Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible 775
An anonymous reader writes "According to BBC, the director of the Vatican Observatory stated in an article titled 'Aliens Are My Brother' that intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space. 'The search for forms of extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God. — Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God.' Mind that this is not the same director who said that evolution is more than a mere theory — that was Father Coyne. I myself agree. There might be intelligent beings created by God in outer space even if there are none here on earth."
the paranoid in me says-- (Score:5, Interesting)
and this pronouncement from the vatican is so that they don't bleed followers in the mayhem to follow.
C.S. Lewis came to this conclusion years ago. (Score:2, Interesting)
Catholics (Score:5, Interesting)
What about non-human intelligent earthlings? (Score:4, Interesting)
(So long, and thanks for all the fish!)
doubtful (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, being that they are not human and never ate from the garden of eaden does that mean that original sin doesn't apply to them? Better yet, does that make them more holy then humans and therefore closer to the catholic god?
I don't see how the catholic clergy can just say "yeah alien life doesn't contradict our religeon" without addressing these questiosn.
When science-fiction and Christianity collide (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:earth ain't what it used to be (Score:2, Interesting)
This particular comment (the parent) is actually one of the few good comments I've seen so far. Since medieval times theologians have wondered, "did the Son of Man come to save everyone, or just humans?" There were a surprising number of medieval philosophers who were concerned with question -- should a race of sentient cyclopean starfish be discovered -- of whether human Jesus was sent to save their souls, or whether they would have to wait for cyclopean starfish Jesus.
In any case, this isn't a deviation from established Vatican protocol, and isn't news. Not for Catholics, and not even for people who just care about alien stories.
Galileo? How about Bruno (Score:5, Interesting)
Bruno suggested that there could be an infinite number of worlds and that they could be inhabited by intelligent life [rice.edu].
For this they burned him at the stake.
Galileo was only 'shown the instruments' of torture and placed under house arrest.
Bruno is the guy they need to apologize to!
Though I'm Not Catholic (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Three cheers for the Catholics! (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, I have always thought the "in His own image" thing was taken way to literally. I don't really think God would give Himself a physical body like ours that is inferior to many animals in many ways (we are slower than cheetahs, can't see as well as eagles, can't swim like fish, etc.) Honestly if you get down to it, there are a lot of things that suck somewhat about our bodies (a quasi-flawed design that causes a large percentage to experience lower back pain, etc.). Obviously there are some who would say that God has a "perfect" human body that, since it isn't marred by sin, doesn't have the same flaws, but I honestly think the idea of God having a physical body is kind of silly. I mean, I can't even be in two places at once with my physical body, much less everywhere at once.
So it comes down to, what does "in His own image" mean? We like much of the creation story in Gensis, I think it is meant to be taken figuratively, not literally. We are set apart from the animals in that we have a conscience and free will. In this way, we are like God. We can basically do whatever we want, and reason about what we want to do. Although I am not a Catholic, I agree with their stance that it is completely possible for alien life to exist (although I think intelligent life, at least that we can/will find anytime soon, is unlikely for other scientific reasons). This alien life could even be "in His own image" as well, since it isn't really a physical appearance thing, and more of a soul/conscience thing.
Re:Might be life? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:doubtful (Score:3, Interesting)
All the Catholic church is saying is that there is nothing revealed from God that says other intelligent life doesn't exist -- and Angels/Demons are proof that SOME other intelligent life DOES exist. The catholic clergy is stating "facts" based on their knowledge. They can't provide an answer other than "I don't know" to the issue of how God would relate to non-humans, as He never told them that.
For some interesting reading in this area (from an Anglican perspective), try CS Lewis' trilogy foray in to SciFi. He explores the ramifications of all these questions.
As a simple example answer for you: angels are depicted as not God and not Human. Some angels rebelled against God and are doomed to hell with no chance of redemption. Angels are also depicted as not having free will in the same way Humans do -- which makes the "rebel" situation kind of hard to fathom. However, the angels are also portrayed as without sin (except for the demonized ones), so those ones need no redeeming. The Bible implies that humans can be more holy than angels because they have a choice in the matter; thus you have to define more precisely what you mean by "closer to the catholic god".
Oh, and be careful: "catholic" and "Catholic" have different meanings (to a non-Catholic): "catholic" is synonymous with "universal".
Think about this statement as being the religious equivalent of "yeah, gravity doesn't contradict the laws of thermodynamics." Stating this doesn't require the speaker to explore all the ramifications of the laws of thermodynamics, just how gravity relates to those laws.
Re:Three cheers for the Catholics! (Score:3, Interesting)
What I find interesting is that this figurative interpretation is what is already being favored by the Catholic Church. From their acceptance of the Big Bang and evolution, it is already clear that they are comfortable with figurative interpretations. This is in stark contrast to a few hundred years ago, when you could be killed for minor points of dogma.
I'm hoping is that some of the more extreme groups take heed and see that it is possible to have an open mind with religion. If you look at history, there has been a long track record of religion disagreeing with science and science winning. Is there anyone (of importance) out there who still disagrees with the heliocentric view of the solar system? I wonder how much of the current switch from the Catholic Church is a recognition that their obstinate views in the past backfired.
