Slashdot Mirror
Are the World's Religions Ready For ET?
Science_afficionado writes: At the current rate of discovery, astronomers will have identified more than a million exoplanets by the year 2045. That means, if life is at all common in the Milky Way, astronomers could soon detect it. Realization that the nature of the debate about life on other worlds is about to fundamentally change, lead Vanderbilt astronomer David Weintraub to begin thinking seriously about how people will react to such a discovery. He realized that people's reactions will be heavily influenced by their religious beliefs, so he decided to find out what theologians and leaders from the world's major religions have to say about the matter. The result is a book titled Religions and Extraterrestrial Life, published by Springer this month. He discovered that from Baptists to Buddhists, from Catholics to Mormons, from Islam to the Anglican Communion, religious views on alien life differ widely.
Muh dick is ready to fuck ET.
Well, the good news is that we found out Jesus is worshiped on other planets.
...just as an example, the early Christian theologians worked out these questions over 1700 years ago.
Not a big deal for the Christian worldview.
I must need to update ad-block, it missed this one!
...
some teenager will use the phrase "sky fairies"
The /. hatred for religion is well known. Any discussion on this subject isn't going to go very well.
I fully expect to be modded down, but until that happens I would really like to ask: why post this here?
... is just to ban science and space exploration, heading this entire situation off entirely.
By the time ET's make contact with us, we'll have been raptured long ago. I think we're on for next week.
Robert J. Sawyer did a send up of mocking religious people's views on ET in his novel Calculating God . An alien lands on Earth and finds it odd that all the scientists of our planet are trending towards atheism, when his civilization finds the arguments of natural theology convincing. Of course, the god believed in by the alien (and mused on by Sawyer, who I believe remains an atheist) is an unknowable, silent, watchmaker god who sprung up spontaneously from the quantum vacuum, instead of the personal God that Earth's big three monotheistic religions believe in.
Ready for the world's religions?
Rank of this problem in things we need to worry about: 4,534,211.
The average intelligence of theists is a lot lower than atheists, I don't think they would even believe science if it was true. Intelligence is the only thing separating theists and atheists, other than that, we are all basically the same.
Not flaimbait. Just facts!
Short answer: no.
Long answer: what do you think would happen if ET did exist, had a spaceship, was feeling a bit nefarious, and manifested itself as a booming voice from the sky? How hard do you think it would be for ET to convince the world's populations that it is in fact god (especially given the technological advantage), then instruct them to do whatever the hell it wants? ET could be sitting up there in his nice comfy space ship, literally playing god, watching us wage war over each other because it makes for better prime time TV then that shit he's getting on his interstellar space channels.
I can't help but feel that religious people are more gullible then the rest of us to varying degrees, and this could be used against us in certain scenarios. When the line between ET and "god" gets blurred, things can become very dangerous very quickly. It's not like modern day religions have any kind of protection against this sort of thing- especially when "god" is just some formless ambiguous person that is almost directly interchangeable with "someone who has technological superiority over you".
>Baptists to Buddhists, from Catholics to Mormons, from Islam to the Anglican Communion, religious views on alien life differ widely.
Tell the aliens that an alien died for their sins and all this time your ancestors were doomed to hell because they hadn't invented high speed communications to hear the "good news".
Ask the aliens what falling trees sound like on their planet.
Ask the aliens what their views on hacking their own bodies reproductive reward system, in order to avoid the reproduction part but still get the reward.
Tell the aliens which planets they've already marked as their own.
Tell the aliens they don't exist and if they keep saying they do exist they will behead their non-existant heads as it is all a big jewish conspiracy.
uh.. who?
what? no jews?
Small steps, lets get them to accept evaluation on our planet first.
In that nobody has ever seen or can prove either exists, and a LOT of idiots are willing to go to any length to confirm or deny their beliefs.
We are far too savage at this point to become part of the federation of planets.. or whatever its called.
At the current rate of discovery, astronomers will have identified more than a million exoplanets by the year 2045. That means, if life is at all common in the Milky Way, astronomers could soon detect it.
Being able to detect planets and being able to detect life on those planets are 2 different things.
Note that the article and book discuss what educated theologians think, not what the followers think.
Philosophy and "what if" questioning are a big part of religious educations. The general public, not really.
So while the Pope and Dalai Llama might be willing to welcome ET with open arms, wingnuts like Westoboro Baptist are going to have apoplectic fits about "devils" and "demons."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I'm not sure what they get paid on their planet, but I'm sure they can be taught to program!
When they land, they'll be a demonstrated fact. Religious faith deals with the invisible and unprovable; it's not involved in observable ET's. The alien's beliefs? We'll ask them. Only problem is, if they ry to convert us.
World religions have different views on subject, news at 9.
Try reading the book: "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe" by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee. Their thesis is that while single-cell microbial life is probably common throughout the universe, the conditions that allowed complex multicellular life - not to mention complex multi-cellular intelligent life to evolve - resulted from a long series of highly unlikely events. While Ward and Brownlee can't say with 100 percent certainty that we are alone, their conclusion - which is backed up with a multitude of convincing arguments - is that complex life is rare ... in fact, exceedingly rare. To boil their thesis down to a single sentence: We are ET.
