i’d like to think that the day WHEN be encounter life out side of this world, will be the day when finally, FINALLY we can cast aside all the silly(impossible for me to believe that “intelligent” beings still believe in)unfounded blind faiths,that have plagued and mutiliated the world in which we live in.
if there is a god, and he created earth,then its logical to assume that he created the INNNFINITE unniverse and everything within(unless some fruit is gonna conjure up some crazy scene of a battle of gods in space defending their own solar systems with bolts of lightning or somethin!!)but yeah, when we do make contact with intelligent life, its gonna be like,hmmmm the bible never mentioned that! isnt that strange, and according to this little green man they’ve travelled through billions of galaxies(that the bible never mentioned):smack: and made contact with countless species of intellegent life(which the bible never mentioned):smack: ). i’ll tell you why the bible says nothing of the existence of ets or even anything outside the atmasphere of earth, BECAUSE THE BIBLE WAS WRITTEN BY MEN, AND THERE WAS NO DIVINE DRIVE BEHIND IT!!! :mad: nothing was mentioned because man had not yet discovered all the scientific facts that we now know. the sooner we realise that all we are is the result of chaotic energy driven reactions over millions of years(sorry fundamentalists)in habiting a rock revolving insignificantly through an infinite universe that we a still not evolved enough to understand…huhhhhhhh…ahhhhhhhh!
phew!!!the better. hey y’know the way that god “created man in his own image”,…well mans earliest ancestor was a tree climbin rodent that resembled a possom.he he!! and why in the original hebrew scripts, god is referred to as elohim,which directly means “they(plural) who come from the sky”!!interesting. comon people lets evolve for christ sake!(oops):wally
hey,back when resembled something of an ape, and used to clean his own anus with his tongue…was he in gods image then, because he definitely had no intellect, and i’m pretty surethat if you went back in time and walked up to primitive man and asked him if he had free will, he’d probably just urinate on your leg and run around screamin.
lets stop being so god damn pompous here, “his own image” means intellect and free will" all we are are animals same as pigs an dogs, we just got lucky with evolution. so your sayin if in thousands of years pigs somehow evolved intellegence, intellected and came to understand what free will meant, they’d be in the image of god then…hmmmmmm.easy when its spelt out in balck an white innit! you guys need to stop hidin behaind technicalities and admit that you’ve all been takin for a ride.Face it jesus aint comin back, suckers :eek:
Any one got a link to the above mentioned Catholic theory on extraterrestrials? I searched the Catholic Chatechism online and didn’t come up with anything.
Well, it isn’t exacty a major component of Catholic religion, either. 
Hi, noely -
Your thoughts, so to speak, on the origin and development of man and of the Bible are both interesting and original. Unfortunately, the parts that are interesting are not original, and the parts that are original are not interesting.
Allow me to be the first to ask for cites for pretty much everything you claim.
In short, welcome to Great Debates. We are a cruel group, but fair-minded.
I predict a short, but exciting career for you here at the SDMB. Got your flame-proof shorts? You may need them.
Regards,
Shodan
Dreamer has a point.
Since we’re just supposing, suppose the ETs were shocked at atheists. Suppose they spoke of the one who was born among them and asked them to love one another. Suppose they the quoted a near equivalent to the Sermon on the Mount. Would atheists just shrug it off as meaningless (as opposed to being meaningful if the ETs didn’t believe in God)?
What’s strange about it? The bible doesn’t mention plenty of stuff that we’ve come into contact with, without it causing any kind of tizzy or uproar amongst religious folks.
John 21:25
Here’s a take on the subject from Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton:
The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:
‘Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?’
‘No,’ said the other priest; ‘reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.’
The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:
‘Yet who knows if in that infinite universe – ?’
‘Only infinite physically,’ said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, ‘not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth.’
Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:
‘Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, `Thou shalt not steal.’’
Suppose the ET’s came to Earth and said matter of factly “There is No God. We’ve searched high and low from one end of the Universe to the other (if that’s possible). We were created -enter whatever explanation here- and you were created the same way.” Now I know a lot of religious folk would disagree, but what would you atheists and agnostics think? There would be so many people just in awe of the fact that there are even ET’s in the first place, and that they are on Earth communicating with us. Would you immediately believe they were right? What if they were capable of mental telepathy and showed you how life began. This is starting to sound like a science fiction novel but you never know, they might be out there somewhere just waiting to come down for a visit and I’d like a heads-up on what to expect :D.
well, for the sake of pre-empting any “tricks” – I was under the impression and have always been told that the phrase “God made man in his own likeness” had to do with man’s possession of an intellect and will.
