What If There _Is_ Life on Venus?
sapiens.org
sapiens.org
I hope in my lifetime we explore Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, and Europa, a moon of Jupiter (and other moons of the solar system) as much as we do mars; they have more chance of having life.
[The original claim](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4), posted 2020-10-14.
Well, Christianity, aside from angels, has a whole load of non-human creatures itself - cherubims, seraphims, etc.
And the case for aliens proper have also been considered for centuries. An example:
In a 2008 statement, José Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory, said "Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom".
@dang, if you're around, maybe give the post a second chance?
That's not much an atheist vs religious person issue.
That's more of a "I care about what's around me and have a curiousity" versus "I don't give a duck unless it affects me personally" case.
One could say the same about the discovery of the library of Alexandria's lost volumes intact. "Why would I care? How would my life be changed as an individual, I don't read such old stuff".
Well, many others would jump up and down with joy at such news...
I understand that Catholics usually believe in evolution, but how could they square away the fact the vast majority of all life could exist without knowing salvation via Christ? Being ignorant of Christ doesn't automatically mean you are damned, but this now means belief in Christ is optional and kind of just a localized thing some humans choose to do.
It really should effect you, if for example aliens claimed their savior was the "real" messiah, how could you dismiss that?
I get that these are just dogmatic questions that arise everytime two religions become aware of each other, but it metaphysically pretty difficult too, like events the Rapture essentially cease to make sense or will have to be radically re-imagined. Questions about whether biblical commands apply to ET life are going to be difficult as well, let alone missionary work.
Upon reflection ET life isn't necessarily bad for the logical consistency of religion as I initially thought, but is more organizationally difficult.
That's not really a problem Catholics have. It might be for Christian groups that have a different view of the role of the Bible.
Though I suspect the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence will also expand the scope of interpretations of various parts of the Bible, including John 10:16, so “this wasn't mentioned in the Bible” will be a disputed point.
> I understand that Catholics usually believe in evolution, but how could they square away the fact the vast majority of all life could exist without knowing salvation via Christ?
There was a time that that was true of the vast majority of humans; if that's not a problem why would it be that it is today true of a broader class?
Beyond that, there a various schools of thought on the issue within Catholicism:
https://www.archbalt.org/vatican-astronomer-says-if-aliens-e...
> if for example aliens claimed their savior was the "real" messiah, how could you dismiss that?
If a heterodox human cult does that, how do we dismiss that? There's literally no difference.
The universe is quite large and the bible is a fairly small book. It is difficult to see how it could cover everything. If the prophets were adding interesting technical details on how the universe fits together hopefully some P = NP tips or guides to fission or somesuch would be further up on the priority list than the state of salvation of alien souls.
I'm not religious at all, but I don't see why the Catholic worldview would have problems with the idea that aliens exist and God has made some sort of arrangement for them. Maybe god just compartmentalises civilisations really well, god has many talents.
No, the God of Catholicism is the God of all Creation. That means the entire universe, including time itself.
> Would non-human intelligent life have souls?
Catholic teaching is that all life has some manner of soul. Humans have rational souls. Intelligent life would therefore have souls.
> Why wasn't this mentioned in the Bible? Doesn't this mean that both creation stories are inconvertibly false?
Why would it? It doesn't claim to be comprehensive or complete.
> how could they square away the fact the vast majority of all life could exist without knowing salvation via Christ? Being ignorant of Christ doesn't automatically mean you are damned, but this now means belief in Christ is optional and kind of just a localized thing some humans choose to do
Many, many human begins lived and died without knowing Christ. Why would aliens present a problem? Perhaps they wouldn't even need it. CS Lewis wrote science fictions with un-Fallen aliens. Maybe such a thing could exist.
> if for example aliens claimed their savior was the "real" messiah, how could you dismiss that?
Catholics don't seem to have a problem dismissing other messiahs. Why would an alien messiah be different?
> events the Rapture essentially cease to make sense or will have to be radically re-imagined.
The Rapture as depicted in something like Left Behind is not how the event is generally understood in Catholicism or other sects. There's no reason it would have to change at all.
