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Pope's Astronomer Would Love To Baptize an Alien

Posted by samzenpus on from the where-do-you-keep-the-head-on-this-thing? dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Guardian reports that Guy Consolmagno, curator of the pope's meteorite collection and a trained astronomer and planetary scientist, says he would be 'delighted' if intelligent life was found among the stars. 'But the odds of us finding it, of it being intelligent and us being able to communicate with it — when you add them up it's probably not a practical question.' Consolmagno adds that the traditional definition of a soul was to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions. 'Any entity — no matter how many tentacles it has — has a soul.' Would he baptize an alien? 'Only if they asked.' Consolmagno dismisses the ideas of intelligent design as a pseudo-scientific version of creationism. 'The word has been hijacked by a narrow group of creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it didn't originally mean at all. It's another form of the God of the gaps. It's bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning.'"

3 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Seriously? by TrumpetPower! · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Let me get this straight — Creationism is silly pagan nonsense, but the notion of an ancient zombie born of a Jewish virgin that a modern shaman can manifest in the flesh by chanting incantations over stale bread...and cannibalizing said zombie will turn you into a similarly-immortal zombie...and that E.T. would be interested in such nonsense for anything other than anthropological reasons....

    I’m sorry. I know I was heading towards some sort of point, but teh shtupid must be contagious....

    Cheers,

    b&

    --
    All but God can prove this sentence true.
  2. Re:I guess the trick is you have to ask? by c6gunner · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I think you're an idiot, all the more so after your response to him. He explained exactly why your statement was silly, and your response to him was "AHA! INTOLURANCE!". Either respond to what he said, or STFU - don't wast our time and bandwidth with your passive-aggressive bullshit.

  3. Re:I guess the trick is you have to ask? by Entropius · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    +1, trufax

    In a society that will refuse to hire you if they find out you do not believe in their faerie tales, one assumes Christians are hostile until proven otherwise -- since they usually are.