God and space travel....

[Lab Monkey]

Lets face it, the old preachers have caused a good few problems here on earth... ALLEDGEDLY!

If we finally manage to fart our way out into deep space and find a bunch of aliens, I think that a few rules need to be established, and they depend on something that some members of our society have very little of - respect, and tolerance.

Okay, so we find an alien race. Now the scientists and science fiction fans will have a field day, but the relegious ones amongs us will probable cause shares in headache tablets to rise, because the existance of ETs would raise some pretty serious questions about the holy texts.

One example would be the 'god made man in his image', if the aliens look, well, alien, this would mean one of two things. God is mutable in form, or there are two gods (impossible). Now things start to get complicated.....

That example was off the top of my head, but you have to admit there's going to be a problem. Nowhere in the bible are references made to aliens. In the past other cultures on Earth have been preached too and assimilated into various theologies. Now there may well one day be a 'prime directive' not to interfere with another culture, but we've all seen how arrogant the religious heads in this world can be, after all much of religion is by it's nature about absolutes, you either believe or you don't. Read up on the meaning of 'religion' and you'll find that having a semi-belief is contradictory.

Would an encounter with another advanced race cause our religions to 'self destruct' as it were. Or would our more millitant sects strike out in reaction?

Chances are that a territory war with an alien race would be pretty pointless, after all space is pretty big. Also by the time we do meet anyone out there, we'll probably be able to mass produce space habitats, so war over planets would be a little pointless too (there are plenty to go around, if mining is your thing).

So, likely as not, if war were to break out, it would be a form of holy war, where by we defend our values, a war of culture and ego.

Xenophobia is a pretty big problem for us, perhaps it would be better if we were alone....

 

[Genuis]

One example would be the 'god made man in his image', if the aliens look, well, alien, this would mean one of two things. God is mutable in form, or there are two gods (impossible).

Couldn't he have made us in his image, but the aliens in another? Just a thought.

Seriously, I agree with you. It would not cause any problems for me personally with my religion, because I don't take the Bible literally, but in the case of some fundamentalists it might. I guess they would just have to accept the fact that what they thought was wrong...which they might never do.

Have you read the book "Enders Game" and all the sequels? Those are good sci-fi, they all have to do a lot with this topic - not so much the religious aspect but just what humanity would do when faced with an alien "threat."

 

[ChrTh]

Actually, there's a Poul Anderson book (I think it's called the 'Last Crusade', or something similar) which deals directly with this topic.

It all depends on how literally you take the phrase 'made in his own image'...if you mean, humans look like God, then yeah, you're going to have problems.
If you mean humans possess the mind to comprehend God, well, then aliens were made in his image as well. (assuming they possess the mind to comprehend God)

Not that we're ever going to find aliens...I believe they exist, but nowhere near Star Wars/Star Trek levels. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if we were the only species in the galaxy, considering the chain of events that led evolution to where we are today...there's also a theory that states that if other space-faring aliens existed, there would already be record of them. Since the window of evolution we're currently in dates over 200 million years back (i.e., aliens could've evolved to our level 200 million years ago on a similar planet)...they should be here by now.

Oh, and pyramids and crop circles don't count

 

[Switch625]

I could see two groups getting insanely bent out of shape because of meeting sentient, technologically advanced, alien races. Christian fundamentalists, and Islamic fundamentalists.

I would bet the farm that you would hear the cries of "Crusade!" and "Jihad!" in short order. Both groups are amazingly unable to handle dissenting attitudes among their fellow human beings. You can bet that they would immediately decide that said aliens were evil devilspawn that needed to be eradicated. In the name of God, of course.

Xenophobia + xenoforms = holy war.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

I think I saw God posting in the forums......

On-topic, I think you guys are right. Alien sentient lifeforms are going to make the lives of fundamentalists unbearable. So long as they don't inflict their unbearability on the rest of us, it's their free choice to choose not to have a life.

 

[allan]

Well, the church tried to silence Galileo, and they did temporarily--but science moved on in spite of it. It may not have been until 1968 (I believe it was) when the Pope finally acknowledged the errors of the Church regarding Galileo, admitting that he was correct, but I'm sure most Catholics a hundred years before also believed the scientific findings that led from his discoveries.

