What Would Religion Do If We Discovered Alien Life?

Date: Jun 27, 2012 | Author: Rudie Obias | Category: Sci-Fi In Real Life

The religion vs. science debate has been going on for centuries. Can both exist? Is there a place for religion if there is science? Questions like these began popping up the moment Galileo started observing the stars for an explanation of our existence. From that moment, science put religion in doubt and that doubt only got bigger and bigger.

Senior writer for Science.com Mark Wall recently attended the SETICon II conference in Santa Clara, CA and went to a panel discussion with panelist Doug Vakoch and Seth Shostak, along with award-winning Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer called “Would Discovering ET Destroy Earth’s Religions?”

The panel ultimately came to the conclusion that if alien life made contact with Earth, it would most likely not shatter people’s religious beliefs. It would probably strengthen them. Throughout history, even in Galileo’s time, religion grew in numbers when scientific fact was first introduced. The idea of Creationism and the one true God have been decaying since science has become more prevalent in the world but people still hold to their beliefs in these models.

Mark Wall accounts in his piece…

The Bible, Koran and other sacred texts of the world’s major religions stress God’s special concern for humanity and for Earth. So the discovery of aliens — microbes on Mars, say, or signals from an intelligent civilization in another solar system — might seem threatening, by implying that we and our planet aren’t all that special.

But our species has had plenty of time to get used to this idea. Nicolaus Copernicus made perhaps the first powerful case for it in 1543, when his seminal work “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” showed that Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way around.

“We haven’t been the center of the universe for a while now — four centuries,” said panelist Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute.

People who are firm in their religious beliefs are not shaken by scientific discoveries that may answer the origins of life and our existence. The example of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the explanation for the basis of modern science and biology. Despite the evidence of Darwinism, religious beliefs keep marching on and are arguably stronger than they have ever been since the theory’s introduction over 150 years ago.

The Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, Doug Vakoch points out, Baptist theologian Dr. Ostrander’s thoughts on the idea of life on other planets…

Dr. Ostrander is adamantly opposed to evolution, and yet he has no problem with the idea of there being extraterrestrials. He says it’s as if a couple has one child, and then they decide to have a second child. Is that second child any less special? So too if God decides to have life on our planet, and then another planet, and another planet. It doesn’t make us less special.

These are questions science fiction takes very seriously. It’s the subject of great works like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Robert Zemeckis’ Contact. Science and religion have already proven that both can co-exist.

Comments

MishaBurnett

Actually C. S. Lewis wrote a trilogy of books, “Out Of The Silent Planet”, “Paralandra”, and “That Hideous Strength”, that play with the concept in some detail. If God is real and created life on Earth, there certainly isn’t any reason that He couldn’t have created life on other planets.
- JessHurley
  
  Great response. Quite frankly I think most Christians accept the fact that if there are aliens, it doesn’t really matter in the grand plan the God has for the human race. In essence…it’s irrelevant.
Jonathan Lucretia

1) Why can not the same God that created humans have created all life?

2) In the first paragraph the question is posed “Can both exist?”…Why not?

3) Most creationists have no problem with science at all. We do however have a problem with junk science.

4) To be fair, most of the younger generation and some of the older fully believe that there is life (or at least a great possibility of life) on some other planet(s).

5) Even many that do not believe in any form of deity do not believe in evolution merely due to the fact that , like the global warming scandal, many lies have been told and any evidence to the contrary is thrown out which leaves the entire evolution community in a negative light even when they are telling the truth which is why I will probably NEVER believe in evolution…not because of my beliefs in a Divine Creator, but due to the suspicion they have cast upon themselves.
- MishaBurnett
  
  Heh. A couple of guys named Crick and Watson pretty much disproved Darwinian evolution about sixty years ago, but the mainstream still hasn’t gotten the memo. “Science” has become political, it’s not about a search for truth anymore, but a obeisance to authority. I’m not wedded to theism, myself, I would love to be able to believe that there is no God and everything is permissible, But I need an alternate theory to explain the existence of fibrogen first, and random chance ain’t it.
  - JT
    
    Nope. Everything you said is completely inaccurate. DNA only disproves evolution if you know absolutely nothing about DNA.
    
