…with the James Web Telescope looking for sources of artificial light to identify potential intelligent life, and the news this week of Perseverance searching for microbial life on Mars it feels like we are getting closer to a major discovery. But what - if anything - would it mean for the religions on Earth if life is proven to exist out there?

  • ModdedPhones@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Same as every other times when science have disproven religions fairytales. They adapt. God also made those lifeforms

  • frankPodmore@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    So, fun fact, St Augustine, who is considered one of the Church Fathers, explicitly argued that if the ‘Antipodes’ (i.e., southern continents not connected to Europe, Asia or Africa) actually existed and had humans living there, that would prove the Gospel was untrue.

    The reason for this is as follows: Christians of his era believed that the reason God had allowed the Romans to destroy the Second Temple and push the Jews into exile was to prepare the men of all nations (as understood at the time) for the coming of the Gospel. The idea was that the Jews had taken the Old Testament, and the prophecies of the Messiah therein, across the whole world. Augustine argues that if the Antipodes contained human beings who had never had any kind of contact with Jews, and therefore no contact with the OT, and no contact with Christians, and therefore no contact with the New Testament, either, that must mean the Gospels are false. Why? Because there’s no conceivable reason that a just God would have deprived entire civilisations of the chance of redemption.

    Of course, we now know that at the time Augustine was writing (4th-5th century AD), there were literally millions of people who had never had the slightest contact with the Jews or Christians and, furthermore, wouldn’t do so for another millennium. So, per Augustine’s argument, all those millions were condemned to Hell (the concept of Purgatory didn’t exist at this point, but condemning them all to no chance of Heaven, just because they were unfortunate to be born a long way away from Jersualem, is clearly also unjust). Either God is incredibly unjust and unmerciful, which means the Gospels are untrue, OR the Good News wasn’t actually spread to all men, which must also mean that they’re not true.

    The upshot of this is that one of the Church Fathers has, in retrospect, irrefutably argued that the Gospels are untrue. The amount of special pleading required to make out that, actually, the Maori or the Easter Islanders or [insert any other uncontacted peoples here] had an opportunity to accept Christ and somehow missed it entirely is far beyond any sane interpretation of the evidence.

    Now, as you might have noticed, this hasn’t stopped people from believing in the Gospels. I don’t see why the discovery of life on another world would dislodge people from a belief that is transparently false when nothing else has.

  • Religion will just claim God made aliens, too.

    Or that they’re a test for the faithful. The way some do about dinosaur fossils.

    I am also fully convinced that religious people could scientifically discover God and not believe it’s actually God, so…

    • loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’ve already seen religious people mixing christianity with ancient alien theory, claiming the aliens are really fallen angels, demons or nephilim, some woukd probably persist in this

  • writeblankspace@geddit.social
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    1 year ago

    Me personally, I think God created all of our planets and all of our stars and whatever life lives in the universe, even outside of Earth. People who believe the same way would just stay the same and would praise God more for how great he is.

    For the others though (iykyk)… well, they’re gonna be like all the other flat-earthers or they call these aliens devil spawn or whatever.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You are not. You believe that there is a being infinitely better than you watching your ever thought and action ready to punish you for the slightest deviation from acceptable behavior. Where acceptable is ambiguous and unavoidable.

          Anyway I am sure you have better things to do as a sky-daddy follower than write rhetorical questions. Like oppress some minority. You theists are good at that.

          • writeblankspace@geddit.social
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            1 year ago

            First of all, not all theists, in my experience, believe in the exact same things. Me, I don’t think God would punish people for the ‘slightest deviation from acceptable behaviour’.

            Second of all, don’t generalize. I’m aware that there are many self-proclaimed ‘Christians’ who oppress minorities, but not all. So please, no ad hominem :)

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago
              1. Your Bible disagrees making you a heretic which according to the bible makes you worthy of death.

              2. Secondly I will generalize whatever I want whenever I feel like it. Especially considering by sheer numbers Christianity had the highest murder count and is active threat to me, my family, and friends. I don’t care about your True Scotsman unicorn Christian that is totally not made up.

              Hey remember when your Pope Pat Robertson said this

              The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

              If Christianity vanished from the world tomorrow the only loss would be bingo games for the elderly.

              Have a nice day, praise Satan, and remember that God is dead.