Vatican Astronomer Comments On Extraterrestrials 1312
An anonymous reader writes "There's an Astrobiology.net interview up with a Vatican astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, who also curates one of the world's largest meteorite collections. On the possibility of a non-terrestrial lifeform, he says initially 'I don't know', followed by three scenarios. First, he argues: 'We find an intelligent civilization and there's no way in creation we can communicate with them because they're so alien to us. We can't talk to dolphins now. In which case, we'll never know.' Secondly, he suggests: 'We find the intelligent civilization. We can communicate.' As agents of free-will, the aliens are self-aware of good and evil, thus convertible to some terrestrial religion. Thirdly: 'We find a dozen civilizations out there, and a bunch of Jehovah's witnesses go up and convert them all.' The question of whether an alien civilization might convert Earth to their religion, or become a religion unto themselves, is left unconsidered. This compares to the many reasons people give for hosting a SETI@home client, including that ET contact would unite humanity, challenge religion, or all of the above."
WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's nothing but a bunch of speculation about how to convert aliens to christianity.
My head is about to explode.
Re:Or how about (Score:5, Insightful)
insightful flamebait? (Score:1, Insightful)
I think that the parent is flamebait inasmuch as it encourages flames (thank goodness all the Christians are in bed) but I belive it still makes a very valid point: surely the Vatican should spend more time thinking about how to truly help the people on this planet rather than speculating about people (in its loosest sense!) much further away!
This really seems to resonate with the attitude of the Catholic Church in the Fifteenth Century. "We have learned from our brave adventurers and scientists that people, or what we would roughly call people, exist on a place unbelievably far away. Let's convert them!" And the rest is rather unpleasant history.
Catastrophic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your post could be summarized more briefly, and less offensively, as "Hey everybody, look at me, I'm an atheist!" Which is not really insightful. But it seems that all it takes to dupe the /. mods is an attempt at controversy. (Unless, of course, the mods disagree with you, in which case you generally get the modding you deserve - flamebait.)
Re:Dolphin Communication (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, the bigger reason is that the dolphins don't have a "language."
Simple as that.
If an alien species has developed spaceships, it's very likely that they have some sort of formal system to communicate thoughts with one another.
Putting our best linguistic experts to the task of communicating with them, regardless of how they communicate (sound, light, gestures, pictures), we'll be "communicating" within hours, carrying on conversations within days, and will be fluent within weeks. (I should know; I've seen Star Trek.)
Mars Attacks (Score:3, Insightful)
One doesn't have to go back in history to see how worlds that collide have one side winning while the other side becomes victims of genocide. The warlike Caribs met the peaceful Arawaks in the Caribbean. The Caribs promptly enslaved and if I remember pretty well wiped them out. The "white man's" encounter with Native Americans led to the decimation of their culture and the annexation of their lands. We (white civilization) also introduced them to a form of biological warfare in the form of smallpox bacteria in blankets.
I personally hope that any alien life form will just pass us by. Why would their motives be any more benign than history has shown us time and time again by other peoples who in one way or another were superior? As far as SETI is concerned, it makes me cringe. My hope is that we keep a low profile and this blue marble is overlooked by any alien life form.
The O.P.'s Second Scenario is Misleading... (Score:3, Insightful)
When the Astronomer is talking about the second scenario, he sees the critical description of that scenario as that "there are other Words in other languages to other cultures". According to Christian Theology (as quoted by him from the opening lines of the book of John), the Word of God existed before humanity did. In other words, the aliens we encounter will have already experienced God, that "need to overcome evil in the world".
He doesn't necessarily think that he's going to be converting them in this scenario. As I see it, he thinks that they will have already encountered some form of Christianity, perhaps in a form completely different from the one seen here on Earth, and that Christians may be able to learn from their encounters with (what he believes is) the same God.
Atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or how about (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, if you go looking for them you'll find someone who believes anything you can come up with.
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
However, there is no proof of any god, except for anecdotes written and translated and modified for two thousand years by men and extorted and promoted by the politics of the vatican/church.
Number of known gods in the universe: 0
Number of known civilizations in the universe: 1
You probably laugh at people of different religions than you and think mythology is silly (whoever could have believed in THAT crap, eh?!) and you probably laugh at little kids when they talk about the easter bunny and santa. Yet religious people have a LOT in common with both of those things. Hypocrits.
Re: Catastrophic (Score:5, Insightful)
> The discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence would be catastrophic for organized religion. What if they have the exact same religion as one of the ones on Earth? Then it must be the correct one, and there's no such thing as faith anymore, and at least 80% of the Earth's population was wrong all along. What if they DON'T share any of our religions? Then ALL of ours must be wrong.
Europeans didn't find that problematic the last time they discovered a New World.
Religions tend to be very conservative about their beliefs, but they've always shown an ability to adapt when the chips are down. Encounters with extraterrestrials won't be any different.
Arrogance (Score:3, Insightful)
For one thing, suggesting that we might convert aliens to Christianity is pretty much akin to suggesting that less well developed parts of the world might have had a chance to convert western explorers to their local animalist or totemist belief system. To take it even further, it might be like suggesting that an advanced primate like a Gorilla would have a chance of converting a human to its belief system (presumably based around sitting in a jungle doing nothing). Any race able to contact us or travel to get here is likely to be far more ethically and morally advanced that we are - it will, after all, have survived the equivalent of a nuclear age of technology without annihilating itself, and must therefore have a high degree of moral thinking.
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Didn't occur to you the fact that we might coexist with alien civilizations by exchanging our concepts above philosophies and that, with 2 thousand years of history, the Christianism is quite a mature in itself ?
The basic idea is that nobody asks anybody to believe in whoever or in whatever fact : the message is important, the rest is just a part of the folklore, a paraboel aimed at illustrating the value of the message.
According to the Bible, Jesus is God made a man, now, how could you convert an alien to this idea if he doesn't give a fuck what a man actually is whereas he wants to exchange ideas in order to help both civilizations advance...
Now go and watch Dogma 10 times in a row until you understand what is Good and Important and what isn't.
Re:I doubt it (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Dolphin Communication (Score:5, Insightful)
If we knew they were trying to tell us a message and they actually tried to get the message across, resources would be made free so we
could communicate with them..
