…with the James Web Telescope looking for sources of artificial light to identify potential intelligent life, and the news this week of Perseverance searching for microbial life on Mars it feels like we are getting closer to a major discovery. But what - if anything - would it mean for the religions on Earth if life is proven to exist out there?
Same as every other times when science have disproven religions fairytales. They adapt. God also made those lifeforms
So, fun fact, St Augustine, who is considered one of the Church Fathers, explicitly argued that if the ‘Antipodes’ (i.e., southern continents not connected to Europe, Asia or Africa) actually existed and had humans living there, that would prove the Gospel was untrue.
The reason for this is as follows: Christians of his era believed that the reason God had allowed the Romans to destroy the Second Temple and push the Jews into exile was to prepare the men of all nations (as understood at the time) for the coming of the Gospel. The idea was that the Jews had taken the Old Testament, and the prophecies of the Messiah therein, across the whole world. Augustine argues that if the Antipodes contained human beings who had never had any kind of contact with Jews, and therefore no contact with the OT, and no contact with Christians, and therefore no contact with the New Testament, either, that must mean the Gospels are false. Why? Because there’s no conceivable reason that a just God would have deprived entire civilisations of the chance of redemption.
Of course, we now know that at the time Augustine was writing (4th-5th century AD), there were literally millions of people who had never had the slightest contact with the Jews or Christians and, furthermore, wouldn’t do so for another millennium. So, per Augustine’s argument, all those millions were condemned to Hell (the concept of Purgatory didn’t exist at this point, but condemning them all to no chance of Heaven, just because they were unfortunate to be born a long way away from Jersualem, is clearly also unjust). Either God is incredibly unjust and unmerciful, which means the Gospels are untrue, OR the Good News wasn’t actually spread to all men, which must also mean that they’re not true.
The upshot of this is that one of the Church Fathers has, in retrospect, irrefutably argued that the Gospels are untrue. The amount of special pleading required to make out that, actually, the Maori or the Easter Islanders or [insert any other uncontacted peoples here] had an opportunity to accept Christ and somehow missed it entirely is far beyond any sane interpretation of the evidence.
Now, as you might have noticed, this hasn’t stopped people from believing in the Gospels. I don’t see why the discovery of life on another world would dislodge people from a belief that is transparently false when nothing else has.
I remember being taught that Jesus presented himself to the rest of the world after his resurrection and that beyond that ‘the rocks testify’ and that all man is without excuse.
It always bothered me, even before I began deconstructing, and was one of a few things that never set well with me.
I’m surprised that in all my study of Augustine I never saw this about him before.
Yes, I always kind of respected the Mormons for at least trying to reconcile the existence of the Native Americans with the New Testament, beyond ‘the rocks testify’, but they also inadvertently showed how absurd the whole idea was by stretching every kind of evidence (biblical, linguistic, genetic, archaeological, etc.) so much to make it work! And of course even that didn’t seem to account for the Polynesians and… well, everyone else.
I was always especially fond of the idea that Jesus revealed himself to the Aztecs and they somehow got so confused that they ended up worshipping a giant feathered snake instead.
Just meeting another person who didn’t automatically believe in your allegedly true God unless you told him about it should have put religion to rest forever.
Moreover, it’s almost funny how thousands of cultures who had no contact between them at all have imagery of red devils with bad intentions yet nobody manages to have even a similar idea of what our supposed God is.
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Religion would change if religious people learn to look beyond 6 feet in front of them, but I guess that’s less possible than proof of extraterrestrial life.
Not all religious people are the Westborough Baptists, rabid creationists, prosperity gospel followers and massive hypocrites you know personally. Nor are the rest all militant fundamentalists who think terrorism is a good idea.
There are Jains, parts of the Salvation Army and many more that are perfectly reasonable and don’t go against anything science has to say. Because at the end of the day, religions and science have very little overlap, as most religious beliefs can neither be proven nor disproven.
I agree and disagree as well.
Religion as it is refers to a way of life. Ideally what your way of life is should not change with what others do or not do.
But realistically, what we have seen is that religion lets people justify their own shortcomings just because they are part of a secret group and then force their “way of life” on others.
At the same time, holding onto a single “way of life” is intrinsically prone to mistakes, since we are never given complete knowledge about everything and will never have it. We need to change constantly to be better versions of ourselves.
If there are people who believe in something greater than them, and are prepared to change if they have the necessary proof, then I’m afraid I can’t call them religious. I’d call them spiritual.
Religions are unlikely to change substantially, I imagine they’ll just find some way to explain the existence of aliens that fits their existing scriptures and world view.
