# How would world religions deal with discovery of sapient alien life? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 28, 2012, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401 "2012-12-28T17:48:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/21 "2012-12-29T17:14:06Z")
Quick - check their palaeontological records! If they evolved earlier than we did, then obviously they were failed experiments and we were meant to supplant them. If they evolved after we did, then we may be in trouble… ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/22 "2012-12-29T18:04:37Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Because he was an idiot? I’m sure he was a perfectly fine person in other ways, but the discovery of aliens doesn’t have to end religion in general or Catholicism in particular any more than the discovery of atomic fission did. Right. Official Catholicism kicked and screamed about heliocentrism for a couple of centuries but then quietly accepted it (though it took all the way to JP2 to \*publicly \*say “Um, sorry about that, Galileo”); with Evolution, within a few decades they had accepted that the general idea was not incompatible and in the 20th Century accepted it as the standard scientific consensus; AFAIK they never were publicly opposed to atomic or quantum theory. Anglicans, Lutherans and other mainstream protestants sharing the Western church tradition were even more open and should have no critical issue with the mere _existence_ of aliens. The theological debate would be, are we called to take Christ to them, are we to consider that God has his own separate plan for them, or may they even be Unfallen? Real heavy duty theological debate. As\*\* Alessan\*\* suggests, most Jewish doctrinal schools would likely say, eh, so, yet more goyim around. Mormons, heck, they already believe in other worlds, no prob. The more hardcore Fundamentalists would be the ones who would rule them right off the bat as either demonic apparitions, or mission fodder who HAVE to be converted, no need for further questions. Aliens saying they have proof of, say, evolution or more seriously of the nonexistence of immortal “souls” would not necessarily be viewed by people with a _strong_ faith as any nore authoritative than human scientists saying so. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/23 "2012-12-29T19:42:21Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > So what, more goyim? Eh. Nothing new there. But what if the alien shiksas are really hot? How would we deal with the rishathra problem? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/24 "2012-12-29T19:58:33Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Would the world become more or less religious in retaliation to the discovery? Well, even if existing religions have a problem with it, the emergence of completely new religions can’t be ruled out. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/25 "2012-12-29T20:00:21Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Most importantly, would they leave said aliens alone, or would there be a mad race to convert them? Or the ETs might have their own religions and send missionaries **here.** And win some converts, too; if L. Ron Hubbard can do it, anyone can. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/26 "2012-12-29T20:01:40Z")
> [@Vaevictis](#): > > In certain limited ways Christian Europe’s initial acquaintances with the Americas might be a model of what could happen in the original poster’s scenario. Yes, but which planet is Europe? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/27 "2012-12-29T20:02:51Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > I don’t think it would raise any theological problems for Buddhists. Or Hindus for that matter (does Hinduism have a creation myth?). Hindus believe countless worlds and universes are being created and destroyed all the time. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/28 "2012-12-29T20:09:50Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > So, why do you think my old coworker was so dead-set against discovering aliens? As a Catholic, why did he fear it would be the end of religion? Perhaps because, in his mind, Jesus and ETs just can’t fit into the same universe. Christianity is based on a complete narrative – God made Man in His own image, Adam sinned and all his descendants are born in sin, Jesus came to offer redemption from sin, Jesus will come again and wrap things up eventually, and that is the story of the universe. The existence of other sentient material beings in it, that just does not seem to fit; it’s like a romance novel with more than two central-character lovers in it. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/29 "2012-12-29T21:15:25Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > I feel confident that Christianity, at least, will find some way to stretch biblical references to include aliens. [Ezekial 1:4-6](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+1%3A4-6&version=NIV) ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/30 "2012-12-29T21:18:09Z")
Human sapient intellect is entirely social and linguistic. Without language and complex social behavior, we are barely different from any other animal. Abstract concepts like zero and next year cannot be retained, or for that matter obtained, except linguistically, and we only get them from other people. This is all we know, the only path to intelligence. But an alien race might have some other unknown medium of intelligence. Perhaps they could learn things directly, through encoding (genetic knowledge growth), which would make their culture, well, alien. We very well might not be able to engage them at all, the functional divide could be insurmountable. It is too easy to imagine aliens that followed a similar path as we did, much more difficult to imagine something else. If they have some sort of agenda, or even if they are merely curious but incomprehensible, how would we figure it out if we could not establish real communication? Given a fully or nearly opaque level of interaction between us and them, most religions would be at an impasse. Here are these beings, the are smart and can do things, but we are unable to understand how or why. It is enough of a struggle to figure out why _we_ are here, now we have to try to figure out why _they_ are here and do we want them to hang around or gtfo? Without some sort of scriptural guidance or zen outlook, there is no way religion could make sense of such a situation, they would now have a gap so large that god would fall through it. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/31 "2012-12-29T22:05:14Z")
\, I’m dubious of the meme that communication would be difficult, or even impossible. A species visiting earth will have mastered interstellar travel. This tells us that this species can solve extremely difficult abstract problems that are completely unlike the environment they evolved in. Well, trying to communicate with another species is an abstract problem. And by comparison it’s not that difficult as it’s a problem that is trying to help you solve it all the while (if they are attempting to communicate, we will be doing all we can to help them). By the standards of problems that they are likely to have solved, communicating with us will be trivial, in my expectation. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/32 "2012-12-29T22:32:24Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > [Quote=Musicat] > > I feel confident that Christianity, at least, will find some way to stretch biblical references to include aliens. [Ezekial 1:4-6](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+1%3A4-6&version=NIV) [/quote] For that matter, the entire book of Revelation could be used similarly. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2012, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/33 "2012-12-30T00:09:05Z")