If future space explorers find aliens, I think the fundies here might try to claim it all a hoax or something, but it won't get very far. I'd like to think though by the time we make "first contact", there won't be too many fundies left in the world... too impractical for most people to subscribe to. But then again there may be more than ever.

 

[allan]

"Not that we're ever going to find aliens...I believe they exist, but nowhere near Star Wars/Star Trek levels. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if we were the only species in the galaxy, considering the chain of events that led evolution to where we are today...there's also a theory that states that if other space-faring aliens existed, there would already be record of them. Since the window of evolution we're currently in dates over 200 million years back (i.e., aliens could've evolved to our level 200 million years ago on a similar planet)...they should be here by now."

There are all kinds of theories.... There is a theory that we may actually be descendants of an alien race from elsewhere (which could be an explanation for why a "missing link" hasn't been found yet)--a ship that crashed, survivors slowly forgetting all the science that got them there as they had to fight hostile elements and animals to survive, etc. Not saying I subscribe to this theory necessarily, but it IS possible.... Truth is, we don't know near enough to even make educated guesses on the existance or abundance of other alien cultures. There may, for all we know, even be many cultures that have achieved "transcendence" (to borrow a term from AC), and can exist and travel as pure energy.... If you believe there is a God, this may actually be what "God" is, who knows?

And even if there are alien races all around us (I agree this is unlikely, but won't rule it out), if they are sufficiently advanced they may not want to have anything to do with us directly (but they could be watching our race develop from a distance). Or there could be a powerful race, the most advanced in this region of space, that has a "prime directive" of sorts and keeps all the other races away from our system--enforcing a sort of law against interference.

But then again, there are the Pyramids in the shape of the Pleiades (including some stars invisible to the naked eye in that cluster), the tribe in Africa that inexplicably knew about the unseen companion to Sirius before its discovery by astronomers, the Mayan city of Tikal built of stones found nowhere near the building site, etc. A friend of mine told me something about reading about (he couldn't remember where) a mechanical computer found in some Phoenician ruins--anyone hear about that? All these things contribute to another popular theory, that we may have been visited by alien explorers from elsewhere, who "nudged" us along with some technology....

Or maybe, statistically, 90% or so of "intelligent" races end up wiping themselves out ecologically or with weapons of mass destruction so therefore few get around to serious space exploration.... Or, maybe Einstein is 100% correct and faster-than-light speeds are impossible to achieve, and there are no "wormholes", "space-folding" or other tricks to get around it either, meaning exploring and colonizing farther than a few light-years never really happens due to its immense impracticalities (I read a Poul Anderson book, "The Starfarers", which dealt with this very issue)....

But who knows? Speculation is fascinating, but until we know more that is all we can do.

 

[hzm]

Truth is, we don't know near enough to even make educated guesses on the existance or abundance of other alien cultures. There may, for all we know, even be many cultures that have achieved "transcendence" (to borrow a term from AC), and can exist and travel as pure energy.... If you believe there is a God, this may actually be what "God" is, who knows?

Isn't that what Q is in ST TNG?


On an episode of "In Search Of..." a guy found that from space if you matched up holy greek sites it formed a cross (not a christian one). They also found sacred sites in europe that made a triangle. Along the lines of the triangle were uranium deposits.

 

[Lab Monkey]

Wow! People replying to my thread!

Now here's a conspiracy.... Have the religious organisations of the Earth, with their influence and resources, pursuaded the government and the sceintific establisment to cover up the existance of ETs for the above reasons?

 

[knowltok2]

Originally posted by Knight-Dragon
On-topic, I think you guys are right. Alien sentient lifeforms are going to make the lives of fundamentalists unbearable. So long as they don't inflict their unbearability on the rest of us, it's their free choice to choose not to have a life.

Yes, and their is no track record of religious fundamentalists inflicting unbearability on others.


"I say you're the mesiah, and I should know, I've followed a few!"