    Actually the genetic code points towards a common ancestry.
    - MishaBurnett
      
      Life is too complex to have arisen by random chance. Positing more time doesn’t help, because proteins degrade quickly and the entire organism would have to come together all at once–as well as other organisms for it to eat. That is what I meant when I said that Crick and Watson disproved Darwin. Darwin was able to believe in spontaneous generation because he had no understanding of biochemistry. Today, we know better.
    - Jonathan Lucretia
      
      Common ancestry huh?
      I think that’s covered in the Bible.
      Science proves a bottleneck in human DNA which could only be explained in one of two ways…a bottle neck back to Noah and those on the ark and then again back to Adam and Eve.
      
      Just because one doesn’t believe in the junk science promoting evolution does not mean we do not believe in good science.
      - JT
        
        Um no. The Bible says God created every creature individually. He didn’t create one creature and then copy/paste all the others from that one.
      - Jonathan Lucretia
        
        1) Read my statement accurately…I said “humans” not “creatures”.
        I was not referring to ALL life…just human life.
        
        2) Go back and read the Bible…All human life bottlenecks back to Noah and the other 7 survivors on the Ark and then it goes back and bottlenecks again at Adam and Eve.
        
        3) The argument could also be made that ALL land creatures ancestry bottlenecks at the Ark but that isn’t exactly the subject.
      - Alph4Omega
        
        If everyone, but Noah and his family died, how did there become as many ethnic groups that there are? wasn’t he white, or at least middle eastern?
        How did the penguins get to the middle east from Antarctica?
        If it rained for 40 days and nights, how did the salt water fish survive the influx of all this fresh water? these animals are very sensitive to those sort of changes
        what did the carnivores eat after the flood?
        what did the herbivores eat?
        how did they get rid of all the waste the animals produced daily?
        if all the world flooded, wouldn’t all the plants die from over-saturation and lack of sun exposure?
  - JT
    
    Simple, simple question for you. If it’s impossible for a species to undergo radical changes over time… where did Chihuahuas come from?
    - MishaBurnett
      
      Chihuahuas came from the same place that every other dog comes from, a male and a female dog. Dogs have been selectively bred for thousands of years, and they are still all dogs. Variations within the species breed true–to an extent. However there seems to be a limit as to how far the envelope of the canid template can be pushed by breeding. Darwinian evolution would imply that the breeds of dogs would give rise to separate species over time, so far that has not been observed to happen. Instead, uncontrolled breeding, such as occurs in feral packs, gives rise to regression to the mean.
      - JT
        
        Of course it hasn’t been observed… When not pushed by artificial means it takes millions of years. Your claims are completely bogus and unsupported by facts.
      - MishaBurnett
        
        Well, you are the one who brought up dog breeding as an example of a radical change in a species, I simply pointed out that those changes are not “radical” in a genetic sense.
    - Jonathan Lucretia
      
      Chihuahuas are dogs and were BRED…not EVOLVED…they are still dogs….a dog is a dog is a dog…
      Now if you could prove they came from cats then you would be on to something.
      
      To use Chihuahuas as proof of evolution is pretty absurd considering that
      1) evolution is not by demand or design but by necessity to survive and
      2) Chihuahuas are possibly the single most useless creature on the face of the planet which disproves evolution yet again and
      3) Since they were intentionally bred by people and people have at least some IQ (intelligence) I would pose that Chihuahuas prove intelligent design (though not exactly on a divine level.
      
      BTW – Giant Freakin’ Robot stole your argument and posted it to facebook and hour after you posted this…I guess the robot didn’t calculate that someone may be watching…hehehehe
  - Cenny
    
    Or the eye.
The Voice of Reason

Despite evidence of the necessity of a divine creator for life of any kind to exist, secularists continue to talk about science as though it isn’t the very building blocks God set in place to govern existence. It’s laughable that something he made is so often thrown in his face as the proof of his non-existence. The belief that life on another planet would even remotely prove God’s non-existence is narrow minded. Why is God limited to only life on Earth? We already know from the bible he created other beings. Angels, demons etc. Why would it be difficult to believe he didn’t create more?
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GKXD2QXJOUN34WXJXVGEEHFW3Q Alexander Onasis
  
  Couldn’t say it better myself.
- JT
  
  Please present this evidence.
spet67

I fail to see why a God or Gods couldn’t or wouldn’t create life elsewhere. Nor am I aware of any scripture saying that Earth is the only place hosting life. So, I don’t believe that aliens announcing their presence would logically undermine religion.

