Would ET Discovery Destroy Religion?

[Alluveal]

If we can use the Rosetta Stone (with their languages--yes, it was simple to do) then we can find a common ground with another species based on the constants: mathematics for one. Again, I said it may take an assload of time, but it would be a foundation.

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

We may be surrounded by aliens every day and be completely unaware of each other and completely incapable of ever meaningfully interacting.

Nobody gives a shit about a dead cat in a box if the box is never opened. I totally agree with you, but a philosophy like that is true for just about everything. We cannot understand that which lies outside our perception. I'm pretty sure that there are a literally infinite amount of sentient life forms past every reality set, because once you step outside your own reality then all your definitions for sentience and life break down.

I don't think, however, you can say that we will never be able to communicate with such beings. We have expanded our perceptive ability milllion-folds past our normal biological perceptions of light, sound, and spatial awareness, and I don't see any logical reason why we can't keep doing it. I think that, because we know how to attach meaning to ambiguous input, there is absolutely no system which we would be unable to eventually understand. Even if meaning is ambiguous to our senses, like communication using neutrinos, we can translate that to something meaningful to us. Thanks to our memetic memories, too, we can transcend the bounds of our own lifespan when it comes to studying something on a long timeframe. If indeed an organism functioned on a time-scale much longer than ours, all we would need to do is maintain contact and employ some scientists who were happy dying before their work was done.

Even organisms on our own planet utilized mediums that were previously unknown to us. For all we know there is a race of sentient nematodes living in the soil, but we havn't figured out how they communicate or even if they need to communicate at all. Or those fucking dolphins who did a shitty job of telling us the world was about to explode.

In short... I agree with partha

[Ddrak]

Well, the problem is you can't know whether meaningful communication is possible unless you exhaust your attempts at trying.

Edit: And I was trying to give Allu some interesting ideas for her creative writing.

Dd

[Alluveal]

Absolutely, DD. =)

Although I tend to write sci-fi lite. I'd fail at hardcore stuff due to my lack of techno-knowledge.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Well, the problem is you can't know whether meaningful communication is possible unless you exhaust your attempts at trying.

Edit: And I was trying to give Allu some interesting ideas for her creative writing.

Dd

Uhhhh.... no.

A) You're only looking at it from your end, and
B) Just because you don't understand the communication now, doesn't mean it isn't meaningful. Example: wives.

[Garrdor]

ID4 was a documentary

[Select]

What if it's life timescale is orders of magnitude different to us? If we literally shrivel and die before it can finish a sentence

This is a great stop-motion piece that explores that

[rvanhuss]

This is a silly question in my opinion and only proves that most people are not very knowledgeable of the Holy Bible. Not that I consider myself an expert either, but honestly, I do at least read it.

In the Bible, the Book of John, chapter 1, verse 3 fully answers this question. It reads: "All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being."

In other words: If it exists, it was made by God! Could God have made ETs? Of course. He is God after all, and who is anyone, Christian or not, to say that He can't? All we know for a FACT is that if there are ETs, God created them. Don't you think that the angels he created would pass as extraterrestrial beings?

Another thought on "religion": Jesus Christ was the complete OPPOSITE of a religious person during His time in the flesh on Earth. So much so that He was crucified for it. For the complete story on that, read the entire Book of John!

[Klast Brell]

Mmmmm Fresh meat!





rvanhuss: This thread runs multiple pages. Can you be more specific about which specific question you find silly?

[Kulaf]

Pretty sure he/she/it means the main topic in the OP. In other words.....since most religions say that all living things sprang from God.....why would the "discovery" of a living thing not of this world destroy religion.

[Taxious]

This is a silly question in my opinion and only proves that most people are not very knowledgeable of the Holy Bible. Not that I consider myself an expert either, but honestly, I do at least read it.

In the Bible, the Book of John, chapter 1, verse 3 fully answers this question. It reads: "All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being."

In other words: If it exists, it was made by God! Could God have made ETs? Of course. He is God after all, and who is anyone, Christian or not, to say that He can't? All we know for a FACT is that if there are ETs, God created them. Don't you think that the angels he created would pass as extraterrestrial beings?

Another thought on "religion": Jesus Christ was the complete OPPOSITE of a religious person during His time in the flesh on Earth. So much so that He was crucified for it. For the complete story on that, read the entire Book of John!