However, Brownlee and Ward's thesis, if correct, should be viewed in a more positive light. If "we" are ET, as they suspect, then we will be the ones to seed life in other galaxies and colonize distant solar systems. We'll have to do it anyway sooner or later. After all, the sun will exhaust all its nuclear fuel in the next 3-5 billion years - and vaporize the earth in the process. If we haven't moved beyond the boundaries of this planet by then, we might be finished.
C.S. Lewis, Anglican and actually closer to Catholicism in theology, wrote, from 1938-1945, a science fiction trilogy known as the Space Trilogy that explores alien races in the context of Christianity.
I first read the trilogy when I was an atheist, and it helped remove that particular hurdle in my later study of the world religions that lead to my conversion to Catholicism.
I thought that might grab your attention - practising religious or not (I am not. Disclosure: I am a nihilistic fatalist agnostic and proud), it is a very controversial statement to make. What I'm about to follow that with is probably nowhere near, but still, controversial.
According to the one religion I'm somewhat familiar with, and possibly others as well, humans are the most intelligent (on a sliding scale) form of life in the Universe (not counting the monotheistic God who is apparently omniscient and omnipotent which would give him an unfair advantage). Were that the case, and considering God gave Man ultimate domain over all he surveyed, then any alien landing on this rock would automatically become the property of the first human who set across it. I believe that any alien intelligent enough and technologically advanced enough to actually make the journey is immediately and demonstrably superior to us in every way, putting Mankind in defiance of God and itself in danger of being instantly rendered vapours by a jealous deity - who would then set to making any who saw it either forget or drop dead/spontaneously combust/lose the faculty to speak or otherwise articulate thought. Either way, said alien would not take kindly to being abducted and probed (I'm sure he would have his own equipment for that), and would be equipped with the ability (and will?) to defend himself and his honour with all manner of weaponry or even turn that spanky engine of his into some exotic bomb capable of reducing the entire solar system to ash.
(It's what I'd do).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
And the answer is "How many logical fallacies can you fit into a paragraph." *ding ding ding*
Perhaps "I'd like Trolling Slashdot for 1000", and the answer is "Mention Religion in a summary, more than one preferably"
No, discussing alien life is not "new" and no, this is not some interesting twist on the discussion. Claiming that "we are going to find alien life by XXXX date" is akin to claiming "the world is going to end by XXXX date". I don't believe in your tarot cards, your phrenology, or what ever else you claim gives you the power to see the future. We all know that the potential is there, but.. well you can read the definition of the word on your own.
You hopefully stopped reading when the guy correlates finding planets with finding life, knowing it was a troll.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Before getting all confident that we can detect ET civilization, how about sending a satellite or three to 10-20 Lunar orbits (what's the Lunar equivalent of the AU?) to determine if we can detect ourselves -- especially when Earth is between it and the Sun.
If not, then no sense bloviating on religion and ET.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Didn't Clarke write in Fountains of Paradise that the sudden appearance of an alien probe ship would basically invalidate most religions on the grounds that they're all Earth-centric?
It isn't like we are getting live video from these exoplanets. I find it a bit unlikely that any major (or minor) religions will be shaken by spectrograph squiggles, even if we are pretty sure they are evidence of biology.
See that "Preview" button?
" He realized that people's reactions will be heavily influenced by their religious beliefs," Really?
The religious will do this because they can't distinguish between their god and an alien?
Even as an atheist, I'm insulted for the believers among us....
And yes, is this a slow news day, I guess.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Religion is something that an ET might bring. It could be in the form of creation myths, some strange gap they discovered in physics and a religion built up around it. Or they may have always had a religion that drove them to pursue physics with a fanatic's zeal resulting in space travel while not straying from their core faith.
Or even worse, they could be way ahead of us in pretty much every science yet have a fanatical religion where the two options are pretty much to pray to some god or spread out and convert other species.
Another nasty variation is that they come with some religion that has a series of logical arguments that can pretty much convince anyone who doesn't have a PhD in rhetoric. So they come along drop off their book of faith and leave.
But if they do come with any religion at all we can all be certain that it will end up with adherents on Earth. Seeing that we have Neo Nazis there is no creed too stupid for some people.
The world religions aren't even ready for regular, terrestrial life
Fantasy reconciling with science fiction. That's why they group those genres together.
No!
Robert J. Sawyer did a send up of mocking religious people's views on ET in his novel Calculating God [amazon.com] . An alien lands on Earth and finds it odd that all the scientists of our planet are trending towards atheism, when his civilization finds the arguments of natural theology convincing.
You may want to check out Eifelheim by Michael Flynn:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eifelheim
Of course, the god believed in by the alien (and mused on by Sawyer, who I believe remains an atheist) is an unknowable, silent, watchmaker god who sprung up spontaneously from the quantum vacuum, instead of the personal God that Earth's big three monotheistic religions believe in.
This is bad logic and bad theology. I recommend "Aquinas" by Edward Feser for a decent run down on why:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Feser
It's a short book, but very dense; not as "beginner" as its subtitle may imply.
I mean, I don't exactly believe in the Star Trek universe which is even more fairy tale than most religions. Where are we in their world order - are we equals, enemies, slaves, pets, food, pests or just a honking big X-factor that threaten their very existence? Since their military power would be mostly unknown it'd be real easy to get paranoid. Just dealing with wacko humans is bad enough, what do you really know about an alien or how they think? Nothing. I think we'd jump right into a military arms race which might end very badly for at least one of us. Perhaps both, if MAD still applies on an interplanetary scale.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Xenu is the one true god, thus forever alienating themselves to only true defenders of souls burdened by Thetans, the Scientologists? :D
Hopefully religion will die off and/or they will all stay earthbound. Father figures that are figments of your imagination demand you say on earth thats it.