But, there are a lot of X factors. One is the way the aliens presented themselves. If they showed up claiming to be Gods, that could threaten traditional religions. There might would also probably be claims from some that the aliens are demons in disguise. Others might worship them, even if they tried to discourage it.
http://www.facebook.com/landkiterboy David Pye

When people say they dont agree with evolution. Why, what is evolution? Put simply all life evolves to adapt to a changing enviroment there are however species that have not evolved because they do not need to adapt. The same can be said with life on other planets. Evolution only excists as a way for life to survive when their habitat or enviroment changes. In religion it is the belief that all life is equal as it is gods creation but without evolution we would not have excisted and there would not be such a large number of individual lifeforms on this planet or any celestial body that can support life.
- Jonathan Lucretia
  
  I agree and disagree.
  
  Adaptation (micro-evolution…which I do agree with) and evolution (macro-evolution which has never been proven) are two different things.
  I can adapt many times in my life and indeed have adapted to many things yet I am still the same species and…yes…most lifeforms adapt over time in one way or another. A great example of this is all of the non-native species of fish that have been introduced to the USA and how rapidly they adapt and even take over many bodies of water.
  
  The theory that one species came from a completely different species is backed only by junk science that has been manipulated on many levels to try and prove what science disproves every time.
  
  In my particular religion (Christianity) all lifeforms are not created equal. Man is “…to have dominion over…” all other creatures on Earth. This does not give humans the right to disrespect or take lightly other lifeforms though.
- Jess Hurley
  
  David see Jonathan’s post. It basically sums up basic biblical teaching. It’s not rocket science. “And God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation, the plants yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.” this is right out of Genesis. After it’s kind gives plenty of room in the Hebrew for micro-evolution or adaptation.
- Deland
  
  Differences between evolution and adaptation.
  !.Adaptation,the process in which an animal changes physiologically to its environment,diet,or as a result of breeding.Adaptation is the process of genes in a DNA structure becoming either active or inactive.sometimes resulting in physical changes but Never Ever does the dna structure change.Example: dark skin from sun exposure over generations=the genes for melanin production become very active.
  Thick eyelashes and eyebrows are common of dessert dwellers,purpose keep sand out of eyes.
  2.Evolution requires a change in the structure of DNA resulting in a new species. This has never been documented in archaeology or the laboratory,there is Zero evidence to back up evolution.
  Your statement “life evolves to adapt” is the most horrendous practice Darwinians use to confuse people who are ignorant of the difference between the two.
  Please educate yourself.
http://www.facebook.com/vanessa.nakoski Vanessa Nakoski

From what I’ve read, most of the comments on this page seem to limit the term “religion” to a single family of religions–namely, the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). As a Pagan, there is absolutely nothing I find in science that challenges my religious beliefs.

So let’s remember: “religion” described a vast and diverse range of beliefs, many of which welcome and embrace scientific discovery.
- Deland
  
  I’ve always wondered what a pagan actually believes.Could you enlighten me?thx
Tank0

i can’t believe we are still debating evolution in this century. the process has been proven with fireflies and can be seen daily. dogs came from wolves , housecats came from larger cats. calling this junk science based on a book thats been rewritten more than the script for world war Z is HILARIOUS.. is it that hard to believe that your god has simply created everything just by supplying the building blocks and a few intelligent laws of biology/physics ? in fact it is a more impressive trick that molding each creature himself.
if aliens ever arrive here you ‘ll see a boom in religion because people have a need to be in controle. some will pray to the aliens others will dig deeper in what they know. personally i think any intelligent alien will not come like in the movies but have the common sense to park behind the moon because we are not yet ready. keep in mind large portions of the population are not as advanced as we in the west … and what we fear we will meet with agression
- Jess Hurley
  
