…with the James Web Telescope looking for sources of artificial light to identify potential intelligent life, and the news this week of Perseverance searching for microbial life on Mars it feels like we are getting closer to a major discovery. But what - if anything - would it mean for the religions on Earth if life is proven to exist out there?
if there are religious aliens, why haven’t their alien televangelists hit us up for donations yet?
In general I think it would just give religions a new group to hate. They would be “Creatures not of God, but of the Devil Himself” in the same way that Christians think of other religions as born of the Canaanites and influenced by Satan.
The real chaos would happen if all the recent UFO stuff turns out to be true. Aliens existing RIGHT HERE ON EARTH could quite possibly cause changes in one or more major religions, but maybe not immediately.
Religion didn’t change when it went up against intelligent people on earth. Why do you think intelligence from space would make a difference? If anything they’ll use it as a way of validating their own beliefs.
They’ll just make a new Testament saying a man cannot lie with that of another planet
65% of Americans already believe that there’s intelligent extraterrestrial life, which is about the same as the percent that identify as religious so there must be a fair bit of overlap already. Americans used to be a lot more religious just a few decades ago but I don’t have historical belief-in-aliens percentage at my fingertips.
My expectation is that a remote-radio-signal-only detection of alien intelligence will have almost no effect on society, not in the near term anyway. It’s too abstract to factor in to most people’s lives. Finding relics within our solar system from long-gone visitors might have a bit more of an impact because I expect there’d be a “gold rush” to find more, since they may have practical value and are limited in supply. The only thing that would have a serious and widespread impact would be actual live aliens (or “live” alien AIs, same thing really) in the solar system itself. At which point the outcome is basically “what outcome do the aliens want this to have? That’s the outcome we get.”
Probably not, they will just interpret/twist their holy writings to support what happened. Or if they can’t think of anything it will just be a “God works in mysterious ways” explanation.
Religion evolves, even if some creationists don’t believe in evolution. It wasn’t too long ago the the pope conceded that the church was wrong and Galileo was right. If extra terrestrial life is discovered there will be a period where all religions attempt to incorporate the news into their doctrine one way or another to keep the money rolling in.
Did you know the Big Bang is called that because Adam was banging Eve?
No, it wasn’t. Science has long proven that religion is a pure hoax, that’s why many studious individuals were burned to death or persecuted throughout human history.
It may have disproven the claim that some creation myths are to be taken literally (and even that is questionable if you assume a trickster deity), but it’s impossible to disprove religion itself.
Ancestor worship for example is wholly unconcerned about how exactly the world came into existence.
Most denominations of Christianity just take the Judeo-Christian creation myth as primarily who created the universe, and not really how, and a categorisation of things and beings.
Most religions primarily make claims about what happens to the self after death and whether one’s life influences that. Unless science opens a portal to an actual afterlife somehow, that is not something science can answer, and religions will continue to exist.
I think OP picked ‘aliens’ because it would be an event where the whole world has to acknowledge that they exist and it would also contradict probably most of the current religions
I’d argue the opposite. Most religions don’t care about aliens existing or not (ancestor worship, Shinto, all Dharmic religions as far as I know, animism, etc.). Others have already made arguments why aliens should exist according to their religion (argued by at least one catholic “saint”), while others would find it difficult but not impossible to fit aliens into their belief systems.
Similarly, the Big Bang at best disproves the literal nature of a religion’s creation myth, if such a myth exists to begin with. An ancient Greek would just tell you that obviously the Big Bang or its aftermath is Chaos, from which the first gods came. An elf in Tolkien’s legendarium would tell you that obviously that was the beginning of Ea (the universe), sung into existence by the first notes sung by the Maiar. A Hindu might say something about Brahman being split into smaller existences.
Very interesting, thanks. What you reckon would an eventual response from the Pope be in case of irrefutable alien evidence?
Big Bang already contradicts ALL religions though.
But I see your point.
But that’s just a theory!!!
Sorry. I couldn’t resist. It’s just fun to act stupid sometimes.
A Game Theory!
But it doesnt…
Big Bang is called that way because Adam was banging Eve.
Nothing. As long as people are scared of dying and other people are willing to profit from it, religion has a home
I think at least with Christianity it would be similar of changing the everything orbiting the Earth to Earth orbiting the Sun. They’d just declare that it is all God’s creation and be done with it.
Christianity doesn’t really change. They still think that the banana is our worse nightmare and since peanut butter has never evolved into a monkey evolution is false.