No sir I dont like it.
all our gold into easily pilferable form by having it end up in the Catholic Churches. No doubt within another few years there will be a huge rash of robberies when said Ferrengi comes back to recover all said gold in order to maximize his supply for the pressing of latinum.
I mean, not to be the debbie downer here, but that presupposition has be presupposed before, and by smarter minds, imo anyway.
Then we have to consider the Great Filter (which could be radioactive elements & nuclear in general which makes sense) as well, and things just aren't looking good for the idea of us discovering extraterrestrial life any time soon. It might be out there, but us seeing it out there seems unlikely so far to me. And the odds of us finding a civilization that is younger than us in terms of maturity is pretty small considering the cosmic time scale.
I'm just saying. I doubt this will happen any time soon. But I've been wrong before.
Regardless, I, For One, Welcome Our New Alien Overlords.
“That means, if life is at all common in the Milky Way, astronomers could soon detect it.”
No, it means that if, thousands or even millions of years agao, some other life form happened to be broadcasting monster radio waves, in the direction of Earth, astronomers might detect it.
I'll listen very carefully. A civilization that has managed to get across the interstellar gulf alive, and chooses to tell us about some religion, well, I'll listen to them with full attention, and as open a mind as I can manage.
And I'll also listen very politely.
--PeterM
I don't know how they would respond to ET, but there are plenty of adherents here on slashdot (with numbers growing at a staggering rate). This is a faith with a number of people who spend a great deal of time attempting to recruit new members. I'm not talking about Pastafarians, nor am I talking about Jedi Knights. I'm talking about the most profound cult in the US in some time, and I'm not talking about Apple fanboys either.
I'm talking about the church of Ron Paul. I expect their dear leader would tell them that ET can be dealt with somehow through the miracle of the open market but what that would actually mean is anyone's guess.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I wonder less whether religions are ready for ET and more whether science is ready for the discovery of inorganic life. Nearly everything I read on the subject carries a stated or more often unstated assumption that evolved alien life will have the same carbon-and-water basis that we do.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
'nuff said.
They're actually quite religious, it would apear the concept of god is quite universal (the one god of the isrealites), and Hinduism accepts this god (awsome). Only thing they won't accept is Jesus, it would seam that when a species tries to make one of their own "god" it doesn't go over well ( universally speaking).
With neither real facts nor justification of any assumptions of the frequency of life, multicellular life, intelligent life, technological life, stupid-enough-to-give-itself-away life, this article starts off on the wrong foot and gets worse. It doesn't matter how many exoplanets you can find, one, ten, hundreds, millions, billions, trillions - finding life on those planets is a completely different step. Finding life on a planet that has is not trying to be found is not likely to be possible, and this opens a problem that is beyond simple epistemology.
As others and famously, Stephen Hawking, has pointed out, an intelligent life form on an exoplanet should be aware of the risk contacting ET should entail. It's a simple matter of weighing risk and reward - and so far, Homo Sapiens has failed to figure that out. We're still stupid enough to be sending physical artifacts far away from our planet with a map that effectively says "We're curious and stupid - please invite us to dinner" without distinguishing the difference in role of dinner guest and entree.
Fortunately, sending physical artifacts is one the least effectual ways to contact ET. Sending electromagnetic signals is far more effective, and humans have tried that too, but only for a short time and only in a few directions. Beyond our early transmissions of "I Love Lucy," the increasing complexity of our signals make it less likely that modern communication, if were somehow intercepted with adequate S/N ratio, would be decoded into anything useful to ET. In fact, those DirecTV signals mean almost nothing without a access card, by design. Unless we actually intend to send a signal, nothing from Earth is likely to give our presence away, short of a few hundred short bursts of nuclear radiation from our atomic and fusion weapons, which we can only hope have ceased to be transmitted.
The simple fact is: "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." Plausably, Homo Sapiens has got to figure out how to deal with the "terrible ghastly silence" of space with much greater probability than having to deal with ET. Even so, contact with ET is much more likely to be via long-distance (and therefore long-latency) communication than by physical contact. And if a religious person doesn't like what ET is saying, they'll just change the channel, or stop responding.
Historically, religion has adapted to scientific advances without just giving up and saying - OK, we were wrong. Religions have been very facile in their interpretation of sacred documents in order for their memes to continue to flourish despite scientific and logical contradiction. Indeed, with Socrates as the example, the risk is borne by the truth-tellers, not the religious followers....unless one can surmise how religious orthodoxy would drink the hemlock this time.
The world religion is hardly even ready to accept humans, so ET are out of the question.
Thinking about all the alien looking drawings in Mayan culture, stories of Atlantis, all the star-aligned cultures (Egyptian, Mayan, Easter Island, Stone Henge, etc.), stories from the Bible that seen extraterrestrial, etc. could it be that humans were put here by aliens and that humans in fact are aliens? If we evolved here, why do we sunburn so easily, why are we so different from all other animals on Earth, why are are biological clocks tuned for a 25 hour day? I've thought a lot of creatures on this planet looked alien but it's an interesting thought to me. Heck, dragons, zombies, and all the other "monster stories" could have been originated/existed on our alien forefathers home planet. I know this sounds kooky, but it's something I'm curious about and would like to hear what others think.