Communication is 2 ways, you have to make sure
you understand what they say, and they must also
make an effort to be understood and repeat if
necessary..
What about cats ? Do they say we can't communicate with cats ?
Sorry, I do communicate with my cats.
I don't know everything they say, and they don't
understand everything I say (I hope
but if they want to send me a message
(need food/attention/to be alone/go outside/..)
they get the message to me.
And if they do something they shouldn't, I also
make sure they get the message..
So yes to me that's communicating.
And now I'm thinking about it, yes, some
people can communicate with dolphins.
Dolphin trainers do train them and I assume
they will also learn to interpret the reactions
of the dolphins. They won't understand everything,
and we speak our own languages to communicate
(dolphins won't speak and we won't squeek),
but there is some limited communication.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
there's exactly as much solid scientific evidence for extraterrestrial life as there is for the existence of God, which is to say there's absolutely none
Searching for extra terrestrial life is a numbers game, it's all about odds. We know life can start on a suitable planet, cause here we are. Then comes the unknown factors.
Point is that S is huge and L, I and C are big enough that it has happened here, so yes I believe there will be intelligent life out there, but I have my doubts that they will be close enough to find, or even exist at the same time as us
Re:Ninnle has you ! (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, the nasty Roman retrospectively remind me of the GIs practising "civilizaiton-101" in Iraq.
Re:I doubt it (Score:1, Insightful)
That's exactly the kind of thinking that leads to followers of the Almighty Lord raping followers of Almighty Allah in prison and followers of Almighty Allah beheading a gurgling follower of the Almighty Lord. Golly, perhaps each side should just be more forcible in converting the other to their side.
Stupid humans.
Some speculation on alien religion (Score:5, Insightful)
The theme is this - religions for small, racially similar groups of people are replaced by religions for larger, less racially similar groups of people. Religion helps justify this takeover.
Great religions often deal more with conversion than tribal religions.
I wonder if this trend will apply to extra-terrestrial religions. Will such religions tend to be converting religions? Will Extra terrestrials have eliminated the notion of 'race' from their religion and culture?
If so, will such a culture focus on genetically assimilating creatures along with religious and cultural conversion?
Considering how universal Nietzche's 'Will to Power' is likely to be, I sometimes wonder if aliens will be like Nazis, but with forcible genetic engineering rather than gas chambers.
Furthermore, since religion and nationalism have always been strongly linked, what kind of religion will a space-faring race have, considering that they will be the first intelligent creatures who aren't bounded by nations and territory as we know it.
I think living in space will have a profound impact on nationality, and thus religion, because it will eliminate the notion of fixed land, which is the basis of nationality. If sattelites can become self-supporting it will allow people to redefine how they organize themselves and choose citizenship.
Re:science and religion (Score:2, Insightful)
Also that and there is so many obvious fallacies written in the holy texts that they must be viewed by any OBJECTIVE scientist as having at least some flaws.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Illogical, Captain. S is huge, but every other value is completely unknown. It's quite possible that L and I are so small that intelligence arose only once in the whole universe. Just because we're here doesn't mean that anyone else is.
Re:Parallels (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or how about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Catastrophic (Score:4, Insightful)
The spiritual truths in all Earth's religions are basically the same:
1. There is a [higher being/a collective of higher beings/a higher force] which must be [revered/worshipped/honored].
2. You should be nice to people who profess to hold the same spiritual belief as you.
3. People who do not fall in the previous category are [doomed/below your standing/misguided] and should be [ignored/converted/killed].
Personally, I don't see how any religion could exist that does not hold these principles. Principle 1 must hold, otherwise it's no religion. Principle 2 must hold, because religions must bind people into groups or they will perish. Principle 3 must hold, because if someone believes his religion does not make him superior to others, he will convert to something that makes him feel better.
So, if anything, finding an alien religion that holds the same principles only shows that the aliens have the same sociological and psychological make-up as humans. It says nothing about the existence of God.
Actually, I think that if space-faring aliens believe in God, they will probably have a better concept of God than we do, and it is likely to be closer to the truth.
Re:Or how about (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, bonjour M. Pascal! It's been at least ten minutes since I last heard that one. Of course, the problem with this is that it applies to the beliefs of every other loony on the street, not just to yours.
Personally, I don't go around believing things just because they come with big threats attached to them, and I think that pretending to believe in a god on such dishonest grounds is a far worse insult to that god than simply not believing, in addition to being quite reprehensible moral cowardice to boot.
Re:Ninnle has you ! (Score:3, Insightful)
I respectfully disagree. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not trying to offend anyone here, so I will be very careful with my words. This is just my opinion, but I think that deliberately setting out to encourage others to join your system of beliefs is not a good or responsible thing to do. Simply in the act of proffering a particular belief system on others, you are necessarily advocating that point of view. It is your opinion. The way that many Christian Churches have acted in the past has been to enshrine their doctrine in myth and ritual, and to withhold the fact that Christianity was a point of view, not the point of view.
I just think that religion is something that must be spread through people being shown the true possibilities in terms of belief systems that are available to them, rather than having ideas thrust at you by parents or Clerics.
Just my 2 cents, feel free to disagree! That is your right, just as this opinion is mine.
Re:WTF? (Score:1, Insightful)
Any religion that wants its members to "convert" other people to it is, by definition, wacko in my book.
Re:Dolphin Communication (Score:2, Insightful)
A logical fallacy is to say "just by that scenario existing ...we have something in common with them". This is assuming that an alien race must be reasonably similar to ours, whereas the aliens might be in relation to us as we are to dolphins.
Re:science and religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Most scientists feel that religion and science are two different worlds. They can't be in conflict. Science is about using facts and the force of reasoning to build an objective world-view. Religion is about using belief to build a subjective world-view, and "believing" is equal to "accepting without a shred of objective proof". These two approaches to building a window onto reality are very difficult to reconcile. So there is no actual conflict, but not many people can hold both views.
That does not mean that science has nothing to say about religion, but science can only investigate religion when a religion makes testable claims. "God exists" isn't testable. "God makes this statue of the Holy Mary shed tears of blood" is not completely testable, but at least it is testable whether the statue actually sheds tears of blood, regardless where these tears are coming from.
And, of course, we know that religion has to say a lot about science, especially where scientific fact clashes with dogmatic belief.