 

[ChrTh]

"the tribe in Africa that inexplicably knew about the unseen companion to Sirius before its discovery by astronomers"

I can't let this one slip by. There's evidence that the 'companion' of Sirius was once the primary star, and that it went nova several hundred (thousand?) years ago, so a simple exercise in reasoning and observation would reveal this. [EDIT: Let me clarify this. When stars go Nova, they get brighter then fade; after they fade, they disappear; this star got brighter, faded, but there was another star that looked different remaining behind. There must have been two stars there beforehand. That's how reasoning would go]

As for the notion of an alien "prime directive" - riiiiight. Look at human history--how often have we left well enough alone? 1800s Africa ring a bell? Same scenario.
Of course, now we'll get all the 'enlightenment' arguments, which is a bunch of bull. A civilization that has space travel would go through the same throes to get there; conflict is the basis of evolution. If they are truly enlightened, there is no need for voyeurism on their part--or spaceships for that matter.
If there were aliens out there, we would know about it in detail. And we are NOT the descendants of telephone cleaners, etc.

 

[BigBirdZ28]

Originally posted by Lab Monkey
Now here's a conspiracy.... Have the religious organisations of the Earth, with their influence and resources, pursuaded the government and the sceintific establisment to cover up the existance of ETs for the above reasons?

No-way would a muslim organization do that.

"O company of jinn and men, if you have the power to penetrate (all) regions of the heavens and the earth, then penetrate (them), not without authority shall you be able to pass."
Holy Quran 55:33

Within Islam, finding aliens is a scientific challenge & science must be pursued to explain religion.

 

[ChrTh]

Catholicism wouldn't have a problem, either. I don't have the exact passage, but Carl Sagan quotes a leading Catholic authority that they would have no issues with aliens in 'Demon-Haunted World'

 

[Sixchan]

I heard the Mormon church's bible has a passage with God talking to Moses saying that he had created many worlds, and many people.

I'll look it up.

 

[Sixchan]

Wow, if we meet aliens, the Mormon church will make a killing! Even God is an alien!

The Planet KOLOB
Mormon Theologians agree that God lives on a distant planet, the planet KOLOB. It's located in the constellation Cancer, sector 2813. Kolob means "the first creation" -- which is "nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God", as McConkie assures us.

"Our scriptures say that God told Moses only about this planet," said LDS apostle Neal A. Maxwell in a recent television interview. "But we're not worshiping a one-planet God." (Salt Lake Tribune Aug 1996 Vol. 252 No. 118)

Man, if this planet is discovered, I'm going Mormon.

Until recently, the star which Kolob orbits has not been known. In late 1999, Mormon astronomers at Brigham Young University, using the Hubble telescope, obtained faint images of this star, which they tentatively named Kakistocra-99b2.* It turns out that Kakistocra falls squarely just next to our sun on the famous Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of stellar evolution. [Kakistocra is a G2.5 type star.]

This lends further support to the Mormon claim that Kolob is an Earth-like planet, just one of Elohim's "worlds without number (Other authorities disagree: Isaiah 30:26). As the Mormon apostle Maxwell puts it, "There are other humanoids on other planets unknown to us."

Unfortunately, the planet Kolob itself has not yet been imaged. Plans are underway by BYU astronomers, using the new three meter active optics telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, to image this star in the infrared spectrum.

Holy ****! This has got to be the best Church for Sci-Fi fans I've ever seen!

http://nowscape.com/mormon/mormons5.htm

 

[stormerne]

Originally posted by Lab Monkey
One example would be the 'god made man in his image', if the aliens look, well, alien, this would mean one of two things. God is mutable in form, or there are two gods (impossible). Now things start to get complicated.....

Two gods impossible? Wrong! It's very possible. In my religion we have many gods. And these aliens may have religions too of course. Maybe they believe one of their gods made them in his/her/its image. (Hmm... I wonder which of my gods are interested in space travel, if any.)

 

[amadeus]

If there was intelligent life beyond the earth, why would we have to pursue them? In theory, wouldn't it be easier for them to find us first?

 

[Sixchan]

What if they all think like you, rmsharpe?


Oh, wait, then we should avoid them. j/k

 

[ComradeDavo]

"the tribe in Africa that inexplicably knew about the unseen companion to Sirius before its discovery by astronomers"

I read up all about a few years back and have been convinced it is true since (for those who don't realsie that means I believe aliens have visted that tribe!)

 

[ChrTh]

Y'all need a heavy dose of Carl Sagan, STAT!