The first book was set mainly on Mars. The creatures there were essentially innocent with regard to sin. It is an interesting take on the idea of the uniqueness of Christ's sacrifice. There may be only one world, ours that needed such remedial treatment in Lewis' view.
You are alone. Deal with it.
The finest single work of fiction concerning the relationship of religion to life on other worlds was Mark Twain's "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven".
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook...
Twain's Captain Stormfield dies and makes his way to Heaven, to find that Heaven is inhabited with uncounted numbers of souls from billions of different planets; every planet has its own Redeemer, but all represent the same God.
The idea that God is human is laughable; any religion that restricts God to a single planet, or even a single galaxy, is thinking much too narrowly! If there is a God, a Supreme Being (a topic on which I reserve judgment, having no knowledge and only limited faith), He/She/It must be truly supreme in the universe(s).
just look at the posting history: http://slashdot.org/~Science_a...
Someone commented above about C. S. Lewis, but Madeleine L'Engle has also used ET to examine religious themes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
it would be just another chance for people to worship a greater being.
"He discovered that from Baptists to Buddhists, from Catholics to Mormons, from Islam to the Anglican Communion, religious views on alien life differ widely." He skipped Atheists?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Who cares about adults who have imaginary friends? Has slashdot gone insane?
at the current state of affairs between a multitude of human neural patterns in crowds which can be labeled religion, political doctrine/opinion, perception of differences in appearace and behavior etc. and adequate response patterns to any stimula to those, what would one expect as a result with another ET-variable added to this mess?
Just more BS with another variable linked to existing primitive routines in heads.
Imagine a look from some distance onto this planet, what do you see?
Failed use of recently developed neural capacity in one species causing destruction of life-supporting systems on a global scale.
There is no hope - just forget it ennnnn, program crash, core dump!
Are there any living people who hold, as you call it, The Christian Worldview?
Most Christians today think it's probably a good idea (i.e. moral and not only permissible but encouraged) within their religion, to hate and act aggressively (kill, if convenient) anyone who either explicitly disagrees with them, or implicitly disagrees with them through their habits or preferences. What that suggests, is that many Christians practice a radically different religion from the one you describe or the one explained in some particular book, so it seems kind of silly that any particular viewpoint, could possibly include all (or even a majority) of Christians. Most think the Christ character Himself is particularly despicable and unacceptable within their dogma, and should be refuted and rebuked all their lives, and (according to them) beyond. To die with a heart full of fear and hate, with a completely wasted life that pursued nothing they value even to themselves, is the goal they seek. Anything less than that, would be seen as a love of life and people, truly the antithesis of the current attitude.
How else will we destroy all aspects of the personalities of the gays and lesbians and poor and infidels and communists? To be a good Christian, you must cultivate your loathing and ignorance and hate. Aliens will have probably heard many lies, but will they have heard the SAME lies? Better to shoot first, learn about them later. Do the Aliens have Popes? Do they have Republicans? Don't take the chance they weren't raised like you. It's too unlikely that the same comedy of errors and evils will have ruined their lives enough to have made them allies.
What happens when they finally realize life is on earth.
CrazyOldMan
Not to split hairs, but wouldn't God technically be an ET?
-Styopa
atheists - someone who believes that rejecting belief will somehow make their reason stronger, or increase their intelligence
- someone who believes they are smarter than faith
- someone who tries to see god through religion but never thinks for themselves
- thinks they are more scientific, "what empirical evidence prooves god?"
- an pure atheists believes in nothing, which is itself a contradiction, since they are believing in "nothing"
everything is based on faith, even science.
here is empirical deductive reason:
all humans are mortal,
socrates is a human
therefore socrates is a mortal
what is human? a biological organism? What is a biological organism? A set of organs that has been adapted to its enviroment. What are these set of organs, how do the function atomically, at even smaller levels, what do you mean by adaptation, and what is considered the environment?
The obvious loop of never ending language, where we will never have true truth because we haven't established axioms that bare the bottom of all knowledge.
Knowledge first off is always relative. It is never in its entirety completely correct.
Science and knowledge in general is based off of assumism, where it is assumed that we have established the axioms of meaning of the words that we use.
If knowledge is assumeed correct, in order to find conclusions based off the premises, then we are therfore taking the knowledge off faith.
Heres a /. nerd for you, someone who has nothing else better to do other than attack religion because it makes the rationale organism. You aren't smart to the universe, you are only smart relative to a high school dropout.
No, Hinduism and Atheism are NOT compatible. The easiest way to demonstrate that you are wrong: Hindu people believe that failures in morality/karma/dharma result in a corrupt soul and may result in reincarnation as a lesser creature as punishment.
You don't have to study the religion very far to know that much. And sure, maybe you live in the backwoods someplace and can't find an Hindu to talk to about Hinduism. You could have had the courtesy of reading past the first paragraph in the Wiki page too, where you would have seen in the first sentence "In Hinduism, dharma signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with rta, the order that makes life and universe possible. A soul, reincarnation, and "an order that makes life and universe possible" are all superstitious and incompatible with atheism.
