Slashdot Mirror
Vatican Debates Possibility of Alien Life
Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first ever conference on alien life, the discovery of which would have profound implications for the Catholic Church. For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church. Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God 'made man in his own image' and Jesus Christ's role as savior would be confused; would other worlds have their own Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal? Just as the Church eventually made accommodations after Copernicus and Galileo showed that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and when it belatedly accepted the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution, Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible's teachings. 'Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God,' says Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and one of the organizers of the conference. Others do not agree. 'If you look back at the history of Christian debate on this, it divides into two camps. There are those that believe that it is human destiny to bring salvation to the aliens, and those who believe in multiple incarnations,' says Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist. 'The multiple incarnations is a heresy in Catholicism.'"
So the bullshitters have changed their story after it's shown to be implausible. It's not like they had much choice. People are leaving that organization in droves.
Current Catholic theology is the result of about 1500 years where some of the most powerful minds of occident contributed to build a quite solid intellectual building. It might be based on nonsenses but still it's internal coherence and its resistance to foreign attacks is quite good.
"extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God 'made man in his own image'"
Surely it would be a problem for those too literalist (the ones that really believe the universe was built in six days, Noah's ark, Metusellah living 600 years, etc.) but for Catholics, God's image has nothing to be with having two arms or five and two heads or breathing liquid methane; it's about self identity and the thought of our own transcendence so probably any intelligent alien (non self-concious non-intelligent alien life pose no problem) would still fit the definition.
"Jesus Christ's role as savior would be confused"
Minor problem: Rome would say that each intelligent species would take its own path towards or against salvation and that's all. Regarding the heaven chores (angels and all that stuff) they are both real things and methapores of the relationship with divinity and you are done.
"would other worlds have their own Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal?"
Both stanzas are true at the same time. Literally that would be no problem for Catholic church, after all its God is one and three at the same time; logically it's still not a big problem: the path to redemption (or the lack of) would be tied to the local History of those aliens; they either don't need redeption (rationally that could be the case, of course I don't think Rome would accept that; they would be out of job), or they found their own path or they came to know about us so they can learn about Christ and share our own redemption (they know *now* that Christ did die for them to so their souls can be saved etc.).
"says Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer "
Of course, it had to be a Jesuit. Quite clever folks, those Jesuits.
"The multiple incarnations is a heresy in Catholicism"
Yes. But since God is uber-everything (almighty, omniscient...) it's easy to acomodate the idea that there are a lot of different ways for a mere mortal to be made in God's image (and even real reincarnations might be accepted by Catholics if aliens are involved; they'd just say that it's no "real" incarnation but kind of larval state: just as a worm and a butterfly seem very different but they still are the same individual you might incarnate on an alien or the other way around and still being accepted as being the same individual -that wouldn't be too hard a problem for Catholics: Christ showed us there was live beyond human death, etc.).
It's been 425 years since Bruno argued in De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi (Italian; use Google translate) that the universe was infinite and contained innumerable stars, with countless planets around them, some containing life.
He was pretty far ahead of his time... far enough ahead that in 1600 the Church had him burned at the stake. Good to see they're getting round to considering his ideas, albeit a little bit belatedly.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I don't know if AC's get notifications when someone responds, but I'll recommend a couple of SF books by Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow and Children of God. In the first, extraterrestrial life is discovered, and the Jesuits have a plan! She deals deeply with the question of whether non-humans have souls, etc.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
Since he has no body, so what is meant by "created in his image" is more to do with our sentience, consciousness and knowledge of good and evil. This is how we are like him. Kind of like if we were to create a sentient program, who is "in our image" but looks like a computer.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
The definitive SF novel is 'A Case of Conscience' by James Blish (winner of the 1959 Hugo).
I said "inherit" worth.
Yeah, you said it twice. I think you meant "inherent".
This space up for sale.
Enjoy your superstition. It has no effect on reality.