It is claimed that many astronomers and scientists actually do believe in God because all their research leads them to believe that there must be a superior being,
I have no idea who claims that, but I remember reading in the Skeptical Inquirer special issue on Science and Religion that it is very rare to find a scientist who believes in God. Those that do have to make a strict division between their work and their private life. Not many people can do that.
Re:Is it that likely? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm. So Jesus died for our sins but didn't die for their sins, and they didn't have their own Jesus either? This can only mean that god loves us so much more than he loves them.
I don't have to tell you what that kind of thinking usually leads to, do I? (hints: crusades, 9/11, war, torture, genocide, holocaust, terrorism)
Re:Dolphin Communication (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a linguist who spends a fair bit of time thinking about these sorts of things (I have a cat, of course!), and I just wanted to say that your post was very well-written and raises a few questions that I enjoy thinking about.
Your first point, that we haven't ever needed to communicate with dolphins and vice versa is a very good one that many professional linguists really don't get. Communication only comes about when it is an advantage to both parties.
One thing that is important here I think is to clearly distinguish communication from language. Most animal species can and do communicate with each other (and in some cases, with humans), ranging in complexity from ants to chimpanzees, but it is yet to be proven that any animals use language in any ways outside of a purely functional manner. Humans use language in so many ways - as a functional, communicative tool, as a system of recording facts, as a social construct for building groups of humans... I could go on. I don't think there are all that many documented cases of animals showing these kinds of behaviours.
But, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence! I personally have a feeling that cats do understand what humans say very, very well. Down to the word level. I'm not sure what their syntax is like (i.e. whether they can interpret meaning above the word level, as phrases or sentences) but Aristotle, my cat, picks up on quite a lot of phrases, such as 'vet', 'bad cat', 'good cat' and all those mundane things, including the name of every kind of food he likes. I also have a bilingual friend whose cats understand his English and Spanish very well. Of course, all this isn't very scientific, but there are reasons to suspect that cats do understand us very well. They have been hanging around us for a long, long time... perhaps since the dawn of farming techniques and granary construction, 2000 bce or earlier. You could even say we have a symbiotic relationship with cats, i.e. a mutually beneficial relationship. They eat the mice, birds and insects that come after our food, which is good for everyone. Except when they hunt the neighbours pigeons, stupid things. (Pigeons, not cats!)
I think there's still a lot we don't know about this kind of thing, but I'm always looking into it!
alien moral standards (Score:3, Insightful)
Odds are that if they are aware of good and evil and advanced enough to be space-faring then they will probably have higher moral standards than anything christianity has to provide...
High moral standards are what makes cooperation possible. Tolerance of differences is probably neccesary, and that certainly isn't taught by christianity.
Or maybe im just projecting my own standards onto aliens... but the christian concept of moral seems to be pretty low compared to what humanism can provide.
Some other scenarios : (Score:2, Insightful)
sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
Religion is truly the highest form of comedy
Re:Or how about (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no ass-kissing involved. There's no difficult list of rules, either. The majority of the New Testament is philosophical explanation of Jesus' words, and guidelines for behavior given by the early apostles, not the direct handing down of a list of rules by God (like the Ten Commandments). The implication is that if you have faith, you will do your best to do God's will, as best as you're able.
The Bible reflects over and over that the default behavior of man is evil, not good. From person 1 straight on down, everyone screwed up. Person 2 disobeyed God, Person 1 colluded, Person 3 killed Person 4, etc. As simple as the list of Ten Commandments seems, have you kept them? Everyone says what an excellent set of rules they are, but I don't know anyone that has managed to keep them.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
If there has to be a creator for you to exist, then surely the creator must have a creator? Or does your logic only extend as far as proving what you want to prove? Who made god?
We can explain the existance of man without having to resort to a creator.
Re:Threat (Score:2, Insightful)
Who cares? What are they going to do about it if anyone does ?
Pass a resolution ?
Set up an oil for dilithium crystals scheme ?
Re:Is it that likely? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dolphin Communication (Score:5, Insightful)
As an aside, if you think that cats are impressive, try owning a dog sometime. Both I and one of my brothers go to college, and yet when my mother says one of our names, the dog immediately stands up and wags her tail. This is after not seeing us for months. Yes, household pets are quite adept at recognizing words, but can they string those words together to form more elaborate concepts? I would argue no. In the example of my dog, she can relate names to individuals (when we are actually present, saying "go to [name]" will produce the correct response), but she can't understand that a name can refer to someone who is not present. She certainly understands "would you like to go for a walk?" but can't understand "walk" in any context that does not involve taking her outside. Likewise with your cat, would it be able to understand it if you said something else was good or bad? Probably not.
Aliens probably "religious" already (Score:2, Insightful)
If they come here and see us squabbling over the meager resources of our planet, I think it more likely that they would want to convert us to their views than the opposite.
I think the same argument applies to us. If we don't stop fighting amonst ourselves, we won't ever get anywhere with our space exploration. As long as most resources are tied up in military programs, space will have to wait. Getting to the Moon is nice and all, but the travels will get increasingly expensive as we try to get outside of our own solarsystem.
On the other hand, I believe in the "wisdom" of Star Trek - First Contact, if we ever encounter another race, people are probably going to be so scared that many Earthly conflicts will be set aside.
God does not die if we find ET's. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is NO REASON whatsoever to believe that Earth is the only creation, or even this universe. I happen to be Roman Catholic. The discovery of aliens would not shake my religious foundation one bit.
I see science not as competition for religion, but as complimentary. When we discover how things work, we discover more about God.
I have no problem accepting evolution as the PROCEESS that was used, for example.
I don't like the extremists on either side on this debate. On one side, you have the atheists, who think science can replace religion. Then, on the other side, you religious nutcases who think the Earth is only 5,000 years old, who scream BLASPHEMY! at you when you mention Mars is closer than it's been in 600,000 years.
But those types of nutcases aren't Roman Catholic, but they are a lot of my neighbors here in Easern Kentucky
We should be seeking to discover other life for many reasons, none of which have to do with proving or disproving God. Either task is impossible, BTW.
Re:Or how about (Score:2, Insightful)
I never understood the argument that God "tests" people. If He is all-knowing and all-seeing, He already knows what you're going to do, so what is the point in actually doing the test?