  Tank0 The Bible does not rule out micro-evolution. It does rule out macro-evolution which is what we get taught in school as theory. Basically no one has ever been able to prove you can get a turnip and an elephant from the same single cell a billion years ago. In fact evolution itself demands design which is why God is the elephant in the room so to speak. You can ignore Him all you want and He will still be there.
  - Tank0
    
    you can ignore science al you want but that doesn’t make you correct. Gravity formed our universe, super nova’s created ALLl the building blocks and chemistry did the rest. We both are in awe of the result , if you think there was an inteligent design then go ahead but all i am saying is that evolution could be part of that devine design. As a programmer i write some equations on a page and yet manage to create a virtual world with it. Since your bible claims we where made in their image is it that big of a leap to think they did the same ? all our universe required was some energy and some universal constants. acknowledging that doesn’t threathen your beliefs , in fact like i stated earlier, it makes them greater badasses in my book.
    Look i am pagan , you are a believer of the abrahamic branch , lets not waste time trying to convince eachother but at least respect proven scientific facts.
    - CommentLost
      
      There is gaping holes in your description of the creation of the universe. Most of which still can’t be explained yet. All you have is assumptions.
      Micro-evolution fits perfectly fine in the Bible and there is plenty of evidence everywhere for it.
      The creation of new species and life forms from nothing (macro-evolution) has no proven science behind it and no place anywhere in the bible. Especially not in the 6 days of creation. Macro-evolution involves death, and there was no death before Adams fall. If thats not true, then the rest of the bible is meaningless.
      - jonathan kreider
        
        I am afraid you are confusing macro-evolution and abiogenesis.
  - jonathan kreider
    
    The bible also doesn’t deny macro-evolution in the one page account of creation.
- Deland
  
  If evolution was proven It wouldn’t still be theory, which it is.There are so many gaps in Darwins’ depiction of evolution,it’s scary so many people think there is proof just because they tell you that in school. I think you and the rest of the world are confusing adaptation w/ evolution.There is a big difference,and no there is no proof house cats came from big cats.There are many different types of wild cats not just big ones like lions and tigers.Your statement makes it look like your talking about the great cats,when it was an Ocelot a much smaller breed that is easily domesticated.
  Check out the breeder who took all the most gentle foxes from one generation to the next.In about eight generations the wild foxes (pure wild fox)looked like house dogs.
  Thats a form of adaptation not evolution,EXACT SAME DNA but the genes were either on of off, you can do that through environment diet breeding.THe important thing is the dna stayed the SAME it was the genes that either became dominant of recessive.
  In conclusion science PROVES adaptation NEVER evolution.
  BTW science has never been able to create life from non-living matter not a single cell much less gene.
  - Tank0
    
    you have the wrong definition of “theory” in mind. I quote “Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge, in contrast to more common uses of the word “theory” that imply that something is unproven or speculative” . for instance gravity has been proven yet it is still called the theory of gravity.
    
    You have me on the big cats , i didn’t mean lions or tigers but medium sized cats like lynxs or indeed ocelots. i apologize english isn’t my native language so my vocabulaire is somewhat limited.
    
    about adaptation : you are very selective in your examples , we humans have bred dogs from wolves yet the DNA is almost the same (they can interbreed) thats why they call it a subspecies. the same was tried with chimps and humans in russia at the begin of last century without succes. the DNA of both is also nearly the same but we do speak of different species. many of the genes are still there but indeed tuned off yet it is enough for science to speak of different species thus evolution has occured , even with 99% of the same DNA. cehck the latest studies on fruitflies , i consider it proven
    
    about life : what is life ? a symbionic relation between cells or a state of mutual benefit to the interdependent organisms. a chemical reaction that keeps the reaction going could be considered life too. yes we did not replcate that yet but i am sure life is a logical step in an enviroment where elements can move freely and have a source of energy.
Alph4Omega

No surprise, this would bring up the evolution debate.
It would depend on the aliens themselves on religious survival, especially if they could mathematically or scientifically disprove all gods.
I think it would cause a dramatic upsurge in atheism.
Would religion survive, absolutely, but it will not garner the same respect that it once did before first contact.
Everything would change: economy, education, access to natural resources, religion, and hopefully the end of the petty infighting across our planet aka war.
- Cenny
  
  I find it terribly funny that people think that if aliens exist. God doesn’t. Such arrogance.
  - Alph4Omega
    
    It’s not arrogant to not believe in god, I just simply believe in one less god than you do.
    and besides, which god are you talking about: Krishna, Shiva, Buddha, Zeus, YHWH?
    - Tennwriter
      
      Zeus, according to his myths, is not the Creator. Buddha, if I remember right, did not want to be worshipped. Most of the thousands of deities are clearly, from their own account, not the Creator of the Universe. Gaia, if she exists, is probably the protective spirit of the Earth, which, while powerful, is nothing compared to her Lord, the Most High, the Christ, who was prophesied, who lived a perfect life, died in public shame, and was born again, and seen of many witnesses on many occasions.
      
