Outer Space Thread

[Mary1966]

The effect on religion is something interesting to think about. If God created man in his own image, wouldn't that mean that all intelligent life everywhere would be the same? The creationists would have a lot to explain if the aliens weren't human. On the other hand, if the aliens had a religion, any idea of the supernatural, that would make the atheists have to think twice.

[Radbird]

Aliens would become our religion.

[Secret Weapon]

I think heaven is just an awesome planet somewhere else in the universe. Where is heaven? In the sky. Where do angles come down from? The sky. Where did Jesus go when he was resurrected? Up into the sky.

What's up in the sky? The rest of the universe... Jesus was an alien, think about it.

[go birds]

The effect on religion is something interesting to think about. If God created man in his own image, wouldn't that mean that all intelligent life everywhere would be the same? The creationists would have a lot to explain if the aliens weren't human. On the other hand, if the aliens had a religion, any idea of the supernatural, that would make the atheists have to think twice.

i was trying to think of a response earlier to IMA and you basically kinda nailed what i was trying to say.

I think the religious folks would just cop out and say that god created everything, but rational minded folk (sorry if thats painting with a broad stroke) would kinda have to rethink alot of things.

[Arthur Dent]

Atheists are already aware that most humans are religious, so I don't know why learning that non-humans are also religious would be change the equation. It would certainly be interesting though.

[IMADreamer]

I think heaven is just an awesome planet somewhere else in the universe. Where is heaven? In the sky. Where do angles come down from? The sky. Where did Jesus go when he was resurrected? Up into the sky.

What's up in the sky? The rest of the universe... Jesus was an alien, think about it.

That is all interesting. I'm not sure I buy into the whole ancient alien thing, but there are some interesting writings and things from ancient times that certainly sound like aliens. Still it's hard to believe they would have visited back then and never since. It's an even bigger stretch to think that when we die we go to another planet or whatever.

I don't know, it's interesting.

[go birds]

they were just planting the seeds...no need to come back YET

next time it will be to destroy us

[jim]

The effect on religion is something interesting to think about. If God created man in his own image, wouldn't that mean that all intelligent life everywhere would be the same? The creationists would have a lot to explain if the aliens weren't human. On the other hand, if the aliens had a religion, any idea of the supernatural, that would make the atheists have to think twice.

Having the intelligence to be aware of your mortality combined with a survival instinct produces stress. Denying that death exists and devising ways to convince yourself that it is so is a way to alleviate that stress. I don't see why that same mechanism wouldn't be in place with other intelligent forms of life in the universe. In fact, I would say that if there was a species as self aware as we are, I would almost bet on it existing.

I do think it is possible we get evidence of other intelligent life, but I do not believe it will ever be realistic to communicate. By the time we hear from them, they are probably gone. And vice versa.

[Mary1966]

Atheists are already aware that most humans are religious, so I don't know why learning that non-humans are also religious would be change the equation. It would certainly be interesting though.

I was thinking along the lines of the aliens having a scientific explanation for things that we regard as supernatural. Arthur C. Clarke has said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Could the aliens do things that we currently call "miracles," such as healing someone by reciting certain words over them, and then give a scientific explanation for why this worked?

[pioneer98]

The thing at the core of all religion is the basic idea that "there are forces at work larger than me that are outside of my control". Accepting this is how religion helps reduce stress. I almost guarantee that intelligent life would have some form of a belief system like this. If they have mastery over every kind of physical phenomenon in the known universe to where they no longer feel anything is outside their control or there is nothing unknown, then they'd either be fooling themselves or would have graduated to basically being gods. But Mary's point is taken that it could be possible for them to not know everything, but could still be so far advanced that they could appear almost like a god to us.

One question I'm always intrigued by is the scale of time. Would alien life understand time on the same scale as us? In other words do the chemical and physical processes that makes life work have to move at the same speed? I guess if their bodies worked similar to ours, then their sense of time would probably be similar. But we have life forms that live many, many years here on Earth, too. I guess what if a conversation that took humans 30 seconds to have took some other strange life form 3 years to have? Would be even be able to comprehend it or even recognize it as "communication"? We are scanning the skies looking for some kind of signal, looking for patterns that would be on our time scale. I think if the communication were happening on a much faster or slower time scale than ours, we'd probably disregard it as noise.