Good grief man, stop believing everything you are told.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The alien who lands on Earth (or the human who lands on alien world) will have had to learn many things before they succeed in doing that. They will have had to learn How To Learn. So what would lead them to even suspect, even begin to investigate and start to form, a belief in a watchmaker god? It's not so much that they'd disprove it, as they wouldn't even think to propose the hypothesis. There aren't any observations that lead anyone in that direction, regardless of its unknowable truth or falsehood.
Just like you don't believe in Thor. It's not that Thor hasn't been found yet; it's that you don't even take the idea seriously (in addition to him not having been found) because nothing suggest Thor might exist. All of Thor's difficulties are also the watchmaker's difficulties.
This hasn't been a major stumbling block for humanity yet, but we haven't seriously tried to do anything difficult yet, so we haven't needed to learn much about how to learn things. Interstellar travel is a whole new level of difficulty, though. Can that really be done with willful self-deception and disregard for reality? If so, how? The resources needed are so immense. I'd think paranormalism would take too much effort to sustain, and would be too obstructive to achieving the goal. The intellectual laziness would work against the achievement itself.
No, Evil is ok if all you want to do is murder millions of people, but for transporting them to another solar system, it's insufficient. You'd need more serious motivation than what Evil has to offer.
... for one, the question should also include whether religions are even suited for modern life and scientific advances. Religions mostly still operate on century and millennia old superstition and mysticism, and most (albeit shrinking number of) people will still gladly accept everything thanks to childhood teaching when everything is unquestionably accepted from parents and authority figures.
Anyway, religious leaders (which may or may not "coincide" with political leadership as well) will find a way to lie around contradictions between scientific facts and religious texts. Anything to continue their hold on people's minds, souls and money ... even if 100% exact proof against religious beliefs were presented, people will still cling to their faith and will try to argue why the proof is wrong. Look e.g. at evolution of species ... e.g. the Bible doesn't say species evolve, still people believe in creation by God. It's a choose and pick situation, where some passages of scriptures will be taken literally, while others are chosen not to be ...
Let's suppose that in a few years someone discovers definitive proof that there is life a few thousand light years away.
It will be big news for a week or two. People who are into the idea of ETs will be happy; people who aren't comfortable with them will question (or flat out disbelieve) the evidence. Everyone will discuss the possible implications until they get bored with the topic.
After a month or so, it will fade into the cultural background and life will continue as before. With no way to get there and no means to communicate, the fact of the existence of extra-terrestrial life simply won't have much impact on anyone's day-to-day life.
Net effect on humanity: minimal.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Personally I don't accept any theology as coherent unless it can answer questions about the multiverse.
So you are a Catholic? The Catholic Church actually sponsors a lot of serious research in the field of cosmology. Matter of fact the Big Bang theory was originally put forward by a Catholic priest teaching at a Catholic University.
Most religious people make a non-binding prediction that there is no life on other planets. Doubly so, but still non-binding, for intelligent life. This is because we are the most important species and planet.
The bible literally refers to non-human intelligent life, angels for example.
...just as an example, the early Christian theologians worked out these questions over 1700 years ago. Not a big deal for the Christian worldview.
I wouldn't limit things to Christianity. The old testament literally refers to non-human intelligent life, angels for example. So other religions that accept the old testament have a precedent of accepting non-human intelligent beings.
A good portion of the world's (well the US's) religions aren't ready for Evolution. Of course they are not ready for ET.
If alien life is discovered on another planet such that there is little to no interaction and it can be simply said "look there is aliens" that would probably be the best case scenario in regards to 'calm' acceptance.
If however they choose to show up on our doorstep at a time when things are particularly bad on this planet(the way things are trending now...) offering "help" or something like that, then that would be an entirely different situation. I am referring to biblical prophecy about end times. They would be suspected of being demons or worse. How bad would the freak out be? Again it depends on context. What if god is real and the aliens are demons? Can you see atheists NOT treating them like gods? Even many religious would fall for it. It would be a VERY dangerous situation. Possibility is endless here.
In any case there are a lot of stupid sheep in the world and this really doesn't depend on being religious or not. It's pretty arrogant to assume that even atheists would be "ok" if aliens suddenly showed up one day. Peoples worldview would change in drastic ways that can't be predicted, some based on reality and some not.
Why are we asking if religion is ready for ET when at least one religion (if you count Islam as a religion) can't tolerate Math and/or Science ?
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/...
Well i dont see why religion would be problem here.. Problem are the peole that goes by their lives repeating same things like robots, newer really thinking. Discovery of living alien world would shatter their image of world. Suddenly we would no longer be alone, super special in universe.
I think it would be rich people that would be hit the most. Poor would suddenly realize that our monetary slavery system might not be only valid system in universe..
How i see God in my personal belief is this: He gave us brain, so we would use that brain to study and learn about world he created for us. So we would look after that world (btw. were doing piss poor job at it). And study universe.
I would welcome news that were not alone anymore in universe. That one day we might be able to meet halfway with totally alien intelligence and shake hands. Or most likely goto war with them, thanks of aggression being one of our primal instinct..
Who says God didint create other worlds while i was creating universe. Or other forms of intelligent life. So far life seems to be everywere in our planet. No matter where we look, theres life there.. In deep see where no light passes and water boils to unpenetrable stone. Heck Chernobyl now has small fungus that eats radiation to grow...