One is the belief a all intelligent things have a soul, obviously fetuses and intelligent life do, but animals functionally don't. Aliens could fall somewhere on the potential intelligence spectrum between sperm and fetus or only one in a billion could reach acceptable intelligence for a soul whatever that is deemed to be. What if they are intelligent, but physically cannot believe in God? Is that just metaphysically impossible?
Second is that the Bible doesn't claim to be comprehensive. This kind of weird to argue against, basically anything disagreeable in the Bible could be controverted then. It's like saying there COULD be an 11th commandment or something of that nature. It makes the Bible not necessarily wrong but difficult to take seriously.
Who is to say?
>Second is that the Bible doesn't claim to be comprehensive. This kind of weird to argue against, basically anything disagreeable in the Bible could be controverted then. It's like saying there COULD be an 11th commandment or something of that nature. It makes the Bible not necessarily wrong but difficult to take seriously.
In traditional Christianity (not protestantism) the Bible is not the be all end all. Oral tradition, lived experience of the church community, the so-called prominent figures ("fathers of the church"), etc, mattered as much if not more.
It was protestantism (a kind of crude fundamentalist "back to the basics" movement not that different to muslim fundamendalism of today, which is in fact a distortion of the actual tradition which was never just about the Bible and only about what's in the Bible/NT) that makes the Bible/New Testament the be-all/end-all.
As for the comprehensiveness of the Bible yeah what your saying is logically correct, but seems a bit disingenuous. Why not include the Quran and Book of Mormon in the holy scriptures as well if the Bible isn't the "end-all"? For God to only be concerned with terrestrial matters in the Bible is very strange if ET Intelligent life exists. Any religion that acknowledges ET life prior to their discovery would seem to be more plausible... though obviously that seems kind of ridiculous in practice.
Because, as I said, in traditional Christianity, while the Bible is not the be-all-end-all, it's not supplemented by anything-and-everything.
Rather, the other important elements are the oral tradition of christians, lived experience of the church community, the so-called prominent figures ("fathers of the church"), etc.
So the Bible is not everything, but there's no room for the and Quran and Book of Mormon in there still -- there are other things that are accepted by (non protestant) Christianity that supplement the Bible -- not just anything.
As with any large organization, greed and corruption settles in sooner or later; and the Catholic organization still can’t shed its bad habits. Nor does it own up to it.
That’s not to say that the fundamentalist protestants in the US have got it right; they certainly have their fair share of cock-ups and scandles and shouldn’t be trusted either.
This is why appreciate the US’ separation of religion from politics.
Well, there was already the Orthodox church, the Coptic search, and a few others, so that was quite clear.
Protestantism was both a reaction against the power of the Pope (via Catholic church) to the Germanic etc nations, who remained "christian" but wanted their own church to break away from Rome, plus a simplification of the faith that reduced its subtler points to fit their mentality...
A version of christianity for peoples who haven't had much of a philosophic legacy. Then you add calvisnism for people who'd like to get richn and feel good about it, without all the christian guilt about the subject of money (they kept and expanded the guilt at the domains of sex and fun -- which is why protestants have been way more killjoys than the catholics).
The basic gist is the understanding that Creation is not parsimonious. It is joyfully over-abundant. Then, why wouldn’t there be life everywhere?
Tangentially, i think the more important thing to remark on here is how that fundamental approach which proclaims that the world is not zero-sum has shifted, especially in modern times. I’d suggest that it’s not a positive shift.
If there are other human-level-intelligent species, there are a number of possibilities, including that they had their own messiah that took their form to fix whatever they'd screwed up, that they had the very same messiah, or that they didn't need one in the first place. It's possible that they don't die, in which case it wouldn't really make sense to apply Christ's redemption to them - but we still die, and so the concept of Christ defeating death by his own death does not become any less applicable to us.
(As another commenter mentioned - C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy explores the idea that only humanity fell, and intelligent life on the other planets knows God but didn't need the redemption of Christ.)
After the Cain and Abel story, doesn't Cain go off and settle in some other city? If those people don't present a problem in explaining origins, why would extraterrestrials? They would be completely un-un-precedented.
What if they did? They could be asking the same questions of us right now.