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If ET Calls, Who Speaks For Humanity?
EagleHasLanded writes "Who speaks for humankind if ET calls on us? Paul Davies, chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, is a likely ambassador. But Allen Tough founded the Invitation to ETI Web site, which encourages ET to make contact via email (and also strongly discourages humans from impersonating ET). But an individual in the UK got over some of the hurdles designed to weed out hoaxers, before finally throwing in the towel."
So, you assume that atheists are correct and that aliens, assuming they even exist would be atheists?
Personally, I suspect that's true, but I don't know. However, I see three possibilities:
Now, of those, do you really think #2 is likely? (If you do, you probably should investigate how religion arose on this planet.)
No, the likelier possibilities are option #1, in which case, any religious individual would make us seem backwards and primitive; or #3, in which case, any religion we choose to represent would likely be weird and possibly offensive to them.
Who would you suggest? An obnoxious pompous prick like Dawkins?
Funny... when I believed, I thought the same way you did. About Randi, also.
Eventually, I realized that what I saw as "arrogance" was merely the courage to stand up to popular dogmas. They were attacking things I held dear, and that made me defensive, so of course I saw them as arrogant and disruptive.
real science, rather than trying to prove the non-existence of god.
Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and you might notice he's also written several books about that. If you investigate what he actually does with his time, you'll probably find he spends far more time doing exactly that -- real science.
You seem to be confused into thinking that all atheists are necessarily "militant atheists", and that this would be the first thing on their minds when they encounter an alien being. That's not the concern at all. The concern is that the last thing we want is to be trying to tell an alien the "good news".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Our TV broadcasts have already spoken for us, and it wasn't a good message.
I hear Single Female Lawyer has some fans.
any aliens with the technology to travel across interstellar space would have to have some pretty phenomenal computer technology
The only thing safe to assume about aliens is that they will be ALIEN. As in, completely unlike us in every way. It's a mistake to terrestrialize ETs, let alone anthropomorphize them. Their concept of 'communication', let alone their culture and motivations, will likely be be so wildly different than ours as to be beyond our ability to even conceive of it. Hell, we have a hard enough time understanding and communicating with other HUMAN cultures. Aliens, especially aliens sophisticated enough to cross interstellar distances? Forget about it.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
We regularly leave our planet by use of technology and have harnessed the power of the atom?
That's not to say it's enough, but those are at least two things that would probably differentiate us quite a bit.
But if we're not 6-dimensional beings and don't *smell* the *pretty* colors, we might seem like a talking dog or a counting horse. They might be amazed by the dog (but will never consider it an equal), but they'll only be temporarily amused by the horse until they wanted to ride somewhere, make some glue, or eat horse-chops.
Strange magical physics don't even have to be in play; the aliens only have to believe that quality X is more important than intelligence (or that quality X denotes intelligence), and if we don't have it, then we're defacto non-intelligent.