Would ET Discovery Destroy Religion?

[Klast Brell]

So tax?

Have you been hanging out with this guy?
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comment ... ial_proof/

If humanity finds irrefutable substantial proof of extra-terrestial life, what effect would it have on religion?

[Kulaf]

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.

Just some points here. 1) The Bible does not say that disease was caused by demons. Jesus "cured" the lepers......he didn't exercise the demons causing their "disease". While it may be true that some religious orders *cough* Catholicism *cough* used demonic posession to explain certain things does not mean the Bible embraces it. 2) I don't recall any mention of the world being flat in the Bible. If you can enlighten me with book, chapter and verse I would be glad to read it though.

[Taxious]

So tax?

Have you been hanging out with this guy?
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comment ... ial_proof/

If humanity finds irrefutable substantial proof of extra-terrestial life, what effect would it have on religion?

Nice catch - pretty sure I don't know that person though. I'll have to read some of those responses later, or is it pretty much the same responses as this thread?

[Garrdor]

[Partha]

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.

Just some points here. 1) The Bible does not say that disease was caused by demons. Jesus "cured" the lepers......he didn't exercise the demons causing their "disease". While it may be true that some religious orders *cough* Catholicism *cough* used demonic posession to explain certain things does not mean the Bible embraces it. 2) I don't recall any mention of the world being flat in the Bible. If you can enlighten me with book, chapter and verse I would be glad to read it though.

It doesn't. However, the Dark Ages were precisely that, and lots of stupid notions were uncorrected by the church because they like 'em stupid.

[Kulaf]

Actually the Dark Ages were "dark" because most of the knowledge of the ancient world was lost in various wars. If it wasn't for the Moors preserving most of the teachings of Aristotle and other ancient "scientists" we would have no record of them at all. The "church" *cough* Catholic *cough* had little reason to correct much of anything scientific because they were not focused on real world solutions. The only things they tried to "correct" was challenges to the commonly accepted notion of an earth centric cosmological view.

[Partha]

Actually the Dark Ages were "dark" because most of the knowledge of the ancient world was lost in various wars. If it wasn't for the Moors preserving most of the teachings of Aristotle and other ancient "scientists" we would have no record of them at all.

The Moors did quite a bit of warring during the Dark Ages themselves. The difference was that the power structure of the Moors wanted to preserve knowledge, and the power structure of the Western Kingdoms liked people stupid.

[Kulaf]

That's just circular logic. The power structure of the Western countries did not have the knowledge either. You are making the argument that they kept people dumb.....but you cannot pass along what you do not posess. The nobels were as highly educated as they could be.....but they still lacked knowledge of the old world because that information was long ago lost in that region of the world.

So unless you have some new historical doumentation of mass scroll burnings by the clergy to purge the West of ancient teachings......let's just agree that the West simply didn't pass on what they didn't have.

[Partha]

You didn't need 'mass burnings of scrolls' back then, Kulaf. It wasn't until well after that period that books were published in 'native' languages and all books were handwritten copies anyways, so it was trivially easy to keep 'forbidden' knowledge from the populace.

[Arathena]

The Flat Earth cosmology of the Tanakh.

[Arathena]

(And yes, I know the difference. But, the New Testament, rightly, says nearly nothing that can be supportive either way, as it is rather firmly fixed on the affairs of men.)