Bold of you to extrapolate from the subset you personally know to the entire concept. That’s like saying Germanic languages haven’t changed in a significant way because the only Germanic language you know is Icelandic (obviously not the case because you’re writing in English, but it’s just a simily anyway).
Yes because The single most famous apologetic speaker on earth does represent anyone.
The pope literally got rid of limbo.
Call me when he admits the Jesus crackers are a metaphor.
Same for the big bang someone here claims to be a proof that all religions are false.
You can’t really prove negatives. Especially not when something is also constantly adapting and changing over the time. If anything it would use this very fact to disprove it, because it usually claims to be so absolute.
You mean disprove. And you can disprove a negative it is just hard to do beyond the most trivial.
Yeah, sorry. It was 1am.
It is proof that the Abrahamic ones are false.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the only thing it disproves is that their creation myths aren’t to be taken literally.
Actually, in the case of Judaism and Christianity, not even that. An accurate translation of the very first sentence in Genesis is in the perfect tense: “In the beginning, God had created the Heavens and the Earth.” Only starting from the third verse does it switch into the narrative tense. As such, the Big Bang by itself wouldn’t be sufficient evidence against taking the Judeo-Christian creation myth literally (obviously, other advances in science take over from there).
Sorry to disappoint you but they were taken literally by people in the Bible and religious leaders throughout history. If the creation myth didn’t literally happen there is no original sin. No original sin and no Easter miracle. No Easter miracle and as Paul himself noted there is no Christianity.
sigh Someone seems to be emotionally invested in believing it is this easy to disprove a religion.
Sorry for the rant I’m about to go on, but during my general linguistics studies I took Old Hebrew as one of my two required non-Indo-European languages. I eventually dropped/replaced it because it was less about the language than about the literature/theology, but some of that information is useful in discussions like this where people’s views are just embarrassingly simplistic.
First of all, the Big Bang has no relevance to the original sin story. Genesis 1 (where the Big Bang does have relevance) is written in a different style from Genesis 2 (they use different words for God, for example). These were separate oral stories collated into 5 books. You can also see this in how Genesis 2 seems to retread part of what was already said in Genesis 1.
Second, the original sin story doesn’t need to be completely literal, it only needs to convey a message. How exactly humanity got original sin and developed the concept of morality is irrelevant to the arguments and beliefs building on it. What is relevant is whether the results are true. Do you really think someone for whom this is part of their identity wouldn’t just say “so what if it wasn’t an actual fruit?” It’s not even logically inconsistent.
Good thing you dropped Hebrew. Hey I took it as well. Do me a solid and read the part of the OT where the brothers are confronted by their father for massacring the town that circumcised themselves and explain the tense structure. The problem should just jump right out at you.
Your argument is that it isn’t relevant and that is your opinion not mine and not Paul’s.
Also, going from no original sin to no Easter is quite the logical leap. The only connection that story has with Easter is that Christians consider part of its ending to be one of several predictions of Easter.
Even the concept of original sin itself isn’t a requirement for Easter. At best it’s a warning to not think Easter is irrelevant to you because you are a good enough person on your own.
Easter miracle. Do you know your own religion?
According to Paul Jesus needed to be killed and come back to life because of original sin. Original sin that entered the world via the literal Adam and Eve story. Maybe read the bible.
Do you know your own religion?
Pray tell, at which point did I claim any religion as my own? I just get annoyed when people use baby’s first atheism to make simplistic claims they can’t back up. As if it were that easy. In another branch of this comment tree you refer to a story way later in Genesis. As far as I can tell, the reference to that story was an appeal to emotions rather than logic. You could use it as a reason why someone might want to reject the religions that include it, but not to prove logically that those religions must be untrue. Do better.
Anyway, my point, that the level of literalness of the original sin story is irrelevant to the theology building off it, stands. What matters to people who believe in it is that it tells them about original sin, not whether or not a literal fruit and snake were involved.
And with this, I’m done with this discussion.
The irrational will always find ways to remain irrational.
Religions are unlikely to change substantially, I imagine they’ll just find some way to explain the existence of aliens that fits their existing scriptures and world view.
There will be new religions that pop up as a result though, for sure.
Or say that science is lying again :p
Nah, it’ll just be another, “Gawd werks in mysterious wayz!”
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If they’re more intelligent than us but with the same morals we’re doomed, so we might have not time to adapt our religions.