It seems to me that one can only advance the theory that God tests people if at the same time one advances the concept of God having limited power. A God with infinite power does not need to test anyone.
Re:science and religion (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a misconception. Either the universe is ruled by natural laws or by invisible old guy(s) in the sky. No two ways about it. And despite centuries of persecution of sciencists by religion, its religion, rather than science that now wants a truce -- quite understandably, considering that (at least in the West), science has religion up against the ropes and is preparing a knockout punch...
Re:I doubt it (Score:3, Insightful)
Speak for yourself. It's a silly thing to say anyway - as the most intelligent species in known existance, we are advanced creatures - it's all relative.
Re:Or how about (Score:4, Insightful)
How would you feel if someone walked into 7-11 you were in and said he was going to shoot everyone who didn't say green was thier favorite color, but those that did could leave right now and he'd pay them $50? Saying green is your favorite color wouldn't really hurt you and get you $50 in bargain.
You'd be ticked as all hell, and you wouldn't believe this guy liked you even if he said green was better for you in your everyday life.
Personally I'd rather be around people who do thier best to be good people than ones who half ass it, yet meet this special requirement for a better afterlife.
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to start believing in a being that behaves worse than a spoiled child, threatens those he says he loves, posseses contradictory powers, and has the morals of a sociopath. Especially when there are several such, all claiming to be the only one. And each on is running a different racket than the next, with the only major items in common is that the head believers all get special privilages here in this life, and a series of directives that make not believing a good way to get killed, or in more 'enlightened' cultures/times, meerly treated like a second class citizen and a leper.
Mycroft
Re:what if (Score:3, Insightful)
Then they will be considered tools of the devil, and most earthbound religions will move us towards war with them.
To someone who believes religion forms the very essence of who they are. Most of the true believers can not be dissuaded from believing regardless of how strong your argument against God is. But ofcourse that is the whole point of faith, it is belief beyond reason.
Humanity hasn't stopped fighting religious wars against itself (despite the fact that all the major religions say killing of human beings is evil). It seems incredibly unlikely we wouldn't wage religious war against aliens if they made contact with us, which is probably why they haven't made contact yet. If they're out there, that is.
In the words of Sagan, "the evidence is crummy..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or how about (Score:5, Insightful)
And in black and white in the Bible we find the exact oppposite:
"What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?" (James 2:14)
You'd have to actually read it to know that, though.
Let me guess: you also have to 'interpret it properly'.
Re:Or how about (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, the problem with this is that it applies to the beliefs of every other loony on the street, not just to yours
Yes, but if that looney does unquestionable good, why patronise him? Does that make you a better person?
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or how about (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it that likely? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ofcourse, the basic assumption you make is that the old testament was written before the "predicted" events it describes, and that it wasn't revised afterwards to "fit in" the predictions, or to "update" them (for example, the 70 year reign of nebuchadnezzar over israel, can you prove that it didn't originally say 20 years, and someone changed it to 70 after the fact?).
I can understand that a believer sees the bible as the word of God, and thus is unwilling to criticize its origin. I however can not make the assumption that the bible is the word of God. To me the assumption that the bible is completely a work of man seems just as likely, especially as you look at early christianity and its revisionist policies regarding the bible (the only reason the bible seems to have been assembled in the first place was to counter gnostic philosophy within the christian faith).
And even if you were able to prove the bible contains predictions that were written before they happened, it doesn't prove that the bible is a valid source of predictions, since you'd need to back it up with a statistical analysis of how often the bible is right about things, and how often it is wrong. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Although I'm sure believers will claim the bible is never wrong, and any specific passages handed to them of predictions the bible is wrong on will be disputed with arguments like "that's allegorical", or "that is yet to happen".
A little Christian-centric, no? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Was it not always the case? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the eyes of a person who shares your morals, no. But if the Nazis has won the war, I suspect many people would have had no moral problem with it. Morals are not absolute or universal. It's true that you can apply your moral values to any point in history and say that (for instance) human sacrifice has always been wrong in your eyes. But that doesn't prove that morals are universal. How do you know that human sacrifice is wrong? Why have so many religions actively promoted it?
would it be right no matter how many supported it?
No. Your morality isn't based on what a majority think. It's based on what you believe to be right or wrong (although that is usually strongly influenced by the culture that you are in - hence most people, I suspect, today believe that genocide and human sacrifice are wrong). But different people do have different views on it - therefore there is no univeral morality.
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:3, Insightful)
And of course, because the pilots are Mexican they cant possibly have the necessary training to be able tell the difference between equipment anomaly and normal function.
Had they been American pilots that would have been a totally different story.
And you, having logged 10,000 hours on drug interdiction duty in the same setup, know the difference between correct function and equipment failure.
Yeah, Right, What-ever!
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:1, Insightful)
"...but none had the backing of the armed forces of any country..."
You could say the same thing exactly about religion, except in reverse.
Successful religions mostly had the backing of armed forces. Think of the rise of Christianity under the Roman Empire and their armies. Think of Islam and its rise under their armies and their fanatical warriors all bound for heaven and hundreds of virgins.
"The armed forces don't perpetuate frauds."
That's even funnier. Have you never heard of "Military Intelligence"? Fraud is pretty much their whole doctrine! What is "disinformation" and who originatewd the term?
Re:Or how about (Score:2, Insightful)
You dumbass, it' s the exact opposite in the Bible. Do you really believe that no matter what you do, as long as you have faith, you will go to heaven? Scary to think you are just one among many who misinterpret the bible regularly, blindly believing thing which are obviously bullshit.
Say I had complete faith in Jesus, If I raped and killed your mother, could I still go to heaven?
On Communication (Score:4, Insightful)
So if an alien species looks like us (has a mouth that serves respiratory and ingestion functions, a tongue) they probably evolved in similar circumstances and therefore have a basis for understanding.
But an incredibly different species could be extremely intelligent but we wouldn't be able to communicate (verbally, maybe even electronically) with them because their medium for thought transmission evolved in a completely different manner
Imagine a species that used special appendages to communicate, kind of like sign language. We wouldn't know where to begin because we don't have those appendages, and it would look like a bunch of flailing to us.
