Aliens and Religion

Dragon Mage

Dragon Mage

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I am researching for a short story I am writing, which will briefly address the conflict between the existence of aliens and how it undermines religion, namely Christianity. I read many articles -- most not worthy of note -- and found many curious reasons as to why the existence of alines would undermine Christianity.

So, share what you think on the matter here. Why would aliens undermine Christianity? Why wouldn't they? If an intelligent, sapient, alien species existed, would they have souls? Did God create them (since humans are stated to be unique creations of God)? Could they find salvation or be condemned to hell? Discuss.

Here is an article of interest with some arguments for both sides.
 
Why does it undermine Christianity more than any other religion?

I don't believe in little green men as such but if you're asking me if I think we're alone in the universe then the answer is no, of course not. There are millions of planets and you expect me to believe that there is only 1 which contains intelligent life? Yeah right.

Would the existance of these beings undermine the existance of God? Not really. God created all life, human and otherwise. Not that I believe in 'God' as a guy with a white beard who sent his son to die for our sins but do I think there is a being which created life? Possibly. I don't really care. If there is, cooooooooool. If not, oh well. As far as i'm concerned, religion is a. just a tool for manipulation and b. a joke that got out of hand ;)
 
iSmiff said:
Why does it undermine Christianity more than any other religion?
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I'm actually not entirely sure, but what I can gather suggests that Jesus sacrificed himself for humanity's salvation, and no other. Should an alien race exist, they would not have a chance at salvation. That is why Christianity in particular has difficulty reconciling with the theoretical existence of aliens.

This is all a theoretical argument in any case since we do not know if aliens do or do not exist. For the sake of the argument, we'll assume that aliens could exist.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if it was just down to a simple lack of belief in life on other planets. :hmmm: I mean, Europeans believed the Earth was flat up until the middle ages. To them, the idea of the world being round was absolutely ridiculous back then so can you actually imagine them speculating the idea of life on other planets? From what I hear, the bible says nothing on the subject whatsoever, so christians are free to decide for themselves whether they think there is life on other planets or not.

I think the only way it would undermine the christian faith would be if such notions were considered blasphemy. I mean, you could easily turn around and say God is an alien. He is not of this Earth. He's just someone who decided to create an entire planet and fill it with life.

One thing that might be worth looking into, particularly with christianity, is how the religion has evolved over the centuries. It was only a few hundred years ago that Galileo discovered that the Earth wasn't the center of the solar system and the church absolutely hated him for it and tried their utmost to fight him on that, going so far as having him under house arrest. Yet now it's just common knowledge that the sun is the center of our solar system. It's here where I think the religion really is undermined because, in order to survive, they have to adapt to keep with the times. Many christians today don't believe in a lot of the things they believed a few generations ago. And the whole religion has its roots in Pagan beliefs, and probably other ancient beliefs that aren't practised so much these days.

Kinda straying off topic there... But basically, so far as I know there is nothing stopping christians from believing in aliens should they chose to.

And welcome back, by the way. :monster:
 
Actually no one in the Medieval period believed the Earth was flat. Nor was Galileo the first person to suggest a heliocentric model of the universe, it was originally a classical idea, it was then revived by Copernicus, then Kepler added to it, before Galileo wrote his book. Galileo was, in the words of Charlie Murphy, a habitual line stepper.

I don't think the discovery of aliens will have much if any impact upon religion, though we are probably more likely to have a Pope from Jupiter before we have one from Africa. The reason is that religion and rationality and logic are mutually exclusive.
 
Don Draper is fairly correct: Aristotle was the first person to suggest the world was round. He cited such evidence as the shape of the earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse. Kepler was primarily concerned with the elliptical orbits, distilling the data Tycho Brahe had collected. Copernicus was so terrified of being excommunicated and persecuted by the Church for his heliocentric model, that he published his book while he was on his deathbed.

Religion has proven itself adaptable before, though it moves slowly -- Galileo was pardoned in 1997, his excommunication withdrawn by the Catholic Church. Is it possible for the Church to adapt to the existence of aliens? In what way?
 
I am not religious, but I just can't believe that how big the universe is, that we are alone in it. I am not saying that they are little green men or anything.

I don't see anywhere in any religious book that says that "we are alone in the universe." If you believe in a God or whatever, couldn't that God also of put life on another world also?

I hear religious people argue this along with if Dinosaurs actually existed. I guess without proof I can't say there is life out there, but I can't see how we are the only ones in this whole universe with all those planets and everything else.
 
I believe Aliens would just make people wake up a little more. (well at least I hope). As far as religion goes, who knows maybe people will start worshiping aliens. If someone can be crucified for my sins, then I guess an alien could also be my creator.

In all seriousness though, an alien is and probably has been discovered but not the kind you think of when you watch movies. The thing about people's minds, are that they are fragile. The more fragile the mind is, usually the more faith they have. It's pretty prevalent across the globe.

I don't think some could believe even if they met and alien face to face that they exist, due to it would actually undermine their religion. That or they would just abstract their religion to include another exception. It's just like when the old testament was created by man. God was a wrathful, vindictive, little thing and for every action that the human did due to "free will" the more punishment that was dished out. We all know without religion, someone can't be moral. It's in the book!

For the new testament god "evolved" into a kind and merciful god. So if an alien turns out to be in the "Newest" testament, well it wouldn't surprise me. "Sorry folks the bible didn't end at revelations, it actually started there! Ready the Bible, New America Version."

Islam/Muslim is the only other religion that I see as tightly bound to a book a man wrote. So the answer to your question is "some will and some will not."

