life because God enjoys playing with DNA. So why wouldn't he just go wild when working with whole galaxies rather than just a single planet?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
You don't understand the catholic mindset :)
The whole point is to believe in it against all odds and, specifically, despite the fact that nothing happens.
I find it weird, too.
OTOH, I can imagine that the mere act of such a submission to a state of mind can have certain desirable effects (and, of course, also undesirable ones). I don't think it's an accident that many other religions propagate a certain way of "giving up".
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Steve Jobs is Buddhist. He could believe he is a Buddha himself, and the funny thing is, even if he's wrong there's nothing wrong with that. It's not like there's an ISO Standard Buddha, and nobody would take his sutras seriously anyway.
Sam ty sig.
When you get right down to it, nothing can contradict that a supernatural being exists outside of it's actually appearing to us ... at which point it would become a natural being since we could observe it.
I can believe that the only two people in the world are Steven Hawking and Darl McBride and that ice cream is made from grub worms. If anyone provides me with evidence to the contrary, I can always say "Ah, but that's just what $DEITY wants you to think!"
The only thing a belief in a deity doesn't support is non-belief in a deity.
Group 1 doesnt say its inevitable that we'll meed other intelligent life.
It says that there probably will be other intelligent life.
The chance of us meeting them is next to nothing.
Space is *big*.
The important message is that good scientific ideas can come from anywhere, even from Catholic priests, and you don't judge an idea by where it came from, but by whether or not it does a good job, for example by making falsifiable predictions.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
You are applying human categories of thought to life forms that evolved completely separately from us.
Personally I got tired how all the good things that happened in my life were God's blessings and how all the bad things were just part of some incomprehensible plan. A lot of non-believers like to talk about how religion is popular because it gives people hope, but for me it was a millstone around my neck. Imagine the kind of self-esteem issues one develops after being repeatedly told that you didn't really earn the good things in your life, and that the bad things in your life happened for some reasons beyond your comprehension.
I feel a lot better now that my life is my own to control. And its nice to know that sometimes bad things happen for no reason, and not because I've inexplicably displeased some supreme being.
Sorry, kind of off-topic, but I felt like sharing. The kind of logic you outlined in your post is probably the #1 reason I'm no longer religious. I always find it amusing that so many people view religion as comforting, since it was quite the opposite for me.
So you hate the Catholic Church because their God (who happens to also be the Jew's God, Christian's God, and, come right down to it, the Muslim's God), drowned thousands of innocent children in a tsunami. Nevermind that He did NOT drown several billion other children that day.
I'm not sure if you're being serious, because my sarcasm detector is wonky, but are you seriously suggesting that not committing heinous atrocities is an admirable quality in a all-powerful being? That'd be like praising my friend John because, as far as I know, he hasn't killed anyone and dumped their bodies in the river. Or maybe like people who proudly state that they take care of their children, as if not leaving them to die in ditches is some extraordinary praise-worthy quality. Its kind of expected that normal people not do horrible things, much less omniscient, omnipotent beings.
Personally I'd like to describe God in terms other than "Allows thousands of people to die for no reason, but at least he isn't genocidal." Well as long as you ignore several books of the Old Testament.
The thing is, as far as we know we have no control over what happens after we die. We may, like in Discworld, get to choose. That would be nice; you would get your fading into nothingness and I would get to go meet my ancestors, watch the history of the world in 3D, and maybe hang out with God and have a few beers :)
;) It seems quite likely they have I suppose, I'm not very well educated in such matters.
I just had a strange thought while wondering how to phrase my own thoughts on the nature of the universe (possibly multiverse? was reading a bit about it on wikipedia earlier) and how amazing it is that anything exists. I always get freaked out by it when I think about how something has just always been there. Even now.. it really just makes no sense. No science can explain it, religion can't explain it.. and my thought was that even if God exists then he could be just as confused at his own existence as I am about mine... It's just not possible to conceptualise something coming from nothing, or something just always being something. No matter how much I think the Universe makes no sense though, it still hangs on defiantly and makes the stairs in the hall creak.
Has any philosopher ever made a similar statement about God probably being as confused at his origins as we are?
which is totally what she said
Faith and delusional are derived from concepts involving evidence, reasoning, and proof. All logical concepts in the strictest meaning. It's generally considered that math (regardless of branch) is discovered, and that logic is a subset of math (discrete math). I think an alien would be hard pressed to be considered intelligent with no concept of logic, and would be capable of groking faith & delusion with. However, earthform sex is never going to make any sense to those poor suckers.
"So even in the oldest context, Evolution fits fine with the Bible." which would somehow say that the bible is the mass to measure everything on it.
So it should read "the bible stories can be made fit with evolution (which we know to be a very successful theory at explaining all life today as we know it)". It is not that evolution fits, it is that the bible is interpreted in the light of evolution.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Gravity and electricity are also just theories. Evolution is at least as much a fact as these things.
Second, assuming for a second the whole Christianity ball of wax is true, there's no reason that God wouldn't send down his other son, Skip, to some aliens, in a form they could understand. The ideals Jesus taught weren't restricted by a specific geography or biology. "Be nice to each other" might resonate as well on Argus-7 as it does on Sol-3.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.