Re:Or how about (Score:4, Insightful)
Most religions would fall over backwards for the chance to teach you about what they believe. Scientologists would rather that you didn't know what they believe, but want you to join anyway. And people think this is a real religion?!
One Christ per planet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Evidence works both ways, you know.
Personally, I'm an atheist, but I acknowledge that my atheism is falsifiable.
It's easy to point at other people's beliefs and say "look! they are gonna have such a crisis of belief when we expand our circle of knowledge!" But intellectual honesty and humility compels me to consider: what kind of evidence would make me change my mind about atheism?
Re:Or how about (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or how about (Score:2, Insightful)
Simple. Man has free will. God cannot take that from you.
Re:Catastrophic (Score:2, Insightful)
The spiritual truths in all Earth's religions are basically the same:
1. There is a [higher being/a collective of higher beings/a higher force] which must be [revered/worshipped/honored].
Except, for example, Buddhism. [1]
2. You should be nice to people who profess to hold the same spiritual belief as you.
Except, for example, Buddhism.
3. People who do not fall in the previous category are [doomed/below your standing/misguided] and should be [ignored/converted/killed].
Except, for example, Buddhism.
In fact, your initial statement is completely false as examined by your ensuing points. There are a number of religions that do not follow point 3, for example; enough so that it was considered an aberration when the Peoples of the Book introduced the idea.
Examine the Ba'hai some time. Or any one of several elements of Contemporary Paganism. Or the Dinka in southern Africa. ... what you seem to have meant is, "The Christians, the Moslems and some Jews, along with elements of Sikhism and Hinduism, on average believe that they're the only people worth inviting round to tea and are willing to support idiots like Bush or fanatics like Khomainei in order to have the chance to throw rocks at everyone else".
And even there, the variance between denominations (for example between Shi'ite and Ismaelian within Islam, or Eastern Orthodox vs. Southern Baptist within Christianity) is so radical that they're barely recognizable as the same religion.
~cHris
[1] I appreciate that you probably put in 'collective of higher beings' as a gesture towards Nirvanist and related philosophies, but you lost that point on 'must be [revered/honoured/worshipped]'; all of those things apply to the various Bodhisattva, but none apply to Nirvana, and none apply to the Bodhisattva (at a philosophical level) more than they apply to everyone and everything else.
Re:religion? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or how about (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not sure why this kind of issue ever comes up in discussions that are supposedly about Christian belief; It's a straw man argument unless you're referring to the several marginal sects of protestantism which articulate a 'No Lordship' theology.
To give merely one common response to this question, Philip Melanchthon once memorably wrote that while faith alone saves, a saving faith is never alone (see the comment on the Book of James, above). That is to say that a theoretical commitment to God that does not manifest itself in action is suspect for that reason. Hence Jesus: "By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?" (Matt 7:16), or Paul: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?" (Rom. 6:1).
Now I don't expect non-Christians to take much of an interest in biblical theology. But those who are willing to comment on it will frequently display a bizarre readiness to assume that everyone involved has been a more-or-less complete imbecile from the very outset.
It's the old "Well I'm certainly not aware of any objections to my argument" problem.
This guy's not much of a historian... (Score:1, Insightful)
If there are aliens out there with fabulously advanced technology who could crush us like bugs, THEY are going to be the missionaries and WE are going to be godless heathens that need saving... not the other way around.
Scary (Score:4, Insightful)
Praise Bob.
Hey, Consolmagno... here's a few for you: (Score:2, Insightful)
Earth's finest astro-missionaries do indeed initiate contact and demonstrate themselves, and their beliefs, as mankind's majority view. In which case:
1: After a few years of contact with our nonsense, they (The ET's in question) decide to tie us to an intersteller "cross" and set us out to drift by a black hole (a la The Mission [imdb.com]
2: Our astro-misionaries find that the alien culture in question has a highly evolved sense of religion themselves and they proceed to convert us.
3: They (the ET's) are completely appalled by our (mankind's) inability to distinguish personal spirtual beliefs from nonsensical religious imperatives and (after speaking their case to some galactic council or other) quarantine Earth from interstellar contact until we set our priorities straight.
4: (As a continuation of point 2) They (the ET's) are enraged by our collective infidelism(sic) that we are hunted down and exterminated for challenging they one true religion: Theirs.
5: They view us as silly monkey-men and throw our collective simian asses in a cosmic zoo (a la, Vonnegut and Porno for Pyros).Anyway, just a few other ideas to chew over, you silly religious elitist type.
You'd think it would be relatively easy to look around and see how much religion (and our immature view(s) of it) have fucked us all over. I mean, turn on the CNN and the end result of it is everywhere. I have an idea, take your deep seeded personal religious views and shove 'em deeply up a very personal place... until we collectively realize that our own personal spiritual viewpoints have no bearing on the world around us... we'll just continue to be screwed.
______
Re:Or how about (Score:2, Insightful)
Out of curiousity, were you here then? I mean, your user ID is 600,000+. I was just wondering if it's a new account, and you used to post as someone else.
I remember the whole 9 yards, where they took it down, and a bunch of folks were clammering that they shouldn't take it down, and it would be the a triumph of free speech. And then it was like, who are we kidding? We've all read op clambake, and we know what they do to people who screw with them.
~Will
Re:Is it that likely? (Score:3, Insightful)
Single-mindedness does NOT foster kindness/gentleness, etc.. Mainly because the probability of encountering one who is of a different mind is too great. This, as history shows, single-mindedness is more likely to produce unifying actions (which can involve aggression, imposing shame, acting immorally so as to produce a "moral" outcome (e.g. The ends justifies the means)).
When you are within the homogeneous society, then things can be peaceful, but as history has also shown, there has been NO evidence of non polymorphic religion or philosophy. Judaism morphed into orthodox and reformed. Christianity morphed from day two into dozens of wholely incompatible religions, was later unified through state-power, almost immediately divided again.. then finally divided into factions which wished to kill one another over incompatible ways of life (Irish/British). Arabic cultural religions (rooted in Abrahamism) morphed into Islam which, like Christianity, immediately apon their founders' death split into rival factions (which till this day war against one another). Same message, only differece is one of leadership (read power).