      Besides, Cenny did not say what you said. Cenny said ‘aliens equals no god is funny’.
      - jonathan kreider
        
        Also many deities of polytheistic religions are more equatable to extraterrestrial, angels, demons, etc. Many have very human characterisitcs and are limited by space, knowledge, and time. It is a mistake that so many atheists make when comparing polytheistic deities and the God of Abrahamic religions. On one side we have anthropomorphic deities and on the other we have a omnipresent demiurge. The God of Abrahamic religions is not some guy in the sky as the ET gods of old were/are.
- Deland
  
  I don’t believe you can prove or disprove God.You have to be able to measure something or observe it to prove it.Also you cant prove or disprove a negative.
  check out this link its pretty eye opening for some people.
  http://kurtcuboid.blogspot.com/2011/08/two-reasons-science-cant-prove-or.html
  - Alph4Omega
    
    Sure you can prove a negative.
    Like, there aren’t any flowers in that pot, or the sky has no stars
    one can be proven to be a negative, or in other words, false
    however in the god argument, it cannot be falsifiable, because god has no physical or any other characteristics.
    You’re asking someone to logically disprove something that doesn’t have any sort of measurable characteristics.
    This is an illogical request and one of the many logical fallacies people try to make to prove god
    - jonathan kreider
      
      How can a simple 3 dimensional entity disprove an 11 dimensional universal consciousness that is the source of all. A conscious omni-sentient force that permeates all of reality. Imagine reality as being a dream within this mind, and we are just offshoots of this mind existing within it. How can one find evidence to disprove the existence of something? There is always the possibility that they are missing something.
- jonathan kreider
  
  Who is to say these extraterrestrials would be benevolent let alone superior. It may be centuries and may even require us to develop FTL travel/communications before we make 1st contact. They me be on par with us, more advance than us or primitive in contrast to us.
Deland

If Darwins theory of evolution was proven it wouldn’t be a theory any longer,yet a theory it remains.What upsets me is teaching theory as fact.If anything can be proven without a doubt by all means teach it as gospel.but if it is just a theory leave it at that and move on .Don’t try and indoctrinate the youth to dismiss A creator with conjecture alone.
As for science disproving A Creator that’s hogwash,if anything science strengthens the argument for A Supreme being starting the cosmos spinning, e.g. the big bang has been proven also the indestructibly of energy.In laymens terms you can’t get something from nothing,and energy is changed but never destroyed,also matter and energy are interchangeable.
The big bang, science proves that if it were a fraction of a percent more or less powerful
the universe would have never formed or it would have collapsed back in on itself.
So my theory is The creator being made of pure energy took a measure of himself(herself,itself, whatever) and released that energy in such a controlled matter as to form the universe as we know it.
That being said, if true,can you imagine the power such a being possesses.Talk about all powerful…….That being said I love science as much as anyone can,for it is the pursuit of truth and doesn’t everyone want the truth. Love ya bye
http://twitter.com/Sargonarhes S. E. Roberts

See the series Babylon 5, which from what I’ve seen is one of the few sci-fi that depicts religion surviving and thriving alien contact. Even depicts the aliens having religious beliefs of their own.
http://twitter.com/HelloMezzie Mezz

It’d make more sense to have religious people on the panel if we want a better idea of what might happen to religion…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Walter-Wilkins/100000730951199 Walter Wilkins

AS a christian, the discovering of life on other planets would not effect my belief at all. Jesus stated that he other flock to care for but never state where those flocks were.BTW would not a all-knowing and All-powerful God have enough love to care for all life that he creates.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Walter-Wilkins/100000730951199 Walter Wilkins

