How would the main religions and faiths handle the discovery of intelligent and/or self-aware extraterrestrial life?
In the main, religions seem flexible enough to adapt -after a fashion and plenty of time- to discoveries and inventions, but bumping into smart alien beings that had never even considered a divine creator (or might have one or a few of their own) could prove to be quite the challenge. I’d love to hear other people’s take on the situation, as listening to myself is getting old.
Same way they approached the natives in the Exploration and Colonial eras.
Would we be discovering them or would they be discovering us?
Who knows? Maybe they also have a diety? Truth is nobody knows how it would all go down.
Simple THEIR God did it.
I hope their diety prohibits eating of humanity.
But would they consider us humans?
See this thread from February and the earlier threads which I linked to in it:
By trying frantically to decide if they were subject to Noachide laws.
Probably. The problem is that the aliens would be sending missionaries the other way, to convert us primitive humans to the worship of the great god Putz, Creator of the Seven Suns of Zorgon.
I already mentioned that a couple times. In Arthur C. Clarke “Rendezvous with Rama”, a devoutly catholic astronaut who is about to be sent on a mission to explore what appears to be an alien spaceship ask for a papal audience, to ask him what the existence of other intelligent lives could mean wrt the Catholic faith. The pope essentially answer that if there are other sentient beings, then they too are subject to the original sin, and they too have been visited by Jesus (in whatever form) and have been redeemed. Basically, that the Christian belief has to be universally true.
Now, it so happened that just after I read this novel, a NASA mission landed on Mars and as usual there were a number of articles in the medias about the possibility that evidences of life could be found there. And to my surprise, a short article precisely adressed the issue. It stated that not long before, theologians had met in Rome to discuss it : what would the discovery of alien sentience mean from the point of view of the catholic church? And again to my surprise, their conclusion was the same as what the pope says in Clarke’s story : if there’s an alien sentient life, then the original sin, the redemption, etc… applies to them too.
Of course, this wasn’t in any way authoritative. It was just the opinion of some random Catholic theologians. But it suggest that it’s at least possible that it would become the actual Catholic stance if it were to happen (and also that this church is potentially open to the possibility of the existence of an alien intelligent life).
Well the Scientologists could say “I told you so”. Ditto the Raelism people.
IIRC, Mormons also have other inhabited worlds as a formal doctorine, so presumably they could roll with the discovery of aliens pretty well as well.
Catholics used to forbid the teaching of the existence of “other worlds”, so as of 1620 or so it was a heresy. Assuming that’s still on the books, it might make aliens a little awkward, though presumably they wouldn’t have that hard a time adjusting their cosmology around a 500 year old doctrine that no one remembers anymore.
Not aware of any other religions that have an official stance on aliens.
Or are we dancers?
The Catholics have an odd view on this issue. There is absolutely nothing in either logic or the Bible to suggest that aliens would have the same moral issues that we do. Yes, they might have their equivalent of Adam’s Fall. But maybe in their world, the Fall never happened. Thus, original sin never would have entered the picture.
Even if they are sinful, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they would have the same redemption story, either. The angels were given exactly ONE chance to decide whether they would follow God or Satan, and that choice sealed their fate forever.
The thing is, if we’re restricting this to sentient life, then the chances are overwhelmingly that they will be vastly more advanced than us. Typical sci-fi scenarios do not apply here.
My prediction is that people will split into 1) Theists who try to incorporate aliens into their theology e.g. as “angels” 2) People who worship the aliens themselves as a new religion and 3) People who understand / accept they are just an advanced sentient species.
And I think, over time, people in Group 1 will gradually move to Group 2. Even if the aliens are completely indifferent to us. Visible miracle-workers in the here and now are much more compelling than some old legends.
Those things are all sociologically driven constructs, created for the purpose of imposing social order. Aliens who evolved with different drives and instincts might have entirely different concepts of social organization, or might have a rationally based morality instead of one based on mythological parable and supernatural dictate. I’d like to believe that morality is a concept that universally emerges from intelligence, but the way you achieve it is subject to great sociological variances even among cultures in different times and places on this one little planet.
My take: if we ever encounter intelligent life elsewhere, Christians will be obliged to love them as fellow “men.”
And everything Jesus said would be as binding on a Vulcan or a Wookie as on us.
The current Pope has said that, if an alien were to ask to be baptized, that he would be glad to do it. I think it’s safe to say that acceptance of the possibility of aliens is now part of fully-official Catholic doctrine.
Imagine that the evolution of the planetary visitors was driven by cooperation rather than predation, that they came with a secular message of replacing our constant conflict with peace and common assistance.
Could dueling orthodoxies accept the concept?
Crane
A lot of the teaching that Satan rebelled and other angels followed Satan shows that heaven could not be a place of perfect happiness and peace, and if God is an all knowing being he would know ahead of time that Satan would revolt and be evil, so it doesn’t make sense to me why such a being would consider creating such a monster, also God should have known that Adam and Eve were uneducated and would fall for Satan’s lies and instead of punishing Satan, he punished Adam and Eve. I would be like a human father beating or crippling his year old baby for something the child knew nothing about.