That is one advantage of an older religious group - perspective. This reminds me of one conversation I had a few weeks back. My friends and I were musing at the relative levels of extremism and how that relates to the age of a religion. Take Buddhism for example. It is an old religion and there is very little extremism. Christianity is younger, and there is still some extremism with a whole lot back in the dark ages. Islam, on the other hand, is still relatively young, about the same age of Christianity in the dark ages, and we all know how much Islamic extremists make the news. Hopefully, then, as religions get older and settle down, they will start adopting the more peaceful, open-minded approaches.
Re:the paranoid in me says-- (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:C.S. Lewis came to this conclusion years ago. (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand if God is infinite love wouldn't it make sense that he would have created other beings and not just us?
This is news? (Score:1, Interesting)
And for all those offtopic morons that say that the Pope is responsible of the pandemies on Africa due to the Church's point against condoms: the Church is also against extra-marital sex, and if you are determined to ignore the last point, what stops you to ignore also the first one? Are you hypocrites, or what?
Re:the paranoid in me says-- (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, the cult leader is knee deep in pussy since he started telling people he's Jesus' half brother by way of their shared alien daddy, Yaveh.
Anyhoo, in his second book, said cult leader mentions that his alien overlords have created another race of intelligent beings, nearby, that don't know about them.
So if any aliens ever do land, and they don't know what the hell he's talking about, he's covered.
Re:Finaly! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mythbusters (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh without a doubt. I don't want to go too far off topic, but if I had to speculate about the origins of prayer, I'd say it's actually a clever way of capitalizing on a couple of aspects of the human psyche, such as the fact that we acquire habit through repetition, and our herd-mentality when in large groups. Since a religious person is encouraged to pray as often as possible (for an extreme example, see Islam), the constant repetition reinforces the basic tenets and beliefs in the mind of the believer. The more they repeat it, the stronger the belief becomes. Add to that the fact that humans in large groups respond strongly to simple statements with which they can identify (eg. "No War for Oil", "Meat is Murder", "Zeig Heil", "Zhu Mao Zhuxi wanshou wujiang!" etc.), and you have a pretty good incentive to want to indoctrinate your followers with something like prayer, and encourage them to repeat it whenever they can.
Re:And who.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The argument that since science can't explain X, religion must provide the explanation is a false dichotomy. If religion wants to make a case for a claim it must do so by providing evidence - something that it doesn't.
Folk 'wisdom' and folk science - or as you put it the "collective intuition of A developed by hundreds of generations of many million people" - tends to be completely wrong. We live on a sphere, not on a plane, we are not at the centre of the universe and force is proportional to acceleration, not to velocity - just to take a few examples of incorrect intuition. If our 'collective intuition' failed us in these rather elementary cases, what makes you think that it is correct on the much more complex question of how the brain and consciousness works?
Re:Catholics and condoms (Score:1, Interesting)
There may be zero chance of conception (for example, a woman who had her ovaries removed due to cancer), but having sex in that case is not wrong (assuming they're married, of course), because the persons involved are not deliberately sterilizing the act. They are not excluding God.
God of the Gaps? (Score:3, Interesting)
My point is, when your whole faith is based upon a gap in knowledge, there is a significant chance that the argument for your faith can be discredited by advances in Science. We may, quite possibly, in the course of time come to understand how to correlate "certain chemical and electrical processes" with "self-awareness". As for "We have no way to tell what happens to our 'souls' before birth or after death", currently we have no way to tell if we actually have souls. The concept of the soul comes from a faith in the supernatural. I'm not saying we do not have souls, but what I'm saying is, how could you possibly tell what happens to 'souls', when you can't even find any way to actually prove the existence of a soul? I can't come up with any meaningful theory of how many Unicorns it would take to move an object of Mass 'M' up a hill with incline I, since I can't prove the existence of Unicorns or come up with any kind of average force that an average Unicorn can apply on an object.
Re:Three cheers for the Catholics! (Score:3, Interesting)
What I find interesting is that this figurative interpretation is what is already being favored by the Catholic Church. From their acceptance of the Big Bang and evolution, it is already clear that they are comfortable with figurative interpretations. This is in stark contrast to a few hundred years ago, when you could be killed for minor points of dogma.
I'm hoping is that some of the more extreme groups take heed and see that it is possible to have an open mind with religion. If you look at history, there has been a long track record of religion disagreeing with science and science winning. Is there anyone (of importance) out there who still disagrees with the heliocentric view of the solar system? I wonder how much of the current switch from the Catholic Church is a recognition that their obstinate views in the past backfired.
The Catechism does allows for an intelligent understanding of the bible. Genesis is a good example of mythos, and this is taught by our Arch Diocese. Of course, for younger children a more simplified version is taught, but what it comes down to is that when I was going through CCD, once you were confirmed, church initiated education stopped. As a teenager, it's hard to believe in Noah and the ark as a true story. Or to read some of the genealogy of Genesis, that people were living for 300-800 years.