Every day folks are getting closer and closer to world wide secularism though. So for the non religious it would be just another day, but it would be of course scientific discovery which in fact would advance the human race. The more important question would be, what if we find another habital planet where we could form new colonies and get off this rock? What then?

I think honestly it would start different, but turn out to form it's own society just like we have now. Human's can not live without society it seems and if it does, it has to have social norms.
 
Aliens dont exist. You can show me all the proof in the world and il still say nope its not real.

Face it. At this moment in time there is NOTHING you can show me that would convince me otherwise.

EDIT: The Greeks had philosophied about a spherical world long before it was ever made fact =p
 
Aliens Exist. (It's a song) :D

Either way, I'm not religious, I have no clue what religion would have to do with aliens for that matter. How on earth do those two things connect? Is it against your religion to believe in things you cannot see? Isn't that very contradicting? I dunno.

I'm not religious, I don't really claim to be an atheist either - it's not that I don't believe there's nothing around us, I don't know if there is. There might be for all I know? I just don't believe in God or anything. :hmmm: Aliens however, they'd just be aliens to us if they did exist, and vice versa really. I find it hard to believe we're the only ones out there, that'd just be ignorant, but I also don't have specific beliefs that I would say there "IS" something out there.
 
Six said:
Aliens Exist. (It's a song) :D

Either way, I'm not religious, I have no clue what religion would have to do with aliens for that matter. How on earth do those two things connect? Is it against your religion to believe in things you cannot see? Isn't that very contradicting? I dunno.
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You can't see god.
 
My point exactly, thanks for pointing it out. =]
 
Kira; the question being, essentially, if aliens existed, would they go to heaven, or hell? Is there only one Savior -- for humanity -- and are aliens heretical by merely existing?

The question of whether or not aliens exist does not matter; for the sake of argument, we assume that they could exist. The debate is about human reaction to them on a religious front.
 
Dragon Mage said:
The question of whether or not aliens exist does not matter; for the sake of argument, we assume that they could exist. The debate is about human reaction to them on a religious front.
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I guess this comes down to if you believe these aliens are plants and animals or are humans.

I guess we could wonder if Animals go to heaven also.. :hmmm: Really I guess if you go from the christian religion, there is only one way through god and that is through Jesus, and if these aliens did believe in that, then yes they would...

so I guess depends on the religion we are going to talk about.
 
The bigger question is - only due to "in his own image" - if god was around is "He/she/it" quantifiable? I think aliens would make more sense. Though I am a big bang theory fella, so you can't really quantify a god in that.

Space is finite due the measured expansions. Though I think it is a little narrow minded to think we are the only ones out there. We are just one solar system. Curiosity is on Mars now, and soon we will have a curiosity 2 further in space and on another planet.

It will not be an if, it will be when we find intelligent life. I don't think we can drop to our knees when these organisms will be found, but Humans are small. There is so much more out there. We are only "kings" and "queens" of this planet. But we are doing a damn good job of screwing that up ;)
 
Big Casino said:
Aliens dont exist. You can show me all the proof in the world and il still say nope its not real.

Face it. At this moment in time there is NOTHING you can show me that would convince me otherwise.
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Why? That's pretty weird and illogical. Each to their own though. Ultimately I believe we will come into contact with 'aliens' (the only question is when? We could have nuked ourselves to death long before then...) and who knows if they will be peaceful or not (too many movies seem to suggest not). Intelligent life may have been on other planets for millions of years longer than ours so it wouldn't surprise me if they had superior technologies and were exploring the universe in ways beyond us.

Even if you're not a betting man I think it's hard to ignore that fact that there are literally hundreds of millions of planets in the universe. The odds of only 1 having intelligent life is laughable.
 
Odds point to there being extraterrestrial life out there somewhere. I agree that it is highly likely that aliens do exist. I do not agree with those that say aliens are here and abduct people to simply examine human genitalia. Alien life, should it exist, is likely millions of light years away.
 
Dragon Mage said:
I do not agree with those that say aliens are here and abduct people to simply examine human genitalia.
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You say that but it wouldn't surprise me if other intelligent life was as equally as fixated on such topics as us.
 
As a person specifically I don't believe aliens exist (at least not the big-headed, small-bodied, black-eyed, green guys), but as a Christian I see absolutely no reason why the existence of aliens would be a problem for me any more than a talking parrot would be. If an animal like that can think intelligently enough to form a sentence and speak it like a human, who's to say a more intelligent animal couldn't exist while still being animal in its nature? If anything, that's what I expect would be the case.

But let's go even crazier and say that there are aliens out there who have souls same as human beings do. That is honestly still not a problem to me. Yes I believe Man is made in the image of God, but I also believe God is infinite. Man is clearly not infinite, so the image of man clearly does not encompass the wholeness of the image of God. Again, I do not believe this to be the case, but my world wouldn't be shattered if I came to learn that there were aliens out there that were made in the image of God too. Who am I to say there aren't aspects of God that are wholly inexpressible in human language, wholly unthinkable in the human brain? Maybe another creature so totally otherworldly could portray those aspects of God. And if God could save me He could save them...as far as I can see, there is no problem.

I think where people are coming from when they claim that the existence of aliens would undermine religion is that they assume that aliens would automatically prove evolution. But that's not the case. They could only prove evolution if their evolution was witnessed and documented. Maybe instead when the aliens talked to scientists they'd call them idiots for believing evolution, because they have documented evidence to the contrary--who knows, since it's all fictional in my book. But logically speaking, there's too much assuming going on with this whole thing, it seems.
 
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