…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?
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.
Catholic Church nowadays is actually already ready to incorporate extraterrestrial life in their preaching. There is a whole astronomical “research” center in Vatican dedicated to align scientific theories such as big bang within catholic preaching.
This is part of it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Observatory
One of the few things I liked about being a Catholic while I still was one
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.
Thing is, information like this won’t get to everyone, but close to everyone will hear about finding life elsewhere
Fair point. I thought for a long time that the fact that Christianity simply couldn’t have spread over the globe for a millennium and a half after Christ’s death was a slam dunk argument against its core tenets, though. I cited Augustine here because I thought it was quite funny when I found out that one of the Church Fathers inadvertently agreed with me! It proved to me that my argument wasn’t a case of me indulging in special pleading or anything like that: it really is a good argument.
Fact is though that all of us, Christian or not, religious or not, find difficulties when it comes to justifying our core beliefs. We constantly adjust to take in new information without really letting it get at our fundamental ideas. I don’t see why discovering alien life would be any different for most people.
Thank you for this brief history lesson! I had never heard of St. Augustine and his treatise.
How do you think his argument fares now that the concept of purgatory exists?
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.
Lmao no. Just how “vaccines cause autism” never changed…
Facts have never stopped religion before. Why would it change now?
Yea im not too optimistic that this would do anything for most true believers
Same as every other times when science have disproven religions fairytales. They adapt. God also made those lifeforms
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.
I read that as “…electron deniers” and did a double-take. Now, wouldn’t that be something!?
Well if opposite charges attract surely the electrons would be at the nucleus? Checkmate electron-realist.
I deny electron.
Electrons are empty inside except for a shower of virtual particle, anti particle pairs! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
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…
Yeah, stories in some religious are so vague that they can be applied to any thing. Some of them are vague enough that religious leaders will have no trouble just telling their followers that existence of aliens was already told in them.
Pope Francis has already said that if intelligent life is found, that they would also be considered children of God, so you’re right on your first point.
To expand on this, every stretch will be made to re-enforce their beliefs.
Aliens are bipedal? Intelligent design!
Aliens have mouths? intelligent design!
Yeah, stories in some religious texts are so vague that they can be applied to any thing. Some of them are vague enough that religious leaders will have no trouble just telling their followers that existence of aliens was already told in them.
What does it mean to scientifically discover god?
Proving God’s existence by means of physical evidence and scientific method.
I see, but theists define god as being immaterial so we wont find their god through science.
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
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.
Or say that science is lying again :p
I think a lot of religious people will reason it this way- “Yes, there are aliens, but God chose us.”
Death to all who reject Avis!
*bows head
Avis, we try harder.
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.
Right, but you also need the whole “we were saved by Jesus” or “we were God’s chosen people” or whatever from the various religions. You have to maintain that by saying there may be aliens, but we’re the ones that God favors.
Not necessarily. Alternatively:
- You can say that we’re the only ones who needed saving.
- You can claim they’re angels or demons (if they’re older than humanity)
The god of gaps strikes again.
Better than the god of gapes
Actually, I think I’d prefer the god of gapes.
Better than the god of grapes
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.
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
I look forward to the aliens response being something along the lines of, “You’re God’s best boys and girls, yes you are, who are blessed little ape-beings? You are, yes all of you.”
Nothing. As long as people are scared of dying and other people are willing to profit from it, religion has a home
deleted by creator
Religions adapt.
Immaculate. Adapt. Respawn
Facts have never stopped religion before.
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.
You can’t really prove negatives. Especially not when something is also constantly adapting and changing over the time. If anything it would use this very fact to disprove it, because it usually claims to be so absolute.
You mean disprove. And you can disprove a negative it is just hard to do beyond the most trivial.
Yeah, sorry. It was 1am.
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.
sigh Someone seems to be emotionally invested in believing it is this easy to disprove a religion.
Sorry for the rant I’m about to go on, but during my general linguistics studies I took Old Hebrew as one of my two required non-Indo-European languages. I eventually dropped/replaced it because it was less about the language than about the literature/theology, but some of that information is useful in discussions like this where people’s views are just embarrassingly simplistic.
First of all, the Big Bang has no relevance to the original sin story. Genesis 1 (where the Big Bang does have relevance) is written in a different style from Genesis 2 (they use different words for God, for example). These were separate oral stories collated into 5 books. You can also see this in how Genesis 2 seems to retread part of what was already said in Genesis 1.
Second, the original sin story doesn’t need to be completely literal, it only needs to convey a message. How exactly humanity got original sin and developed the concept of morality is irrelevant to the arguments and beliefs building on it. What is relevant is whether the results are true. Do you really think someone for whom this is part of their identity wouldn’t just say “so what if it wasn’t an actual fruit?” It’s not even logically inconsistent.
Good thing you dropped Hebrew. Hey I took it as well. Do me a solid and read the part of the OT where the brothers are confronted by their father for massacring the town that circumcised themselves and explain the tense structure. The problem should just jump right out at you.
Your argument is that it isn’t relevant and that is your opinion not mine and not Paul’s.
Christianity doesn’t really change. They still think that the banana is our worse nightmare and since peanut butter has never evolved into a monkey evolution is false.
The pope literally got rid of limbo.
Call me when he admits the Jesus crackers are a metaphor.
Bold of you to extrapolate from the subset you personally know to the entire concept. That’s like saying Germanic languages haven’t changed in a significant way because the only Germanic language you know is Icelandic (obviously not the case because you’re writing in English, but it’s just a simily anyway).
Yes because The single most famous apologetic speaker on earth does represent anyone.
In general I think it would just give religions a new group to hate. They would be “Creatures not of God, but of the Devil Himself” in the same way that Christians think of other religions as born of the Canaanites and influenced by Satan.