**Mijin** , I get what you are saying, but you are assuming that they would _want_ to communicate with us. If they just want to study us, they well might have no particular reason to let us gain information from them – that could pollute the data they are collecting. I mean that the aliens might be able to understand us but we them. Or they might just want to eat us or mine up all our unobtainium, in which case, us being able to understand them would certainly not be to their advantage. At this point, if they made it here, they hold all the chips. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2012, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/34 "2012-12-30T14:18:21Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > [Ezekial 1:4-6](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+1%3A4-6&version=NIV) Ezekiel saw the wheel Way up in the middle of the air Ezekiel saw the wheel Way up in the middle of the air So let me fly So let me fly So let my fly Way up high Way in the middle of the air! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2012, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/35 "2012-12-30T14:21:04Z")
> [@For You](#): > > At this point, if they made it here, they hold all the chips. Do they? From Bruce Sterling’s SF short story “Swarm”: Afriel, a human agent of the Solar System’s Shaper faction (specializing in gene-engineering), at war with the Mechanists (prosthetics and technology), has been sent to the Hive, a cluster of asteroids in a distant star system, where, in air-filled tunnels burrowed through the rock, live the Swarm, a race of nonsentient beings with many specialized castes. His mission is purportedly scientific study, but his real mission is to domesticate the Swarm, alter their genes to make them produce things the Shapers can use. At the end, his partner, the (real) scientist Mirny, vanishes, and Swarm of the soldier caste arrest him and take him before what appears to be a new caste, a Swarm with a giant brain, which has absorbed his partner’s mind and memories through a tentacle thrust into her head, so it can now speak her language. Afriel’s pheromonal experiments created a chemical imbalance which the Queen detected, triggering genetic patterns, causing the brain to be born to deal with the threat. > [@](#): > > “Yes,” Swarm agreed. “You will be helpful. Your companion’s memories tell me that this is one of those uncomfortable periods when galactic intelligence is rife. Intelligence is a great bother. It makes all kinds of trouble for us.” > > “What do you mean?” > > “You are a young race and lay great stock by your own cleverness,” Swarm said. “As usual, you fail to see that intelligence is not a survival trait.” > > Afriel wiped sweat from his face. “We’ve done well,” he said. “We came to you, and peacefully. You didn’t come to us.” > > “I refer to exactly that,” Swarm said urbanely. “This urge to expand, to explore, to develop, is just what will make you extinct. You naively suppose that you can continue to feed your curiosity indefinitely. It is an old story, one pursued by countless races before you. Within a thousand years – perhaps a little longer – your species will vanish.” > > “You intend to destroy us, then? I warn you it will not be an easy task --” > > “Again you miss the point. Knowledge is power! Do you suppose that fragile little form of yours – your primitive legs, your ludicrous arms and hands, your tiny, scarcely wrinkled brain – can contain all that power? Certainly not! Already your race is flying to pieces under the impact of your own expertise. The original human form is becoming obsolete. Your own genes have been altered, and you, Captain-Doctor, are a crude experiment. In a hundred years you will be a relic. In a thousand years you will not even be a memory. Your race will go the same way as a thousand others.” > > “What way is that?” > > “I do not know.” The thing on the end of Swarm’s arm made a chuckling sound. “They have passed beyond my ken. They have all discovered something, learned something, that has caused them to transcend my understanding. It may be that they even transcend being. At any rate, I cannot sense their presence anywhere. The seem to do nothing, they seem to interfere in nothing; for all intents and purposes, they seem to be dead. Vanished. They may have become gods, or ghosts. In either case, I have no wish to join them.” > > “So then – so then you have --” > > “Intelligence is very much a two-edged sword, Captain-Doctor. It is useful only up to a point. It interferes with the business of living. Life, and intelligence, do not mix very well. They are not at all closely related, as you childishly assume.” ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2012, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/36 "2012-12-30T15:07:12Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > So, why do you think my old coworker was so dead-set against discovering aliens? As a Catholic, why did he fear it would be the end of religion? One Catholic’s impression of such things, when his entire experience of aliens is “The X-Files,” isn’t necessarily meaningful. I think Sicks Ate nailed it. The goalposts would be moved, and the beings of Sirius III would just be heathens or potential converts. Of course, even if sapient, it’s unlikely we would see aliens as being God’s children; the likely scenario is a war of hideous violence, and we’d see them as monsters. And they us. ---
**Author:** ![Indian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@Indian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indian)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/37 "2012-12-30T16:21:44Z")
…way back in [2008](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/14/vatican-its-ok-to-believe_n_101690.html). May be the news didn’t percolate down? ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/38 "2012-12-31T15:29:03Z")
Depends on how much and in what form the aliens are willing to tithe. For 10% of their gross, paid in US dollars, I think every religion on earth could find a place for aliens, even little red beings with horns, tails and hooves. If they don’t tithe we will need to send missionaries to save them, followed by soldiers to save the missionaries. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2012, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/39 "2012-12-31T17:24:47Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **drewtwo99** : > > So, why do you think my old coworker was so dead-set against discovering aliens? As a Catholic, why did he fear it would be the end of religion? The cognitive dissonance implicit in this view is staggering. If discovering aliens is something that he opposes, then that must imply that he considers it impossible, and thus that he thinks that they exist. But if they exist, and if he believes that their existence would destroy religion, should he not consider religion already destroyed? Yet he obviously does not, given that he still identifies with a religion. ---
**Author:** ![ladysorrowfree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@ladysorrowfree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ladysorrowfree)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401/40 "2013-01-02T05:53:32Z")
Read Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Fire Balloons” for an interesting take on how a missionary might deal with encountering sentient ETs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-world-religions-deal-with-discovery-of-sapient-alien-life/645401.md?page=3)