There will be new religions that pop up as a result though, for sure.
Will proof of aliens change the brainwashed ultra religious? Not a chance. Hell, there are flatearthers and election deniers. I don’t expect much from about 30% of our population.
Religions adapt.
I think a lot of religious people will reason it this way- “Yes, there are aliens, but God chose us.”
How many more steps until it’s the 40k universe?
I think wed be about 28000 years away from having to worry about all that lol
They would just claim god created them, too. They already did this with the universe when the whole thing about there being other stuff than the earth came up.
Exactly this. I know a guy who is a Christian but also believes in extraterrastial life saying that ayy lmaos are also Gods children. Every time he talks about it my head starts to spin.
I think at least with Christianity it would be similar of changing the everything orbiting the Earth to Earth orbiting the Sun. They’d just declare that it is all God’s creation and be done with it.
Same for the big bang someone here claims to be a proof that all religions are false.
It is proof that the Abrahamic ones are false.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the only thing it disproves is that their creation myths aren’t to be taken literally.
Actually, in the case of Judaism and Christianity, not even that. An accurate translation of the very first sentence in Genesis is in the perfect tense: “In the beginning, God had created the Heavens and the Earth.” Only starting from the third verse does it switch into the narrative tense. As such, the Big Bang by itself wouldn’t be sufficient evidence against taking the Judeo-Christian creation myth literally (obviously, other advances in science take over from there).
Sorry to disappoint you but they were taken literally by people in the Bible and religious leaders throughout history. If the creation myth didn’t literally happen there is no original sin. No original sin and no Easter miracle. No Easter miracle and as Paul himself noted there is no Christianity.
Also, going from no original sin to no Easter is quite the logical leap. The only connection that story has with Easter is that Christians consider part of its ending to be one of several predictions of Easter.
Even the concept of original sin itself isn’t a requirement for Easter. At best it’s a warning to not think Easter is irrelevant to you because you are a good enough person on your own.
Easter miracle. Do you know your own religion?
According to Paul Jesus needed to be killed and come back to life because of original sin. Original sin that entered the world via the literal Adam and Eve story. Maybe read the bible.
Do you know your own religion?
Pray tell, at which point did I claim any religion as my own? I just get annoyed when people use baby’s first atheism to make simplistic claims they can’t back up. As if it were that easy. In another branch of this comment tree you refer to a story way later in Genesis. As far as I can tell, the reference to that story was an appeal to emotions rather than logic. You could use it as a reason why someone might want to reject the religions that include it, but not to prove logically that those religions must be untrue. Do better.
Anyway, my point, that the level of literalness of the original sin story is irrelevant to the theology building off it, stands. What matters to people who believe in it is that it tells them about original sin, not whether or not a literal fruit and snake were involved.
And with this, I’m done with this discussion.
Religion will just claim God made aliens, too.
Or that they’re a test for the faithful. The way some do about dinosaur fossils.
I am also fully convinced that religious people could scientifically discover God and not believe it’s actually God, so…
I’ve already seen religious people mixing christianity with ancient alien theory, claiming the aliens are really fallen angels, demons or nephilim, some woukd probably persist in this
Me personally, I think God created all of our planets and all of our stars and whatever life lives in the universe, even outside of Earth. People who believe the same way would just stay the same and would praise God more for how great he is.
For the others though (iykyk)… well, they’re gonna be like all the other flat-earthers or they call these aliens devil spawn or whatever.
There is no god. You are free.
Am I not free for believing in him?
You are not. You believe that there is a being infinitely better than you watching your ever thought and action ready to punish you for the slightest deviation from acceptable behavior. Where acceptable is ambiguous and unavoidable.
Anyway I am sure you have better things to do as a sky-daddy follower than write rhetorical questions. Like oppress some minority. You theists are good at that.
First of all, not all theists, in my experience, believe in the exact same things. Me, I don’t think God would punish people for the ‘slightest deviation from acceptable behaviour’.
Second of all, don’t generalize. I’m aware that there are many self-proclaimed ‘Christians’ who oppress minorities, but not all. So please, no ad hominem :)
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Your Bible disagrees making you a heretic which according to the bible makes you worthy of death.
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Secondly I will generalize whatever I want whenever I feel like it. Especially considering by sheer numbers Christianity had the highest murder count and is active threat to me, my family, and friends. I don’t care about your True Scotsman unicorn Christian that is totally not made up.
Hey remember when your Pope Pat Robertson said this
The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.
If Christianity vanished from the world tomorrow the only loss would be bingo games for the elderly.
Have a nice day, praise Satan, and remember that God is dead.
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