Do not confuse the tendency for like people to congregate, with the logical benifits of independently derived hospitality. A man can be wise, dumb, genereous, selfish, hateful, or caring. But a religion is about homogeneity. It serves a useful purpose (as it facilitates the individuals' personal aspirations), but religion in and of itself is a cold machine, who ultimately craves survival and growth (much like a corporation). And it should be treated as such.
Re:Or how about (Score:2, Insightful)
That's akin to one of the questions that I can never get answered. If god loves us and wants us to be happy, why did he give us the choice to sin in the garden of eden. If he is all-knowing, he would have known that adam/eve would eat the apple. If the consequences of this action offend god, why did he give us the choice.
If god wants us all in heaven to celebrate with him, why does he give us the choice.
Seems sadistic to me.
~Wx
Re:Or how about (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people keep pushing the Ten Commandments? Half the problem with Judaism at the time was that it was "function" lacking "form". After all, what happens when there's a conflict between two of the Ten Commandments (your parents tell you to kill someone, for instance)? That's why Christ simplified it in the New Testament.
Even Judaism realized that later on - What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.
(Yes, I know that Matthew 6 says that Christ said that the old rules still apply. Of course they do. They always will. The problem was that somehow people managed to miss the meaning of them - to God, they were obvious. To man, apparently it was too much.)
There's no difficult list of rules, either.
Yes there is - it's all through Matthew 5-7, though it boils down to the above - Love God above all others, and love your neighbor as yourself. That's it.
And those commandments are much easier to understand.
(So why are people pushing so hard for the Ten Commandments in courts? The Golden Rule is almost completely universal in almost all religions, and it has a lot less "wiggle room" - you're still a dork if you think about killing someone and don't do it, for instance)
Anyway, my point is that if you're pushing Christian doctrine, you shouldn't be pushing the Ten Commandments. You should be pushing the Golden Rule.
Note that I'm not commenting on what's necessary to get into heaven - that's a matter of belief in my eyes, though I firmly believe that any religion that believes that just saying the magic words "I believe in Jesus Christ" saves me, and the converse (not saying it means I can't be saved) is crazy - function without form. I can believe something without stating it. Heck, I can have faith and belief in something without knowing it.
But I'll stop there.
Re:Or how about (Score:1, Insightful)
So, you know all about secondaries and locks and lists and nulling and floating needles, and how to differentiate between a rock slam and an F/N, and what 'session ruds' are, and why they're important, and you've studied the Axioms with an attestation at exam, and been M3 checked out on the material?
Because unless you have, you won't have much of an opinion worth 'doing battle' over with a trained Scientologist
10 Commandments? Not a great list by me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, not everyone says they're an excellent set of rules. I don't. I for one think they're just about on par with any other ancient code of behavior or law -- a mix of obviousness and muddled ambiguity handed down by yet another set of self-appointed spokespeople for God.
We had a brief thing with the 10 Commandments at my kids' Public school, actually. Supposedly the existing "Code of Conduct" was all too "PC" -- a term mostly used to attack things you disagree with nowadays -- and we had a few parents who asked why we couldn't also post the Commandments instead (or failing that, also). So, we got a good chance to examine the two lists.
The current behavior code was full of stuff like "Show respect for others" and various words about becoming a good student and a good citizen -- an emphasis on learning how to be a good person and how to participate in American society. There was an interesting strain of "Civics Lesson."
The Commandments, well... We don't actually have a problem with students murdering each other at our little school, and as far as coveting our neighbor's wives goes, there isn't much danger of it among the grade schoolers I happen to know, and I'm not sure an advanced warning was all that useful for them. As a public school, Noble doesn't encourage idols of any sort (that being one of the several reasons for which the idea of posting the Commandments themselves was voted down). And so on.
In short the Commandments frankly didn't seem relevant to my kids' school lives, or really to their lives -- surely not more than any other list of advice. Not nearly as relevant as the existing conduct code, anyway. Where they did apply, they were mostly staggeringly obvious (Don't kill anyone). They reflected social mores of 2000 years ago; the "neighbor's wife" thing is more about women as property than about being faithful to your own spouse -- note that it doesn't mention husbands or tell you not to fool around with single college girls if you're married. (How many wives did Solomon have, again?) Granted, this was the KJV translation, but then nobody asked us to post anything in Aramaic or Hebrew or Greek.
That's leaving alone the whole "We're all evil by default thing, which is just so very Christian and so very not useful in figuring out how to live a moral life. If God wants to blame me for my inherent flaws, I defer to God entirely -- but not to a human spokeperson for God. No - Thank - You.
So no -- brzzzt -- not everyone says they're such a great idea. I personally think you'd do much better reading a Cliff's Notes version of Kant, as far as leading a moral life.
Re:Or how about (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't rightly believe in any god who demands your worship in order to be rewarded in the afterlife, and yet whose son also preaches forgiveness among your fellow men in God's name. If God himself cannot forgive those people whom did not have faith and yet still lived "good" lives, and allow them into heaven, then why should such a duplicitous being be worthy of worship? That's not a god. That's merely a being with more power than us. The being may have enough power to seem like a god, but that doesn't necessarily make the being a "superior being" that is worthy of worship.
And before anybody asks, I have not read the Bible in a very long time. Not since giving up religion for Lent over a decade ago.
Re:Or how about (Score:5, Insightful)
The act of faith, in itself, is a work. That is why "salvation through faith", while hugely popular, is in itself heretical. It's just a bolted-on idea with little Biblical basis. The comment that James is not canon is nonsense.
If you rewrite the grandparent post to say "salvation through irresistable grace", things start to make a lot more sense. If you accept the idea that Man is fallen (as it taught in the Bible), and is only redeemed through the grace of God (i.e. it is not by any work of ours that we are saved, as is taught in the Bible), then James starts to make sense. Faith, by itself, is only one manifestation of salvation--not salvation in and of itself--and works are an external expression of faith and salvation.
The inevitable question is, "How do you know if you are saved by grace, then?" Well, if you have faith, and you do works, it's a fair indicator.
Discussions like these are why I get so annoyed with religious discussions between believers and non-believers. Non-believers tend to lump all Christians under a single rubric, when Christian-on-Christian oppression is at least as significant as Non-Christian-on-Christian. We're hardly a homogenous group. (The same goes for Hinduism, Buddhism, and just about every other -ism, BTW, so the idea that "Hindus" won't have a problem with aliens is likely total nonsense.) It's intellectual laziness backed by raving bigotry when a non-believer lumps a Catholic with a Jehovah's Witness with a snake-handler. There is just as many key differences between them as there are between Perl and Java and Tcl/Tk hackers.
