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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Not sure this question was worth a full blown article in the NY times. It's fairly obvious religion makes only sense in a human context, and on Earth. Unless we find humans elsewhere (which is pretty unlikely, there is no specific reason why an intelligent being would have to be a primate on another planet), the question does not make much sense.

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Why does religion make sense only to humans, and not other intelligent life forms?

Because religion is a human creation, and all our holy texts are very human centric (and barely regard animals as anything else than food, while we now know that tons of animals have a great deal of consciousness and emotions similar to humans).

EDIT: Just to make things clear, I'm not saying that God does not exist, but what I'm saying is that the system derived from that belief (i.e. religion) is very much created by humans and for humans.

Buddhism includes reincarnation as animals

I was waiting for that one. But animals are just vessels for humans souls while waiting for another reincarnation, as far as I understand. So animals are not given much soul on their own.

Put another way: "animals are vessels for souls while waiting for reincarnation". It now applies to everything souls (possibly) reincarnate into, while still being true. I think that viewed in this way, it is obvious that the Buddhist concept of a soul is not human centric. The soul would be an entity trying to escape a cycle of reincarnation (and one of the potential candidates for reincarnation is a human). Aliens could fit right in there as just another vessel.

If I recall correctly (and this depends somewhat on the school of Buddhism), all sentient beings are thought to have the potential to attain enlightenment by virtue of possessing Buddha nature. People can be reborn as animals and animals can be reborn as people. As I recall there isn't really the concept of animals being "containers." Instead, they're sentient beings that could be people from past lives or could be animals progressing through the cycles of death and rebirth.

So why are not all Buddhists vegetarian then ?

It depends on the school of Buddhism. What I wrote about mostly comes from my readings of Mahayana Buddhist texts. As I recall, Mahayana Buddhism generally requires a vegetarian diet. I don't remember Theravada thought as well, but a quick search online is telling me that it allows meat eating but with a number of rules (and differing interpretations of those rules).

"In three cases meat may not be eaten by a monk if he has : (1) seen (2) heard, or (3) suspected that the meat has been especially acquired for him by killing an animal (i.e. the animal has been killed specifically for the monk). This rule is called the Rule of Tikotiparisuddha (Pure in Three Ways).

However, the meat of the following ten beings is forbidden to be eaten by the monks : human, elephant, horse, dog, snake, lion, tiger, leopard, bear, and hyena. (Vinaya, Mahavagga, Book 4)"

http://www.dhammasara.webs.com/JivakaSutta.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_vegetarianism#Views_of...

This is only our perception. Other creatures could have created their own mythology.

Yeah, and their alien mythology would be alien-centric just like our religion is human centric.

Indeed, and it's interesting to speculate what the similarities and differences would be. Since they will likely also have evolved in a Darwinian way, I think there will be more similarities than differences.

Although, like the article says, if they have evolved further and especially if they uploaded their minds into computers, it might have become something rather different.

I would say that religion is cultural, and doesn't really have anything to do with evolution.

I think he was referring to our human religions that we came up with.

It might make sense in a human context if God has a physical (immortal) human body.

What do you mean exactly ? How would it make sense?

If the Human form is divinely inherited from a physical immortal/exalted Human (God), then assuming there are other Humans on other planets would not be a stretch as OP suggested.

I see what you mean. But that would go against much of what we know about Evolution and Natural Selection.

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