To those arguing Evolution vs. creation. I’m also a science teacher. When most people talk about theory they are really describing a hypothesis which in scientific terms means an educated guess. To a scientist, theory holds a different level of rigor. Also, in science no theory is ever really consider proven beyond a doubt they are always open for review and retesting. Every time they find a new fossil the theory of evolution is reviewed. This action is true of every theory. BTW the bible does not disprove macro-evolution. Macro-evolution occurs over eons not a few generations. How do you explain that all life on this planet share at least 98% of the same DNA. I’m a theological evolutionist, God created the universe and evolution was the tool he used to do it. The Bible and science are opposite sides of the same coin. One tells us that God did it and the other is trying to tell us how he did it. That’s mu opinion.
- jonathan kreider
  
  Exactly. Evolution explains the origins of species not necessarily the origins of life.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Walter-Wilkins/100000730951199 Walter Wilkins

@Jonathan Lucretia, why could God have not pictured everything in his mind and snapped his fingers and set everything in motion. He would have still created everything individually. The six days in the old testament were six of God’s days and only he knows how long those are. Could he have done it in six days? Yes, he could have done it in six seconds if he wanted. However, he stated it to man in terms that early man could have understood.
•,d
LoveLife11

The Bible has extraterrestrial life mentioned all the time – they’re called angels. (they’re definitely not beings from this earth – the whole point is they’re another race of beings that live in the “heavenly realm” instead of on earth) So why should “religious people” have any type of issues with other forms of life found on other planets? Logically, if you can believe in angels, little green men isn’t that much more of a stretch.
Tennwriter

A little history for the folks on the panel: Being the center of the universe was not the place of honor. Hell was regarded to be, and perhaps is, in reality, at the center of the Earth. I’m pretty sure its obvious to all that Hell is not a place of honor.
Earth was close to the cosmic shitter was what our ancestors meant.
That said, the Mediocrity Principle is very doubtful. Earth is an outstandingly unusual place (to get a grip on how weird, I think you’d have to use scientific notation in your probability estimates). And furthermore there is some evidence that we are near (within a 100,000 lightyears) of the actual center of the universe.
To answer the interesting question, we need another question. Are the Aliens ‘Fallen’ or ‘Sinful’? Logically, whether or not they were fallen, they would believe in a Creator God. Naturally, there would be some very interesting differences (take two believers in Jehovah, and make one a Mathmatician and the other a Doctor, and they both see God a bit differently. One sees the Great Mathmatician who aligned the universe to the nth decimal place with at least one of the universal constants being a 1 in 30Billion choice. The other sees the gentle and kindly Great Physician who binds up our wounds.) Obviously an alien race of seaweed hive minds is going to have different ideas and understandings, but at the base, it will be Yahweh.
http://www.facebook.com/marvin.fuzznut Marvin Fuzznut

I have yet to find a so called Christian who can hold an intelligent conversation on the subject. Once they get past the nonsense Christians become FORMER Christians. Matt Dillahunty for example. (Search youtube for “theatheistexperience”) It simply isn’t possible to really understand Christianity and still believe it.
- amd
  
  Absolutely. As for the evolution “debate” there is none. There are a minority of highly vocal, ignorant, ill-educated, frightened xians and then there are the rest of us. Absolutely no point in entering a battle of wits with unarmed opponents. They cannot even understand the scientific definition of theory, however often it is patiently explained to them, repeatedly. Too stupid for science? Try religion.
  - Jonathan Kreider
    
    Try me. I have been a firm believer in extraterrestrial/ inter-dimensional/ spiritual entities my entire life. I am also a devout Christian as well as a firm believer in the theory of evolution. My view on reality is always being refines. I am not narrow minded or irrational. I am more philosophically, spiritually, scientifically developed in contrast to most humans. So please do not group us all into the same category.
    - Becca
      
      You can’t be a devout Christian and be a firm believer in the theory of Evolution. Being a devout Christian means that you would believe in Creationism “is the religious belief that life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being”. Therefore, you are not a devout Christian. You are contradicting yourself by saying are a devout Christian and then saying you are a firm believer of Evolution.
  - Jonathan Kreider
    
    The existence of extraterrestrial life is irrelevant to the survival of religion. Only those who lack knowledge of their religions and those who lack knowledge of science would struggle to reconcile the two.
  - jonathan kreider
    
    Sorry, I meant to reply to the person above. I agree with what you said though.
http://www.facebook.com/mike.adamson.10 Mike Adamson

You people live in a universe of selective reality. You’re terrifying…
DT in NYC

C.S. Lewis was a major Christian philosopher of the 20th century and he wrote a book, Perelandra, about another planet with humans that did not fall like Adam and Eve.

