Well, really, most human societies hold cooperation, peace, and common assistance to be virtues. We just fail, all too often, to live up to the ideal. If an alien visitor preached this, we’d all nod and agree (and then return to killing our brothers tomorrow.)
Now, if the alien went a whole lot further, and preached against private property of any kind, or the advancement of any personal advantage over the communal good, he’d be wasting his breath, but it still wouldn’t be wholly alien to us. There are humans who say the same thing.
There was a science fiction story where the aliens were very strict anarchists/minarchists, and believed that any government larger than a small town was morally intolerable. They had real problems coping with our nations of tens and hundreds of millions.
It gets scary if they’re so alien we can’t make sense of them at all. Suppose they believed that language is only for telling the truth: fiction, as we know it, is a major sin. (“What? You tell stories of people who never actually existed? That has to stop now!”)
I think we’ve been so inundated by the idea of alien life in popular media, that a lot of people, after being shocked and awed that alien life actually exists, won’t do the stereotypical thing that our ancestors probably would have done by worshiping them as gods/messengers of gods. The more proselytizing religions would probably try to convert them. I’d imagine converting a new life form to your religion would be a pretty big boon to your religion. Or conceivably a detriment if enough of your followers are hard-line xenophobic.
Humans are pretty cooperative. Life is competition, down to the level of genes. If by “predation” you mean our meat eating heritage, then herbivores also compete for territory, scarce resources, status, and mates. When humans fight each other they’re not generally looking to eat each other. One view is that any alien species who set out to explore the galaxy would have to have some level of territorial ambition or greed. Docile hippie aliens wouldn’t bother.
I’m pretty sure that (Orthodox) Judaism would consider the aliens to be in the same religious category as animals - intelligent animals, to be sure, but lacking a soul or the capacity for free will.
But what if the aliens were not only technologically more advanced than us* but had a long, rich culture and history? I think if the church tried to take that line, it wouldn’t be a very stable situation at all.
As I said upthread, the odds are they would be unimaginably more advanced than us, essentially gods. But since everyone else is imagining little green men I’ll try to stay within that discussion space.
I can’t speak on behalf of other Christians but I don’t see how the discovery of extraterrestrial life would contradict Scripture or Christianity in any way. Not mentioned doesn’t mean doesn’t exist.
I don’t think it would make a difference, theologically speaking. If you don’t like the word “animals”, I could point out angels as an analog (from the viewpoint of (Orthodox) Jewish tradition) - they are certainly thought of as intelligent, with powers and abilities beyond those of human beings (somewhat analogous to advanced alien technology), but they are still believed to be essentially celestial automatons - no free will.
While, from a Christian point of view, I think the view would be that if they had free will, intelligence, a moral sense, etc, then they would be considered to be created in the image of God, and therefore if not actually human then on all fours with humanity.
Yeah but they aren’t bracketed with animals (with humans having dominion over them) either. And, depending on your denomination, they’re worshipped to one extent or another.
Now from that you might argue Christianity would have no issue with incorporating aliens as angels. But there’s a difference between angels as mythical beings no-one ever sees, vs walking, talking and having an agency of their own (that constantly contradicts whatever shoehorning the church tries to do).
Plus, of course, as I say, demonstrable power is always going to beat legends. So if the aliens are doing stuff that affects humans, we’ll shed the old religions in no time.
I’m leaning in this direction as well. There is a natural tendency, reinforced by media portrayal, that aliens are basically just like us except with funny foreheads. They, laugh, they love their children, they listen to music, they are jealous etc. In fact they are far more likely to have an entirely separate set of hard wired motivations, and instincts that will make them very difficult for humans to understand on a basic emphatic level.
Based on this it would seem reasonable to believe that these creatures don’t have any more of a soul than an octopus. Yes, they are intelligent but they certainly don’t have a soul in the way we would understand it.
In fact if it happened that they were basically like us, then that would be one of the few unbelievable coincidence that might cause me to move from atheism to a more agnostic understating of a spiritual dimension to the universe.
I agree with all this, but don’t forget one requirement in this scenario is that the aliens have chosen to interact with humans in some way that makes it clear that they exist and that they’re sentient. Otherwise the OP doesn’t apply.
And I think sentient + powerful is enough to be a big problem for religion and shake up many people’s view of the world. We don’t need to empathize, we instinctively anthropomorphize forces of nature anyway (this is largely why religion exists in the first place)
Is Jesus an only child who goes from planet to planet? Maybe he was just assigned to Earth and has a sibling saving souls on each of the other inhabited planets.
Calling themselves the “Universal Church” requires them to take a universal stance. Of *course *the aliens are Catholic or at least have the prerequisite history and moral basises to become Catholic. How could it be otherwise?
Not that I believe the Catholic doctrine to be factually true in the Universe at large or even just here on Earth. But I do think I’ve factually explained the thinking and motivations behind it.
Some religions are very invested in the idea that humans are the sole center and reason for being of the entire Universe. Those folks are in for a shaking up that’ll rock their universe.
At the other extreme, some are moral systems with some supernatural pixie dust thrown on. They’ll adapt without much fuss.
The second group will either extend themselves to encompass aliens, or label them the incorrigible Other exactly to the degree the aliens have moral sensitivities similar to our own.
As noted by others above, trying to predict how much aliens resemble us morally is a fools’ errand. On this planet at least, larger and more complex technological societies require a greater degree of trust in strangers which implies an increasing triumph of group empathy over selfish individualism.
I can argue convincingly (to me at least) that aliens with the group social dynamics of great white sharks could not progress to be a space-faring society. Likewise a society composed of 100% human psychopaths.
But what about aliens that are more like hive-minds than individuals? What would they say about our ideas of morals? And what would we say of theirs? IOW, there is no guarantee that because we need to become trusting cooperators but still at least partially self-motivated individuals to cross space that they needed to do so as well.
If they showed up to Meeting: “The guestbook is in that corner. We’ll have someone in this other corner to answer questions if you have any about Quakerism. Potluck is the third Sunday of each month. Please label ingredients.”
Otherwise I imagine folks would just think it’s cool.
When the Spanish conquistadors came to Mexico, they treated the locals like barbarians. Because they weren’t Catholic.
When The Franciscan Monks came, they said the locals were like innocent children. They have never rejected our faith. And life was better for the locals.
So, if the aliens met the Franciscans, they would have the opportunity to accept the faith.