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=suicide+bomber&btnG=Google+Search&meta=lr%3D&aq=f&oq=
Deleted
I was under the assumption that no scientific theory can be proven with 100% certainty. Are you simply holding religious views to a higher standard than you hold your own?
Well, that's "by definition" one aspect of a scientific theory. You're right, because a scientific theory is a formulation of a model that maps to past observations, it can only ever be disproved, and never proved, as we don't rule out the possibility of as-of-yet unobserved irregularities that would disprove it.
The flaw in your comment is that you are comparing religious views to scientific theories.
While it may never be "proved", a more important aspect of a scientific theory is that it can be used to make predictions. And those predictions, if right, can serve to support it (and also give it some scientific value).
Take for instance Newton's gravity: at the time of its formulations, it was vastly sufficient for its applications, and useful to calculate projectile trajectories, etc. Then we started noticing that it fell short for certain applications, and Einstein's theory of relativity became a more accurate model for many uses. Now everybody knows that Einstein's theory of relativity isn't "correct", as some observations show. However, it's still very useful.
The predictive ability of a scientific theory is as close to "proof" as you get. Religious views cannot, and should not be compared to scientific theories. If certain beliefs make you happy, you are free to hold them, but if you want your beliefs to have any weight in society (for instance, policy or otherwise), I think it's reasonable that you be expected to show their value and how they may be rationally justified.
Wait a minute, are you one of those who consider ID to be a scientific theory?
This space up for sale.
There were plenty of people from the time of Jesus's death through many centuries who denied or argued various aspects of Jesus's humanity, divinity, status as a prophet or the Messiah, and resurrection.
The current Bible canon is only a selection of the books that the Catholic Church decided were the right ones in the 16th century. They also had to select one of at least two available manuscripts for what became the Old Testament. Other denominations have other canons. There's a pile of books that are left out, and some which are left in that have disputed authorship.
A lot of what's in the Bible is historically accurate, some percentage of it is repeated and probably exaggerated, and there's a lot of stuff that was written in the same span of time (anywhere from 10 to 15 centuries) that isn't in there. You are glossing over so much history it's amazing. Just take a look at this one wikipedia page, if nothing else: The Bible and History.
Please explain how someone would "prove" anything that happened 2000 years ago without relying on the books that were written at the time.
You're both wrong -- you wouldn't prove it, in that you can't prove anything.
But your evidence is entirely within the pages of a single flawed book. Compare this to the evidence for other historical figures, like Julius Caesar, for example.
And IrquiM is right in that it is up to you to provide evidence, if you want your claims to be taken seriously. Otherwise, the correct default position is nonbelief -- not disbelief, simply nonbelief.
the bible is a compilation of the best preserved writings from that time,
Mostly because they are the writings religion wanted to preserve. Just look at the writings which were rejected by the Council of Nicaea.
That, and the fact that someone felt the need to forge an entry by Josephus doesn't exactly help your case.
generally accepted from a HISTORICAL pov as accurate.
Citation, please. From a historical perspective, the Bible is a work of fiction which borrows heavily from other traditions. The Jesus story in particular is borrowed from all kinds of stories repeated through the ages, and is almost a complete ripoff of the story of Horus. Here's a quick summary of Horus, stolen from the movie Religulous:
Written in 1280 BC, the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes a god, Horus, the son of the god Osiris, born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer, who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, healed the sick, the blind, cast out demons, and walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead -- "Asar" translates to "Lazarus". Oh yeah, he also had 12 disciples. Yes, Horus was crucified first, and after 3 days, two women announced that Horus, the savior of humanity, had been resurrected.
Ignoring that, it's certainly one of the more self-contradictory accounts, and you have yet to answer Hume's challenge -- in order for testimony of a miracle to be believed, you must show that it would be more miraculous for the testimony to be wrong than for the event to have actually occurred.
Now, which seems more miraculous: That a man rose from the dead, or that the testimony was mistaken? Which seems more likely?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That wasn't Aquinas, that was Anselm.
