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.'"

Comments

Catholics are quite clever

[turbidostato]

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.).

Re:Catholics are quite clever

[lwsimon]

Being raised Catholic, I questioned the idea of alien life. My priest got a little bit exasperated at times, but he sat and explained the catechism to me, and there is no problem with accepting aliens. Further, the Church would not necessarily even want or need to convert them, regardless of their religion.

Christianity holds that man fell from grace in the Garden of Eden, where he was tricked into consuming fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, against God's commandment. If He created an alien species, then they may have never been exposed to the concept, or they may have followed His commandment. Having never fallen from grace, they would have no need for a savior, and therefore no Jesus Christ.

As the parent said - the premises may be flawed, but Catholic Catechism is quite internally consistent.

Two words: Giordano Bruno

[Shag]

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.