That humans will be easily tricked and brainwashed into believing whatever ET tells them.
Just like our current slave religion overlords.
He'll be slaughtered in no time.
This seems to be based on a common misunderstanding, based on confusing education with wisdom and/or intelligence. Just because we all have color TVs in the industrialized world now doesn't mean that we have gained one grain of wisdom.
For all it's worth, a space-faring civilization could be a a couple of dozens or hundreds of years ahead of us in terms of engineering and science, and still they might be a complete bunch of morons. They could be more intelligent than us, but they could also be much less intelligent than us. They could be more religious than us or less religious than us. It might have taken them 100 times longer than us to have come up with Newtonian mechanics, they might all be mindless religious zealots, could have the strangest religious views about the universe, might love to kill or torture aliens (=us) for fun or in order to bring us their 'wisdom', and so forth. We simply don't know, and almost nothing can be inferred from the level of technical development about these matters.
The world religions are not ready for accepting each other.
What I find most annoying is that Spinger publishes this in a "Popular Astronomy" series. At least they could have classified it under religious studies, speculative philosophy, or put it in a "Popular Astrology" series.
Not a big deal indeed....
I would like to ask Giordano Bruno if that would be a big deal. They burned him not because he said there are aliens, just because he said that universe is infinite.
I don't think ET is problem for religions. Religious systems are entirely arbitrary and wouldn't have hard time inventing some stuff to fit in the new reality. They've been selling stone age and bronze age superstitions for millenia and they know how it's done no matter how many times they are proved wrong.
No, discussing alien life is not "new" and no, this is not some interesting twist on the discussion.
Actually the discussion is largely regarding the discovery of exoplanets, and not speculation about them. That's the difference between noticing that things fall and the discovery of gravitational waves. Discovery of something that was previously surmised always brings it to the forefront of discussion. You seem to have a huge problem with it. Or was there some intergalactic imaging technique available in centuries past that I am unaware of?
You hopefully stopped reading when the guy correlates finding planets with finding life, knowing it was a troll.
Since you are keen on definitions, why don't you tell me the correlation between places in the universe we have found life, and how many of those times it has occurred on planets? It's 1:1, good sir. Perhaps it is just your atheism having a flare-up due to seeing the word "Religion."
Religions don't seem to grasp the concept of evolution yet so why bother asking about alien lifeforms?
I mean, that's like asking "is your hello world program ready for CORBA yet" ..
Maybe we should worry about getting religions to this century before worrying about what is possible in the future.
He discovered that from Baptists to Buddhists, from Catholics to Mormons, from Islam to the Anglican Communion, religious views on alien life differ widely.
Well, what'd you expect? However, I think the problem is of a deeper nature than 'what does so and so religion think about extra-terrestial life' - it is about the compatibility between religion and science. Science is fundamentally about facts and what follows from the facts: you make observations, then produce theory etc. In many religions, if not all, you try to start from the other end: you settle on some Ultimate Truth, then try to make your facts fit; that way it becomes a bit hit-or-miss whether your belief allows for a new discovery of any kind.
Another, potentially interesting question would be - is it possible to produce a religion that is strictly scientific in nature without it simply being science? Or IOW, can any form of religion add anything to science?
Religious faith deals with the invisible and unprovable
Thomas Aquinas would disagree:
Therefore I say that this proposition, "God exists," of itself is self-evident, for the predicate is the same as the subject, because God is His own existence as will be hereafter shown (3, 4). Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature — namely, by effects.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm
The Catholic Church holds that God can be known through reason alone. From the First Vatican Council:
If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/09/qed.html
Back in the 1940s, the Catholic church said that it was impossible that there were any other advanced species on other planets, because "we are god's children and the bible says nothing about him creating any others".
Now, the pope says the opposite, that "if there are any other advanced life forms, then they must also be god's children".
A complete and 100% reversal of "infallible" doctrine.
The religions will make up excuses. They are good at it.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
You're an unnatural "TrAnStEsTiCuLaR MoNsTeR", R O T F L M A O!
Are non-theists ready for the possibility that life is actually exceedingy rare (ignoring the possibility that advanced civilizations simply don't want to be found)? If life generated spontaneously on this planet and yet this is the only planet with life then that's a little...odd.
At the current rate of discovery, astronomers will have identified more than a million exoplanets by the year 2045. That means, if life is at all common in the Milky Way, astronomers could soon detect it.
It means nothing of the sort. The methods that we're using to identify exoplanets cannot detect life on those plants.
The world's religions are still struggling with the concept gender equality and are for the most part completely against gay rights. Heck. Even the consensus that slavery is wrong is rather recent innovation in the history of religion.
The discovery of ETs would make them freak out and think that their particular prophecies of the end of the world are coming true and will act accordingly to make those prophecies self fulfilling.
Vast and ancient and infinitely powerful—and I know the name of this God. I know the path you have to walk down to be one with this God. I know his secret rituals and the correct form of prayer and his portents and signs. I have studied the ancient writings of his prophets and followers in person, not simply relying on the classified digests in the CODICIL BLACK SKULL files and the background briefings for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN.
I'm a believer. And like I said, I wish I was still an atheist. Believing I was born into a harsh, uncaring cosmos—in which my existence was a random roll of the dice and I was destined to die and rot and then be gone forever—was infinitely more comforting than the truth.
