This moment, if/when it happens, will be so mindblowing on so many levels and affect us deeply as a society/species/etc. that I just WANT to see it.
Also, the information we exchange with them would have a huge impact on everything. What if they have the secret to efficient solar power? Or AI?
Science changes and religion adapts.
Interestingly the bible doesn't make any comment to suggest there is no other life in the universe. In fact it does refer to extra terrestrial life; God sent "angels", literally translated "messengers", to the earth.
I'm shocked. Just shocked. You mean there's no hope that translation errors are going to be fixed? For example in hebrew the same word is used for either "young woman" and "virgin". And some believe that the christian made a translation mistake by transforming the young woman mary into the virgin mary.
I think that if that one is a mistake, it should be fixed ; )
The New Testament is quite clear on the matter of virginity, and no, it's not based on the misinterpretation of a single word.
(I'm not saying that the incident of the virgin birth is true, of course. Just that the "mistake" is false).
"The senior Vatican scientist, Brother Guy Consolmagno, said that he would be delighted if we encountered intelligent aliens and would be happy to baptise them. His pronouncement opens up the possibility of space missionaries heading out to the stars to convert aliens to Christianity. Speaking on the eve of addressing the British Science Festival, Dr Consolmangno said he had no problem with science and religion co-existing together. But he dismissed Creationism and claimed that the revival of “intelligent design" – the controversial theory that only God can explain gaps in the theory of evolution – was “bad theology". Dr Consolmango is one of a team of 12 astronomers working for the Vatican, said the Catholic Church had been supporting and funding science for centuries."
Granted, not enough centuries, but still a nice statement.
Hah, want to bet? Both the Bible and Buddhist scriptures have been rewritten and retranslated and had additions made countless times in the last few thousands years. The teachings of Christ and Buddha are now not able to be found in those texts. They're just the words of ordinary people.
Not necessarily. Non-believers often underestimate the intellectual sophistication that one can find in religious traditions.
For instance, Augustine in the 4th century was already saying things like this:
"With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures."
And C.S. Lewis (best known as a Christian apologist) wrote some interesting religious science fiction novels with extraterrestrial angels. (The Space Trilogy.)
Living as pet slaves for extra-terrestrial overlords would have little "long-term effect on most people's daily lives"?
Personally, I'd not be that mind-blown, more like vindicated for years of conjecture and lively debate.
The realization that those dots moving across the sky are not gods did little to eradicate religion. Nor did the realization that gods did not carve the canyons or raise mountains, or even create the species or the stars. Why should finding some living junk on Mars be the game changer that everything else failed to be?
* or what have you
Those parts of the human brain were never about logic and accurate observation of the material world - so they are safe from new facts and logic for now.
Probably at some point (assuming we survie), our own genetic/cybernetic modifications will so increase our intelligence, that religion will fall away completely... but that's beyond the Singularity.