It is understandable that those who haven't studied religion take a literal interpretive view. "Man mad in God's likeness." I'd like to believe it's nothing to do with two arms, two legs, but more of Love. We may not live up to it all the time (sin), but seeing man's ability to love is heartening.
Re:Catholics (Score:2, Interesting)
Good work finding that source, but you misinterpreted it in your original post. He was not suggesting something equivalent to hell being a metaphor, but that it is not a physical location. It has a separate mode of existance (spiritual). Ergo, those who think drilling holes into the center of the earth is going to let the demons are on crack. The next sentence:
If you read further on, you will see that many aspects of the popular views of heaven and hell really only work metaphorically. As you get really deep into Catholic theology it becomes clear that hell isn't really a place where God sends people He doesn't like away to be sadistically tortured as punishment for pissing Him off. Sadism would contradict the all-good nature of God and the claim that He desires what is best for us. Rather, it is the state of complete separation of a person from God, who is the source of all joy. As such, it is a thoroughly miserable state of existence, comparable to the agony traditionally associated with hell. Furthermore, it is the result of that person's freely willed choice to separate himself from God. That is to say, our free will is so thoroughly respected by God that He will not force us accept unity with Him. What constitutes acceptance of Him isn't explicitly clear, but the Bible lays out the basics through the 10 commandments and Jesus' ministry (the Sermon on the Mount in particular is useful).
This does get frequently misinterpreted, even by Catholics, as suggesting that hell does not exist. I even had a priest who taught one of my theology classes in college say, "Heaven exists, but we don't know if hell does." Unfortunately, somewhere in his own studies, he got the roles of mercy and justice mixed up and concluded hell might be incompatible with mercy. A minor fault, I suppose, but it was interesting becuase he still taught that we have to in some way accept God to join Him in Heavan, yet without a Hell, the only other possibility is a state of limbo, a concept that was rejected by the church long ago.
Re:Mythbusters (Score:5, Interesting)
I find this form of argument very strange, though very common--making statements which presume ongoing continuity of life, or consciousness, while denying it. Reality is such that by default people don't die, so God should be blamed if they do, or reality is such that people do die by default, and your complaint is about when exactly it happens... which is it?
Re:Science and religion? (Score:3, Interesting)
To paraphrase Bill Bryson [wikipedia.org], if someone were to take a pair of tweezers and pull you apart atom by atom, when the last two were separated you'd be left with a pile of inanimate matter -- none of which is alive but all of which was you.
Science has no provable explanation for how the Big Bang occured (assuming it did), simply that it looks like that's probably what happened. Science can't explain how the 20 amino acids we require to exist form on their own, nor how they combine and fold themselves into the hundreds of various proteins we require to function, nor why all the thousands of processes that occur within a cell occur. This all appears to happen "just for the hell of it".
As for there only being room for God in the gaps science can't cover -- I submit to you that if we were to learn everything there is to know about everything, we would become Gods.
For the record, I'm a confirmed athiest and devil's advocate.
What's next? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Finaly! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:in theory they don't need jesus (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Galileo? How about Bruno (Score:5, Interesting)
G. was asked to write a defense of his position, in the proper Latin, and submit it to the church. Instead he wrote the defense in Italian so that the average guy could read it, and attempted to make it available to the public before the trial was over. What do we do to people today when a judge gives them some interogatives and they release their answers to the press in an attempt to influence the trial? Right, we find them in contempt and lock them up.
G. used a character named Simplicio in his dialog, and put words that had been used by some of the church authorities in that character's mouth. He picked quotes that were easy to abuse or make fun of, left out a lot of points that were harder to deal with, and the whole work arguably became a straw man attack. What do most modern judges do if you misquote what they say in court? And what if you said the name you gave a character representing them was only because they claimed their view was simple, but the name you used actually best translated to "simpleton"? What would most judges do today to somebody who publicly called them simpletons and then tried to feed them a line of BS about why? Right, they take people like that, and lock them up.
It's called contempt of court, and it can have an unlimited sentence right now in the present day, as in telling a reporter they will stay locked up until they name their source, however long it takes. You can argue, and I would, that a spiritual institution shouldn't have the power to be conducting courts or censoring publications at all, but the response the church gave snowballed into serious consequences because Galileo made it into a pissing contest first.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mythbusters (Score:3, Interesting)
Different denominations of Christianity have different interpretations of the Bible, but generally they all hold the Bible to be the ultimate authority, God's message to mankind. The Catholic Church's ultimate authority is the Pope, who can freely contradict and overrule parts of the Bible he doesn't like. Mormons believe Jesus visited North America after His Resurrection, according to some golden plates [wikipedia.org] written in "reformed Egyptian [wikipedia.org]" and buried in New York until the 1820s at which time they were translated into King James English [wikipedia.org]. Anyway, they don't hold the Bible to be the ultimate authority either.
Re:nitpick (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Go throgh Genesis chapter 1 and write down all the different categories of life forms listed there in the order created.
2. Go throgh a textbook on evolution with the list you wrote in step one and you will discover something very odd. Same order.
Not only that but the order is counter intuitive. Specifically, everyone assumed Mammals came before birds ontil the fossil record showed otherwise.