In reference to the news post itself, why is the Vatican speculating on alien civilization? We have less than adequate proof of alien life. We have no proof. When you look at the Hubble deep-sky photos, it's easy to say to yourself, "Gosh, all those galaxies, surely there's a civilization in at least one!" Who knows? I do know that there is less evidence for alien life than that Jesus walked the earth; but Jesus' existence is less than universally accepted among non-believers, while alien civilization is given serious thought.
Think about that--we have Old Testament prophecy concerning the coming of a Savior; we have New Testament witnessing to the fulfillment of those prophecies; we have new prophecies that the Savior will return with ultimate judgement. All of this is based on pretty reliable historical documents, and consistent over at least 4000 years. But we ignore this, and instead concentrate on wondering about alien civilizations and how they'll affect us? Even assuming that they do exist, what sense does it make to think they're even aware of us, or can ever reach us? So there's bug-eyed monsters in galaxy MCC-435PDQ, or whatever. Unless they have faster-than-light travel (another leap of faith that is bolder than the goofiest Christian Scientist praying for God to heal their kid's cancer), they will never get here. Generational ships and interstellar travel make fun science fiction, but the odds that ET is heading here because he's jonesing for Starbucks... well, it's just silly.
Re:Or how about (Score:3, Insightful)
This is necessary because you must pay them for various activities in order to progress up through the ranks. If they gave you all the information for free, there would be less incentive to pay.
Re:Or how about (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or how about (Score:3, Insightful)
If you consider God as a parent, you will start to understand much of his nature.
What is better for the horse? To live in the wild, in freedom, or to pull a plow in the service of man? For man the horse is better broken, but you would have a hard time arguing that freedom is a bad thing for the horse. Now extend that to humanity's relationship with God. Your argument seems to say that we are merely devices for God's "purposes". However, since God is all-powerful he does not need us to do anything. God can recreate the world how he wishes it to be. What is our purpose then? And if we must obey God as our parent, what with free will? Do we only have choice as long as we make the choice God "wants" us to make? And if so, why isn't the right choice more obvious. Why is it not obvious to believers God does not want them to wage war, because he loves all, on every side of every dispute?
I don't like the concept of the entirety of humanity being a bunch of children with limited responsibility. That kind of "God knows best" reasoning has been the excuse for most of the awful acts perpetrated by organised religion.
Also, a sign of maturity is not needing your parents to solve your problems for you. It is a badge of pride for parents when their children become independent. If we are God's children, he should want us to grow up and not need him anymore. By that reasoning, a person doesn't grow up until they stop praying to God for help.
Frankly, the model of God as a parent raises more questions for me than it explains. So, no, it doesn't help me understand the nature of God.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, throw in extremophiles (for example, living organisms thriving on minerals spewed from hot springs in the ocean floor with no sunlight, previously thought impossible: organisms living in ice... one mile deep, protiens in asteroids literally falling to Earth, etc...). Lastly, comprehending the vastness and age of the universe is a remarkably hard thing to do. The numbers involved are massive.
Using probability alone, I think it literally safe to say that we are/have been visited. I have a very long list of numbers showing this, but ROI doesn't permit me to copy here unless prodded.
Good luck.
Re:Or how about (Score:2, Insightful)
"It's in black and white in the Bible."
Interesting. Jehovah also says you will have slaves from the nations surrounding you, you can purchase kids from the nations around you & make them slaves as well, and that your newly purchased slaves will then become your property which can be left as an inheritance to your descendants. (Leviticus 25:44-45)You'd have to actually read it to know that, though.
"The Bible reflects over and over that the default behavior of man is evil, not good."
Funny, I find it very evil that some god would tell us 'thou shalt have slaves.' So which is it, did god command slavery or did man write those words? Who benefits from slavery, man or god?
Further, as a Christian, do you own slaves as Jehovah has commanded? I mean, if you are going to base your life on the moral teachings of the Bible, surely you would wish to follow them all.
Re:Or how about (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:One Christ per planet? (Score:3, Insightful)
Careful - atheism isn't a logic term, it means "no God." You can't be "atheistic" towards telepathy - come up with a different term for that.
Anyway, it's very curious that you can actually believe "there is no God, but it's possible that I could be proven wrong."
In actuality, there is no possibility that you could be proven wrong - so it is not falsifiable. It still could be wrong - it's just not capable of being proven wrong.
Think about it. How could someone prove to you that there is a God?
Let me take one example - the same argument follows for most others, but it's easiest to show this way.
Imagine a being plops down right in front of you, and says "I'm God."
You, being atheist, say "I don't believe you. Prove it."
Now, let's assume he tries to prove it. So he does something. I don't care what. Anything - literally, anything.
You then say "OK. If you're God, then you're omniscient. So how specifically did you just do that?"
If he can tell you, he no longer needs to be God to have done what he did - he's just someone who knows how the Universe works better than you do. (Here's a hint: "I'm God" is not an answer to a 'How' question. It would be like a doctor, after saving someone's life, saying "I'm a doctor" when asked how he did it.)
If he can't tell you, he's not omniscient, and not God.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Note that I did not just prove God doesn't exist. Only that you can't prove God exists.
The existence of God is something that is a real, pure belief. Believe what you want, believe it for whatever reasons you want, but you'll never be proven wrong, either way.
Yes it is (Score:3, Insightful)
If people learn to live without religion, and take personal responsibility for their lives (don't be good to get into heaven, be good because it's smart for survival) the need for religion and the rules it evolved with go away.
Unfortunately, people don't want to deal with death, and the message that one will continue moving on in an immortal fashion is far more seductive than accepting you are going to die and rot in a box till the Sun explodes.
As for the harm religion can do, it is immense. Islam, Christian Crusades, Witch hunts, Jewish conquests, Hindu Thugee, terrrorism, and expansionism can all be traced back to religion. These competing religious ideas are just like competing species. They all want maximum expansion room and few competitors. Religion is a virus. If you want to believe in God, Yaweh, Vishnu, Allah, or Hecate, by all means do so. There is no need to be part of an organized group to do it. Religious heirarchy is an old concept that was once important to our survival, but now is as useless as a stone axe.