Because the truth is that my God is coming back.
When he arrives I'll be waiting for him with a shotgun.
And I'm keeping the last shell for myself.
The theory behind Christianity is that everyone is a sinner and needs Jesus to redeem them lest they suffer some kind of punishment. Many Christians are flexible enough to believe that Jesus has appeared in many forms with many names, and as such, many other religions are also perfectly valid. If we generalize this, "original sin" is an abstraction, representing the idea that all sapient creatures have the ability to choose to do evil and need redemption. Extended to advanced alien civilizations, the assumption is that at some point in their evolution, they too will have developed the ability to choose to do wrong (harm others in some way, etc.) and therefore need a redeemer. If God has appeared on Earth in some form many times, logically, He will have appeared on every civilized planet many times, offering every advanced intelligent creature an opportunity to repent and ask for forgiveness.
On the other hand, this is probably an exceptional viewpoint, and many religious people who believe that believers in other religions (or none at all) are infidels will decide that this is an opportunity to either convert or kill off those evil godless aliens.
Incidentally, Thomas E. Hanna (http://tehanna.com) is one of the most intellectual Christians I've ever known. Although I don't necessarily agree with all of his beliefs, debating philosophy and religion with him is downright enjoyable, because he doesn't try to shove a set of rigid beliefs down your throat. He just reasons. I can't be offended by that. I'm not really into going to church, but if I lived in Lakeland, I'd go to his. His blog tackles a lot of concepts that may be esoteric to non-Christians, but for those who are, he pushes the envelope and as a result gets under the skin of many conservatives. I enjoy anything that challenges established idiologies even in small ways.
What if they don't find any life but just planets? Will the atheists concede defeat or say "oh these are just a million plants - there are more out there?!
Religion will not cause any significant changes. There is not a religion that exists that is not used to constantly shifting their narratives to fit current events. Sure some of them will predict that they exists, and others will state, no their is no possibility any other life exists, and others will have no opinion. And when and if they are found their will be huge intense philosophical debate on if they have souls, but none of it will dictate on how we interact. Human Nature on the other hand will dictate that will fear and hate them, and either enslave, hunt/harvest, or eradicate them; Or at least try to do one of these three things.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The followers of a religion often care little about what their leaders and theologians say, especially on esoteric topics. There are fanatical cultists who hang on some personality's every word, but those are the exception.
How many Catholics do you know who use birth control? How many Southern Baptists drink? How many Jews work on Saturday?
If anything, finding a non-intelligent life form would be pretty much meaningless. It may even reinforce the Christian idea of human exceptionality. It'd just be more plants, animals, bacteria, etc. for them to steward on behalf of their deity.
Finding another intelligent life form would be a thorny theological problem for some, but a simple mission to convert for others. It might just cause a whole bunch of new splitter congregations based on differing opinions. It may cause wars among factions. Whole new religions might sprout and grow based around the discovery. If we ever find an intelligent and communicative species with their own religion, some portion of humans will convert to that no matter how different it is from anything we already have.
TL;DR: What theologians and church leaders for religions that exist now have to say has little to do with the new belief systems such a major event would usher in.
Humanity is incapable of getting along with itself, there is no way that religion is ready for ET's.
They are experts at using circular reasoning and 'because the (insert holy book here) says so' arguments for thousands of years. Why would the discovery of aliens change that?
People who are delusional always find reasons to continue to believe in things that aren't there, the arguments don't have to be logical or correct. They just continue to believe in them.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Any signs we find of it, would be a snapshot of some point in the past. We could communicate with a civilization a few light years away, though it would be very slow since it would take 12 months for a beam of informational light to reach a single light year away. With our current tech, it would take us way too long to get to any other star systems. unless we stumble onto a worm hole near Mars or something.
Not a big deal for the Christian worldview.
Good to know that despite deep--sometimes violent--conflicts between rival sects and schisms, often about the very interpretation of their core holy texts, the extraterrestrial question is addressed in the worldview common to all Christians regardless of denomination. Let the yawning commence.
just ask Galgamex
"Weintraub also identified two religions – Mormonism and Seventh-day Adventism – whose theology embraces extraterrestrials."
Swedenborgianism is a another brand of Christianity that embraces extraterrestrials. Swedenborg wrote about conversations he had with the spirits of extraterrestrials where they told him about their worlds and cultures.
Ask the rank and file believers if they believe that angels exist. If so, they believe that humanity is not the only intelligent form of life.
Angels fail at least one of the criteria necessary for "life", and possibly all of them.
Its already a known fact that what the rank and file believers consider life and what most scientists consider life do not agree.
Don't try moving the goal posts. We are discussing what the rank and file believe, and how well they can incorporate alien life into their belief system.
He realized that people's reactions will be heavily influenced by their religious beliefs
To realize is to become aware of a fact. The above clause is not a fact, it's a hypothesis. It's not a realization, it's an assertion. Catholicism forbids birth control, but a majority of Catholics are in favor of it. So even if religion has affected their views to birth control, which is speculative, then that influence has been unconvincing in most cases.
I'm a secularist agnostic, and this article just seems like an excuse to attack religion. To the best of my knowledge, all major religious texts are silent on extraterrestrial life, so there's no inherent conflict between religion and aliens.