Dolphins are no where near as intelligent as humans. The second smartest animals on earth would be both species of chimp.
Learn something new.
Nazis were neither secular nor godless. Communists are typically godless, but not secular. Also, I think you mean the 20th century. There weren't any communist states until the beginning of the 20th century, and the Nazi party didn't exist until around the end of the first world war.
Learn something new.
"And unicorns don't appear anywhere in the Bible, AFAIK"
* "God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn."--Numbers 23:22
* "God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn."--Numbers 24:8
* "His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorn: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth."--Deuteronomy 33:17
* "Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?"--Job 39:9-12
* "Save me from the lion's mouth; for thou hast heard me from the horns of unicorn."--Psalm 22:21
* "He maketh them [the cedars of Lebanon] also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn."--Psalm 29:6
* "But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of the unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil."--Psalm 92:10
* "And the unicorn shall come down with them, and the bullocks with their bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness."--Isaiah 34:7
Shamelessly cut & paste from God, errr I mean Wikipedia.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Sure I could read a book and learn a lot more about E=MC^2. The point is, most of us don't. In fact, most people aren't scientists. What most of us rely on is exactly the same sort of authority that religion tends ot be based on. You are completely right that science is falsifiable, but I'm not talking about what the scientists do, I'm talking about what normal people actually do in their day to day lives. I am probably never going to learn more about why E=MC^2 because it isn't my field and I don't have time, so I take it purely on authority as do most people.
To pick a nit, GR is actually seemingly complete for all domains larger than a characteristic size, and though we've been looking for refinements, we've not found any yet. That's the whole crux of it -- GR works perfectly, if not in the quantum domain, and quantum works perfectly, if not in the GR domain. Whoops. Otherwise, good post.
Blog
Uhm, no:
Orthographically, E = mc^2, or more formally (as the relativistic energy-momentum relationship in Poincaré Einstein Planck form) E^2 - (pc)^2 = (m_0c^2)^2, was introduced in his special relativity paper, "Is the trajectorial inertia of a body dependent on its energy content?" ("Ist die Treagheit eines Koerpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhaengig"?) published in 1905, an English translation of which can be found here: http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/www/ [in the first equation -- note that l is used for E, and v is used for p and in the usual form today sets cos theta = 1 and rearranges the power terms]
The special theory of relativity elucidated a post-Newtonian mechanics which works against a coordinate set of 3 spatial dimensions and one timelike dimension in which Euclid's geometry postulates always held true in all the spatial dimensions, and the timelike dimension could by rotation become a spatial dimension with another spatial dimension becoming a timelike one, thus demonstrating an equivalence of length and time (i.e., allowing c to be a ruler in spatial and timelike dimensions).
Careful testing of the special theory of relativity revealed that the space-time geometry of the observable universe is *not* Euclidean, with the deviation from Euclidean "flatness" proportional to the gravitational potential at the point in space-time under study.
Einstein was able to develop several nonlinear equations that create a space-time which is flat locally (i.e., physical experiments are reproducible with the same results (required by Galilean relativity *and* by existing Einsteinean relativity) and local geometry will extremely closely approximate Euclidean geometry. (The latter is not too surprising since you can closely reproduce Euclidean geometry at small local scales on the surface of the Earth, which is so gently curved that you do not detect the non-flatness of your floor or desk). However non-local geometry can appear obviously non-Euclidean. By rotation of the dimensions, local timing appears to pass at one second per second, but remote timing of events in a different gravitational potential may pass slower or faster similar to how Lorentz contraction works in the case of observations involving relativistic speeds in special relativity.
The rocket-isolation room shows that gravitation works as an acceleration; there is an equivalent effect felt by the experimenter when he is in a sealed room at mean sea level as when the same sealed room is in a rocket ship being accelerated by about 9.8 m/s^2 -- with good insulation (no windows, for instance) there is no distinguishing between acceleration from the Earth's mass versus acceleration from the rocket engine.