THOU SHALT NOT TROLL

[Klast Brell]

Pretty sure he/she/it means the main topic in the OP. In other words.....since most religions say that all living things sprang from God.....why would the "discovery" of a living thing not of this world destroy religion.

Here is The original post.

As far as I know, the more popular religions don't account for any type extraterrestrial involvement. If we discovered life on another planet, what kind of impact would it have on our religious beliefs?

rvanhuss did not seem to be answering that in his reply.

Q: What impact would the discovery of ET have on religious beliefs?
A: God made everything

[Garrdor]

ANIMALS HAVE NO SOULS, ALIENS HAVE NO SOULS,

SOULS ARE FOR HUMANS. GET IT RIGHT.

[Kulaf]

Pretty sure he/she/it means the main topic in the OP. In other words.....since most religions say that all living things sprang from God.....why would the "discovery" of a living thing not of this world destroy religion.

Here is The original post.

As far as I know, the more popular religions don't account for any type extraterrestrial involvement. If we discovered life on another planet, what kind of impact would it have on our religious beliefs?

rvanhuss did not seem to be answering that in his reply.

Q: What impact would the discovery of ET have on religious beliefs?
A: God made everything

The post is the question......ergo "Would ET Discovery Destroy Religion?"
Answer "The Bible says all things are made by God, therefore Religion already accounts for ET's (if they exist), so no......it would not.

[Select]

and who is anyone, Christian or not, to say that He can't?

I say it can't cause it's just a made up being. Nyah nyah.
Oohh troll on troll.

[Klast Brell]

Pretty sure he/she/it means the main topic in the OP. In other words.....since most religions say that all living things sprang from God.....why would the "discovery" of a living thing not of this world destroy religion.

Here is The original post.

As far as I know, the more popular religions don't account for any type extraterrestrial involvement. If we discovered life on another planet, what kind of impact would it have on our religious beliefs?

rvanhuss did not seem to be answering that in his reply.

Q: What impact would the discovery of ET have on religious beliefs?
A: God made everything

The post is the question......ergo "Would ET Discovery Destroy Religion?"
Answer "The Bible says all things are made by God, therefore Religion already accounts for ET's (if they exist), so no......it would not.

So rvanhuss was replying to the thread tittle instead of the content of any of the posts?

that's not a tough question to answer if you only look at the title itself.

If gods are real then the travel of an alien from their planet to ours would not destroy those gods.
If gods are fictional the visit of an alien won't destroy something that never existed in the first place.

But again. The actual post was asking what impact a visit from ET would have on beliefs about gods. It was not asking about ET's impact of the power of people's gods.

[Klast Brell]

Or just to be an ass, I could ask you for your definition of the term.

What is religion?

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

A more appropriate title might be "Would ET discovery destroy the foundations of modern religious faith, given that most religions do not directly tackle the issue of ET life and therefore may lose followers because ET life would be such a shattering force on most peoples world views". At least, thats what I took it as.

I think the other guy is answering the question as if the ET discovery would literally make the pope collapse into a supermassive anti-reality black hole. I don't think it would, either.

[Kulaf]

So rvanhuss was replying to the thread tittle instead of the content of any of the posts?

Well let's see......it's his/her/its first post ever on the board. He necro bumped a thread that was over a month and a half dead.

Yeah.....he/she/it was replying to the thread title.

[Klast Brell]

Well the first reply to his post was don't feed the trolls. But I thought I would play along.

I don't remember if I said this earlier in the tread. I believe that religious people, as a group, or on average, are very adaptive to new world conditions. The beliefs of 1000 years ago were fully supported by the bible. Disease was caused by demons or bad spirits and the bible agreed. The world was flat and the sun revolved around it, and the bible agreed. When medicine and astronomy proved that wrong, A few people got tortured until the recanted, but eventually the religions people accepted the idea and developed a new interpretation of the bible that fit with the new understanding of reality. The bible is full of passages about how to properly manage your slaves. When slavery became unfashionable the interpretation of the bible changed to oppose slavery.

If ET shows up it will bend a lot of Christians heads for a while. Then they will sit down with their bibles and figure out a new interpretation that makes it all OK.