Pope's Astronomer Would Love To Baptize an Alien

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.'"

Comments

What about Gingers?

[antifoidulus]

Why doesn't he try to baptize a Ginger Kid instead, they are assumed to have no soul and there are a lot more of them then there are aliens.

Re:I guess the trick is you have to ask?

[TheLink]

As the guy said: "only if they asked".

That's why many Christians disagree with infant baptism.

So if a dog or gorilla understood the implications of baptism and wanted to be baptised, then I personally see no reason why the dog or gorilla shouldn't.

Even a reasonable Atheist should allow such a creature the freedom to do so, despite disagreeing with it.

FWIW, I think it may not be such a great idea to keep creating more and more transgenic animals (or even very advanced AI). It looks like society wouldn't be able to handle/treat such creatures appropriately.

Just because it can be done now doesn't mean it should.

Better wait till we grow up first.

Re:Good read

[ShakaUVM]

>>You have to remember why Christians get baptized in the first place: to remove original sin

If you consider Original Sin to be a nature that is anything less than perfect (which is what it more or less means these days), it makes sense. Redemption for your fuckups.

>>Or is he thinking that Adam and Eve were the original ancestors of all intelligent beings

Doubtful. Back in the middle ages, the question arose if elves and giants could be baptized. They'd been sending missionaries out to the northern reaches of Europe, where everyone knew giants and elves lived. So the pope considered it, and said, sure. They could be baptized, too, if they wanted it.

So this isn't much of a departure from precedent.

Definition of a Soul

[Jason Levine]

He lists the requirements for having a soul as:

- have intelligence
- free will
- freedom to love
- freedom to make decisions

Putting aliens to one side for the moment, as I don't think Lrrr is going to drop in on us tomorrow, I wonder how he feels about some intelligent animals.

Chimps, gorillas and other primates have been shown to fulfill these requirements to varying degrees. Dolphins have also. Would they baptize a dolphin? (How would you do that? Raise it out of water?)

I wondered if anyone ever asked Koko what gorillas think about a creator. Thanks to a Google search, I turned up this exchange:

Francine Patterson: "Who is God?"
Koko: "Me."
Patterson: "Who created the world?"
Koko: "Another woman."
(Source: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_12_131/ai_n8569017/?tag=content;col1 )

Somehow, I don't think Koko's religious outlook would gel with the Vatican's. ;-)