To the extent that I am at all concerned about people's reaction to the discovery of aliens -- which is to say, hardly at all -- I am more concerned with how we would handle it on a global scale rather than how any subgroup would react. There will always be naysayers, and (it's worth noting) they may well be right! Should it happen, alien contact may well turn out to be a tragic event in the story of our species. Or it might be a monumental achievement. But aside from some ground rules, like not shooting first and asking questions later, I think it makes sense to wait until we know what we're dealing with before making any policy decisions, let alone worrying about the effects of any dissidents, or the motivation for their dissent.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Please define "doing right" in a universe that does not have a god.
It means maximizing human happiness, whether God(s) exist or not.
obligatory Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id...
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
If this is a question those not from this planet are positing:
I hope you understand alternate realities and how they function.
If so, this man is ready for them. If not, then my advice is educate yourselves a little bit before trying.
And look, specifically, at what the Vulcans tried simulating with the mirror realities and the events surrounding 'First Contact' depicted in Bozeman Montana in 2063.
In this reality, there's ONE first point of contact for this planet. It's not necessarily the president, and that's not necessarily true for all realities.
Oh so there you are, pounding your chest and acting tough but there
is a day of judgement to come, a day when the living shall sink into
the dirt, women, children and men alike, all but those saved
for they have embraced the holy sacrament and the mark they
have received gives them passage. Passage into the dawn
of a new day after, when the Mother of Babylon will spread her
mighty thighs and groan and sigh as she forever convulses her
bleeding lap over us. The fertile bleeding lap that will give endless
birth to miracles and these shall descend upon us.
You will either open your heart and abandon your foolishness or you
will die. There is no place for you in what is to come and future
generations of meek who will inherit the Earth will not question when
their tills disturb a bone left behind.
Your savior was with you until the end of his age, now it is time for
you to follow the man with the pitcher he will take you into the
new house. This you can find in your own screed, Luke 22:10.
I suggest you heed it.
The verse quoted, Psalm 8:6 has been mangled by people more interested in accomodating modern language and liberal sensibilities: these folks changed it from singular to plural, so that it no longer properly makes sense. It is not "they" but "he". It refers to man (the human race) and to the man, Jesus. And yes, I am a biblical literalist, and the translators who did this were probably not.
Not to worry. God created the heaven and the earth, so he knows what's in them. (Genesis 1:1) Earth was given to mankind. Adam (man) was given the Earth to rule and to reign and to tend (like a garden). Adam fell from a state of grace, because he did the one thing that he was not allowed to do. Jesus the Christ came to save that which was lost and to restore all things. It's through Jesus that we reconnect with the Eternal One, the Father of lights. After Jesus returns to rule and to reign on Earth for 1000 years, the new heavens and earth will be revealed, and the old will melt in fire. Not worried about a few exoplanets.
Religion is used to give arguments that have no firm basis support that protects them from being assailed. Proof of that is how fast the Mayan Temple System was abandoned in Central America when climate fluctuation destroyed the economy based on corn in the 13th century. Conversely, Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam, Judism, are scoundrel refuges for people who don't want their idea of moral authority and cultural centrism to be questioned. A scientific discovery which refutes special creation isn't going to deter this sort of thinking in people, whether it comes from Islamic extremists or Southern Baptists who embrace the Inerrant Word from Scripture. A better response is to base political and economic institutions on secular norms that reduce the influence of these reactionary forces. The challenge is that secular systems do not teach moral principal enough so that moral authoritarianism does not find appeal in those wronged by economic and political expediency. This is why we have movements like ISIS at the current time; not because they are theologically based. It is because academic and institutional sources for secular leadership do not base their training on sound ethics, even ethics that is based on universal human rights, let alone the sanctity of life wherever it exists.
This is more immediate than the questions which science will answer: How complexity beginning in inanimate physical systems can result in life without resorting to an intelligent designer. Such talking points have a hidden agenda to give moral authority to cultural beliefs. The question of how life arose is less important than how origins justifies the norms embraced by religion. How the physical universe stores information, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not violated by local stores of complex information, may be the answer to false dichotomies about life, and research may tell us that other places have solved this issue millions of times over, producing living systems that are unique from the one on Earth, or convergant with ours but where it is impossible for the similar systems to be genetically related; there being no panspermy possible. I think that some unique chemistry not like our own will be found to support life that would be fundementally alian to ours, That would surely put an end to Special creation. This finding could be a simple as finding trace fossils on Mars or other Solar System body revealing a biology basically different from what appeared on the Earth.
Of course the true Bigots will wiggle and change the terms of the argument and say that God changes the rules how ever he wants, small "h" deliberate.
If true secularists want to defeat religious bigotry and theocracy, they should start by embracing ethics and based more firmly on standards stronger than business expediancy, for example, or short-term profit, or survival of some organization. Every time some secular leader fails to do things either to live up to principal or based on some strong ethical system, this gives fuel to those who will act with authority based on ethnic pride, such as Putin and the Russians, or out of moral bigotry, such as ISIS and some of the religious people in America.
hello. My thought of religion is that it supports the nurturing of a spirit, which is itself the form of life which interacts with other species. Aliens possessing interactive life would therefore be spiritual, and either nurture towards a "God", or away towards a devil.
There is a significant difference between knowing something and having faith in something.
"Knowing" something that is actually not known, is a big problem for religions. And other people.
It is also a big problem when troubleshooting computer software, and other technical systems...