…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?
Really depends on the religion and the kind of life discovered. No religion would have any issue with life on other planets in general, as long as it’s not provably intelligent life.
If it is provably intelligent life, some branches of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism (in order of age) would get into a crisis of belief while other branches would readily adapt. There likely would spring up many sects, some of which would claim that intelligent life to be angels/demons. There would be theological debates about whether these beings have their own original sin, etc.
Meanwhile, most other religions would simply not care all that much. Ancestor worship literally wouldn’t give a shit. Religions with reincarnation would simply expand their notions of what you can be reincarnated as. Many local pagan religions have creation myths that apply only to their local region. If those creation myths survived contact with colonizers and the knowledge that the world is larger than the area they cover, the knowledge of aliens existing wouldn’t make any more of a difference.
Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if several new alien-based religions sprang up.
Some fandoms are basically religions, especially sport club fandoms. They wouldn’t give a shit.
Lastly, it would be a boost to militant/proselytizing atheism/materialism, which also are like religions to some people.
That said, it would take a long time from the first evidence of intelligent alien life to having it proven to the point that it can’t be dismissed as misinterpretation of data and malicious manipulation. Unless an alien armada invaded and took over part or all of Earth, there would be more than enough time for everyone to adapt without much issue.
And even then it wouldn’t be the unifying event for the world. It would literally be a race to see who could sell out the others first to get a technological advantage. It’s 2023 and we’re having a mind-boggling resurgence of people who again think the world is flat and that vaccines are just poison used for control.
Oh definitely. I was just saying that that’s the only scenario where religions for which the existence if aliens would have a problem wouldn’t have enough time to adapt.
Saint Thomas Aquinas taught it was possible that non-human intelligent life existed out there. He said it was improbable but theologically possible. So I think the Catholics will handle it well.
I wonder if the RCC already has a plan to cover up one of their preists molesting aliens.
At least christians and mormoms would probably send some missionaries their way, too.
Won’t happen. Well some fringe group might launch someone. In the right direction, but they won’t arrive.
However the universe is large and the speed of light very slow: we will never be able to send humans to another alien. In fact the speed of light is so slow, odds are we will never even get to the point where both civilizations are aware of each other - either we know they existed but they are extinct before we discover it, or they discover us long after we go extinct (of course we won’t know that).
Realistically there are only a few stars with in range of where we can establish contact. The farther out we get the less useful contact will be just because by the time we get a response we are likely to have figured it out. If we asked an alien 1 light year away (there are no stars that close to earth) about fusion they can tell us what we are doing wrong and jump start us. However by 20 light years out odds are we will know what we did wrong before their response can reach us so we are limited to sending the latest movies back and forth (open question - we will enjoy each others entertainment), and by 100 light years it is just culture interest. Even if they are very long lived, they may be interested in us, but we won’t be able to sustain enough interest in them to answer questions - not to mention their questions will be obsolete (an alien 100 light years out would have just had questions about human life in 1823 reach back to us - we don’t really know)