Re:Or how about (Score:1, Insightful)
Omniscent is a subset of omnipotent, so it doesn't have to be listed separately.
However, omnipotent and omnibenevolent are contradictory, which is why the Western God doesn't make sense.
Re:Catastrophic (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't say it was flamebait as much as... well, a clever turn of phrase.
For one thing, I'm not sure what you mean here by "dogmatic". You seem to think a dogma is the same as belief. What I intended by the use of dogma was something more like a whole set of beliefs that you inherit along with your religious stance.
Like believing there is a God is not particularly dogmatic. Believing that it is evil for a woman to show her belly-button on a Tuesday is more along the lines of what I mean by "dogma". I mean some specific little rule about how life is, set forth by an authority figure.
I also think you misunderstand the word "gnostic". "Gnosis" is a not a belief, it's knowledge, but a particular form of knowledge. It's intuitive, and comes from within. When you know something, and know it for sure, but only by knowing it in your gut, that's gnosis. "Gnostic" faiths are religions that preach that no specific church can tell you answers, but each person has been, in some way (depending on the religion) given a natural insight into the world which only needs to be developed.
To claim to be "agnostic" is to say "you know boys, I don't really have a gut feeling on this one." Speaking properly, you can be agnostic, yet "know" through other means. You may claim to know through the information passed to you through some authority figure, for example. Therefore, gnostic knowledge pretty much can't be dogmatic, and agnostic knowledge is very likely dogmatic.
When a scientist tells you that you shouldn't eat fatty foods, that's agnostic knowledge. When the priests told the Jews they shouldn't eat pork, that was agnostic knowledge. When I refuse to drink Tequila because it just "feels" evil, that's a little closer to gnosis.
So with all the little rules I'm being force-fed through the media on how to live a good and healthy life, with only the authority of some snazzy scientist or another to tell me that it's "right", doesn't that sound a little dogmatic? I mean, you aren't doing all these experiments yourself, right? Somebody's just telling you, "Oh, I did experiments, and I know what I'm doing, and this is what came out to be true, so believe me when I say..." and you believe them. And Christian priests might say, "I prayed and God inspired me towards truth, so believe me when I say..." and their congregation might believe them. More and more, I think atheism is a religion, with scientists as the priests, and universities as the Meccas.
So I have a question: If you let "science" tell you what to believe, and how to make decisions, what told you to believe in science? If you say "science", it sounds a little fishy... circular maybe? If you say something like "I just know!", "It's obvious!", or "It's intuitively right!", then whoa... look out! You bending to the power of gnosis.
Do I really need to go on?
And BTW, what objective reasons are there to disbelieve a divine presence in our world? I'm quite familiar with scientific theory, as well as the history of science, and even if I were to accept science as my religion and Steven Hawking as my personal savior, I still think I would have to admit that no one can disprove God, or am I wrong?
At least he has a sense of humor (Score:3, Insightful)
I've always believed that contact with extraterrestrials will be the beginning of the end of many Earthly religions, as people come to grips with the idea that spirituality is just a local effort to cope with unknowns. But the tenacity of religious leaders to cling to doctrine in the face of contradiction, and the willingness of their flocks to do whatever they command, have always been major driving forces in human history that will probably never go away.
Re:You are incorrect (Score:3, Insightful)
I've found that the Bible becomes a whole lot less contradictory the more I work to understand what it says.
Take this example you've addressed here. In order to understand Jesus, Paul, James, and the various Apostles and their biblical teachings you have to know a fair amount about who they were, that is to say, the environments they came from and the missions they were called to fulfill.
I'll start with Jesus himself. Jesus' ministry was primarily to the Jews. In Jesus' time the Jews were the ancestors of God's chosen people Israel. It was correctly assumed that the Jews would the ones through whom the commandments of God and their teaching would be practiced and perpetuated. However, as it turned out, and this not unforeseen by God, Jesus found more evidence of faith in the Gentiles (read -- people excluded from God and the old covenant) than he did in Jews.
When I talk about faith or belief as Jesus did, I mean to do so in the context of what Jesus meant in identifying believers. Specifically, Jesus expected people to recognize him as being from God not in an unreasoned or necessarily blind manner as is commonly taught by many Christian religious of today, but rather as of evidenced by the healing, supportive, and often corrective nature of the works he performed. The fact that these works were often miraculous was really of secondary importance in that regard. Jesus spoke ill of the Jews when they attempted to castigate him as demonic on the basis of their extremely limited understanding of the Scriptures they were entrusted with. That, and of course, they wanted to kill him. So when modern 'Christians' tell people that they are going to hell because they are unbelievers, they usually don't know what they are talking about any better than the old Jewish authorities did.
So since Jesus ministered to both Jews and Gentiles, you have to interpret what he said to those very different audiences accordingly. Please stay with here; I think it will become more clear later what I mean.
Jesus called the Apostles to minister almost exclusively to the Jews. Paul is the only Apostle, aside from Peter perhaps, who had any significant presence among the Gentiles. And there was good reason Paul was chosen to minister to the Gentiles. Understand that the Gentiles had been throughout history excluded from participation in God's covenant relationship with Israel. This meant they did not even have the law let alone any assistance in obeying the commandments. As a result, Gentile societies evolved such that murder, theft, trickery, sexual perversion, coveting and venerating supernatural power (be it holy or not), and other evils became not just an aspect of their civilization, but an integral part of their culture. As a result, the typical Gentile couldn't even hope to identify a good work from an evil one let alone perform one. And these were the kind of people Paul was called to minister to. Now why would God have chosen Paul?
Paul himself was a Pharisee, a Jewish religious authority descendent from a line of Jewish authorities. As a Pharisee, Paul sought out and persecuted Christians. In fact, in God's eyes, he was no better than the Gentiles and understood who God was little more than they did. At least that was so until the Lord appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. That was the turning point Paul's life - Paul's experience of justification and the beginning of his salvation. So here we have a Jew that by his own experience of salvation, could relate with and teach Gentiles who were as 'dead' in the faith he once was. If your traditional enemy comes to you with a different message than his forebea