The ancients used to write about the people of the sky – some Babylonian writings explained the flood as having occurred when the “old man in the sky urinated on the earth”. Makes you wonder if that’s why God promises to never do that again in the Bible, and why sea water is salty, but I suppose that’s a discussion for another thread…
As far as aliens, why not? If you take creation to be the work of God, then God could easily have created other creatures and placed them on other planets, so that someday, when everyone was ready, we could have a big party when they get here.
The shame would be that we’d have to turn it into a U.N. conference and “dialogue” and form committees… I hope they land in Louisiana, because then we could all have a beer, dance a little, and go to Mass in the morning.
Maybe them alien women would go for the bead trick if it’s close to fat tuesday…
As far as the religion question goes, it wouldn’t have any effect on Catholicism whatever… so to speak, it’s already in there. As far a Judaism, they would be gentiles, so, it’s already in there. As far a Buddhists, well it wouldn’t matter. Shintos would like them, heck, some of there art already has alien priests…
I think it would be most interesting in some of the Indian religions that have reincarnation as the post-death reward/punishment – the next higher step after man is spiritual… so does that mean that between animals and man is a hidden step of alien? or, does that mean that man is the second to last step before the netherworld? Now, that could be a long discussion…
you’ve just helped my point there a bit friend…
you see, the fact that the bible does not mention so many things that science has explaned(such as the fact that there is something outside of our own atmasphere)proves that it is certainly not the exact word ot the creator of the universe, or even written by a man driven by the wisdom af said enlightened being. unless your gonna say that you believe god flew around on a unicorn writing bibles in every planet that for the minute had intellegent life(and later onwent back to the ones that evolution took its time on) do you not think that if god had decided to spread his wisdom on the earth he would have mentioned some scientific relevences like… i dont know… the world is actually a sphere, y’know especially if he wanted that word to spread all over the world. hey isnt that funny… jesus never mentioned that the world was round neither…how strange:smack: ;j
hey i dont wanna fuck with you guys cause you’ve all probably had a lot more life experience than me, but one thing i do know and believe…(as thomas leary once said)i do not believe anything because belief is the death of intellegence.
as for me not stickin around long, …i’m just passin time till i can get a bus outta this crazy place i’m in!!
I presume, then, that Thomas Leary did not believe what he said, and that you shouldn’t either.
Your demand that the Bible, a collection of books on history and morality, be scientific, as well as your astonishment that Jesus never “mentioned that the world was round neither” is, well, astonishing.
I reckon you’re equally flummoxed that Isaac Newton never mentioned the scientific method in The Principia, and that the Theory of Relativity fails to credit Popper.
I find it disturbing that cheese does not feature in the writings of Isaac Newton and for this reason alone, I reject them.
Isacc newton was’nt the son of the most awesome creator of existence, come to think of it …
neither was jesus:eek:
Over to you Lib; plenty of material to work with, I would imagine.
**noely:**You may be tilting at windmills here; whilst we have a fair population of theists here on the board, a subset of which would describe themselves as Christians, I don’t think there are all that many of those who would insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible or that it is inerrant.
thanks for welcoming me into your lil group friend. you all seem like a nice enough bunch o fellas.
regarding “cites”, i get all that stuff straight outa my head, you see the debate of whether there is a god or ets is one that we cant solve with “facts” or research,hell i dont think we’ll ever solve that through any devises that are within OUR control. its called thinkin stuff out for your self. i may not be the most qualified man at that, but who is, i definitely aint gonna listen to the ramblings of a few prehistoric power hungry mongoloids.
no agression intended here fellas.
peace.
hey isnt it funny how abraham set out to spread the word of god accompanied by his slaves!!!why didnt god take the time to point out to him that slavery is moraly reprehensible??
i got that from the bible.reading from genisis,i was the only one in the church that noticed that, i think i was actually the only one listening. oh incase you’re wondering why i was in a church, its because it was a special day for my girlfriend, and i care way too much about her to let her down!!if thats of any interest
funny!seems people keep changing what exactly it IS that the bible means exactly. way people used to see it was, adam and eve was how man was created and how it fell from grace, and that godactually did build the world in under a week, but then it seems science keeps comin along, diprovin these claims and then we change what these stories mean, in the desperate hope that the laymen wount blink an eylid and wake up. how long we gonna keep clutchin at straws here fellas.
what was the topic again:smack:
well we’ve never come into contact with anything as big as intellegent life from another world, its not like discovering a new breed of mosquito or something.last thing i remember that really shuck tose dusty old scriptures was dinosaurs and lil ol darwin,
well, my word he certainly blew the arse out that adam and eve stuff huh!!:smack: doh!! but yeah those smart religious foke had an ace in the hole there, uh uh those were u h …metaphores, a damnit , nah shag that darwin is the devils child, yah that’ll work!
:eek: hey man, sounds like you’ve been saving that one for a rainy day. i like it
take it easy bro