Presumably the other intelligent species could be non-primate, although in Lewis’s book they were virtually like homo sapiens.
amd

The bible is the word of god. But how can be sure? Because the bible tells us so. But why believe the bible? Because the bible is infallible. But how do you know it is infallible? Because the bible is the word of god. Around and around and around it goes. Circular logic, believed by the ignorant, fear-ridden and not terribly bright. Eventually, aliens or no aliens, if we survive the onslaught of religious war long enough we will out evolve the man-made concept of religion, and those who once wasted their lives reading the anachronistic, violent and contradictory scribblings of primitives who thought the earth was flat will be looked back upon in disbelief and amusement. As I said before, too stupid for science? Try religion.
- amd
  
  Typo. sigh.
  - Tennwriter
    
    AMD,
    Erastothenes, an ancient Greek, came close to correctly measuring the sphere of the Earth. No one who was educated in the ancient, medieval, or rennaissance worlds believed the Earth was flat. Columbus’ primary mistake was thinking the Earth was smaller than it was, not in thinking it was flat.
    ==============
    We all start with assumptions. Leewontin, a noted Darwinist, spoke about the need to keep the divine foot out of the door. His assumptions. Mine is that the Bible is True.
    Now, there is a lot of evidences that make it easy to accept the Biblical assumptions of infallibility, but in the end, like all assumptions, it is a matter of faith same as the Darwinist and his Materialist Assumption. But, I doubt that you are interested in an honest comparison of evidences.
    ================
    Your goal seems to be to try to intimidate Christians with unfounded claims of intellectual superiority. Seeing as I’m likely smarter than you, and definitely wiser, you’re going to have to try harder to scare me. Maybe if you jump out of a closet, and scream ‘oooga-booga’ that might do it.
    ===============
    My prediction, as a futurist, is that we’re already past the high point of Evolution. The Internet is great at breaking up gov’t tyrannies. 89% of Americans are some form of Creationist. And in the near future, we’re going to have a preference cascade as the futile attempts of intimidation like yours lose their effect as people everywhere realize they greatly outnumber the nomenklatura and the sword and shield of the State. Hopefully, the result will be a peaceful Velvet Revolution, but its likely to happen either way.
    ================
    And BTW, my sneering is not directed at the honest seeker after truth who is an evolutionist. I would disagree with such (natch), but with I hope respect.
amd

This is a great link. Just for the record, I long ago learned never to enter into battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, so if you are a religiot, feel free to obfuscate, waffle and rant, I will admit listeniing to the frustration and anger of religiots is deeply satisfying to me
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion
amd

This is a great link: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion Especially love the summation. Previous post has not shown up yet, so apologies if this ends up being a double post. Just for the record, I learned long ago not to enter into a battle of wits with unarmed opponents, so if you are a religiot feel free to obfuscate, waffle, rant and rage. One mistake people often make regarding those with the god flu is to think they have to respect a person’s opinions. Of course not, you have to respect their right to HOLD the opinion, (however ignorant, ill-informed and just plain wrong, and despite the fact that most of them would have you burned at the stake/stoned to death for yours) but absolutely NOT the opinion itself. Anybody who lives their life based on the witterings of nomadic primitives who thought the earth was flat deserves all the ridicule you can fling at them. Just laugh and keep walking. I must confess, I do find the frustration and anger of religiots deeply satisfying and highly entertaining.
amd

Here’s another great link (and the information too in case the link doesn’t work):https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4219298484661&set=a.1143636995046.2021868.1351121675&type=1&theater
Horus: Egyptian god worshipped since 2200 BC. Born of a virgin, had 12 disciples, healed the sick and injured, raised Asar from the dead, crucified then resurrected after 3 days, known as the lamb, the way and the light. Doesn’t seem so original now does it?
God or no god, religion doesn’t enter into it. Just think for yourselves, people. And, as previously stated, all religious ranting and obfuscating is highly amusing, feel free . Don’t expect a response though, arguing with those with the god flu is absolutely pointless, just as arguing with someone who believes invisible pink unicorns are whispering commandments in their ears would be.
Lol

“What Would Religion Do If We Discovered Alien Life?”

IF.

Giant Freakin Robot