How do you feel about the possibility of discovering life elsewhere in the Universe? Would the discovery of life, particularly intelligent life, impact your faith ( religion ) , values and/or world view?
I think I answered this when I answered the first question. But- I do think god/creator created the universe and everything in it – finding other life- which would be very exciting for me – would be to me life finding a cousin – a family that is distant enough to not feel like family but must be as god/energy created everything. no issues with being Jewish and life in space- its just one of the scavenger hunts god gave us.
Thanks so much for your comments:) I enjoyed your metaphor of the scavenger hunt and “finding a distant cousin”. And I love your openness to the possibilities of life elsewhere –and being part of the journey that we are already on. As someone wisely said ( and I’m sure that there are may who have said the same thing ) –we are all God’s creatures. And for those of us who believe in God and the Divine ( whatever your belief system and whatever you perceive God to be ) —the rest of the Universe, and whoever and whatever contains, is an inevitable part of our human journey. We are born/ “programmed ” to explore. It’s who we are and what we do –if we weren’t–we’d still be sitting on the other side of the world believing that the earth is flat. As we push beyond our borders and forge new frontiers, I can’t help thinking of it as a series of doors that are just waiting to be opened—hence, your “scavenger hunt”… But, I guess that larger question that I keep going back to –are we ready for what we find?
Elise Gladstone
June 2, 2017
I agree with you completely – this is how I see it- and as to are we ready ? When we are ready it will unfold. I suspect that there are other beings out there monitoring us and evaluating the very same question – our “eyes will open” when we are ready – just wonder what percentage of humans will be ready at that time – I bet some will not be and then…..it will be very interesting!
Bill Sutherland
June 11, 2016
This is a good question. I do believe in God but my image of Him and his influence has been limited to only us and to only us here on earth. And let’s face it, He has plenty of competition down here as it is – and it’s more than just Islam and Judaism! What about Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism? And what about all the Agnostics and Atheists down here, too?
Do the higher powers of this other intelligent life have intergalactic scopes, too?
Looking at just Christianity alone, I have been told when I’ve asked this question to the few leaders that I know, they have generally responded with “Creation is all creation, not just what’s happened here on earth. It’s all part of His work.”
If that’s the case, are there parallel forms of Christianity out there, too? And, parallel forms of the rest of the World’s great religions, too? Admittedly, I could be asking for way too much with that last question.
As you can see, I have a lot more questions than I have answers. Yes, discovery of extraterrestrial life would certainly impact my faith and consequently my worldview, too. At first blush, I think it would undermine my faith, especially if it wasn’t reflected somehow in our stranger’s faith.
If it wasn’t, my worldview would be similarly affected. The role of religion in defining the differences of our global members would give way to the realization that we should be defining the commonalities of our faiths to pull us together. Could that even happen? I’m not so sure…
No sooner do I write the above and I wonder if it’s really not an alien visitor but Satan in the flesh after all! Or is this some kind of flashback of a B grade movie I once saw?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. It’s so true, isn’t it, that all we have is questions at this point and not a lot of definitive answers. The question might seem to many to be purely hypothetical and I guess, technically, that’s true. After all, we don’t know for an absolute certainty that there is life elsewhere, especially intelligent life, but recent discoveries are certainly making that appear a lot more likely. We are the first generation to grapple this with any degree of seriousness. It’s no longer–” what if? ” But more like–“what will we do when??” The question is philosophical more than scientific at this point, but there will be implications for not just religions but society in general when that moment that Dr. Mountain refers to ultimately happens–the moment we discover we are not alone.
Like you , I would have all kinds of questions to ask of any intelligent and advanced civilization that we might communicate with —especially when it comes to their faith and beliefs. I think it’s only human to want to see if they “match” ours. And if not, who is “right”? That could certainly be a mind bender and for many people, a crisis of faith.
What seems to be the approach of some Christians when it comes to this little discussed topic- ( hopefully that changes to some degree with this blog )- that all of the Universe is God’s creation—mirrors my own thoughts to some degree. You know–the one that I worry is perhaps too simple? :)But so far—it’s working for me.
I do worry, though, as you point out that there may be people who equate any “aliens” ( again–I dislike that term–too many negative connotations ) with Satan or an evil presence. That is one of the reasons that I feel it is so important to start the conversation. There will be no answers found on this blog—unless the Creator decides to log in–lol . Just the questions and the conversation. Seems like a good place to start. Thanks for helping to get it going.
Robert Gougeon
April 17, 2016
Well, my first thought is that the human ‘tribes’ having been dealing with the ‘discovery’ of the Other for some time. One imagines, pretty much since the beginning of any human ‘tribe’, that politics and spirituality have been negotiating such relationships in various forms, from violent conflict to diplomatic negotiations… whether the barbarians surrounding the ancient Greeks, the Roman Silk Road to the Orient, the New World, wars of religion, etc., etc.
One can scan the current state of this planet, as the 24 hour news channels do, and a fairly full range of options seem to be playing themselves out. From Syria, to North Korea, to Mexican drug cartels, to softwood lumber, to reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, to name but a few headliners, the list of negotiating Otherness goes on and on.
So, how will negotiations proceed with another form of life on another planet?
Well after the initial ‘huh?’ moment, it might go something like this…
The capitalists will be looking to see if they have cool stuff to trade or if not whether they can be put to work in some profitable fashion.
The militarists will be looking to see if they have more powerful toys than ‘us’.
The spiritualists will be asking whether they can summon more powerful demons or deities.
The scientists will be asking…, ‘gee, wonder what they’re made of?’
Which perhaps brings us to a curious point. The scientists will be looking for empirical evidence, which presumes they will have to be empirical beings. Which sounds like a strange requirement for the spiritualists.
Or another way round, back to the original question: why would any empirical discovery affect a spiritual worldview?
The typical answer would presumably be something along the lines… if the spiritual worldview presumed, required, morally obliged a particular state of a particular empirical world.
Now, some spiritual traditions do seem to harbour such claims, Christ, for example, is seen by some to be the unique, universal bridge between the one and only mortal world and the one and only divine world, and that bridge is travelled rich with moral requirements.
But why would spiritual reality be limited to a particular empirical one?
Doesn’t sound like a very powerful demon/deity if that’s the case.
In which case, people who believe that their spiritual worldview requires just the particular empirical reality they are ‘familiar’ with, may be in for a rude “awakening”!
On the other hand, those who have no such spiritual expectations or requirements, may already be ‘awake’ to the possibility that there is stuff out there which our empirical vision can’t ‘see’ now and will likely not be able to see even after we, empirical beings, discover curious signs or symptoms, empirical footprints, so to speak, of spiritual Otherness elsewhere in the vastness of the empirical universe, on the other side of some hill, ocean, galaxy or black hole, or peering just over the edge of our empirical universe ; )
So, just a few sleepy thoughts about what ‘waking up’ might be like…
Interesting thoughts. Your breakdown of the various groups ( militarists, scientists, spiritualists ) and their response to the discovery of other intelligent life in the Universe actually reflects how quickly humans adapt to new realities. Unfortunately it usually involves assessing how we can best benefit ( use ) this new information but perhaps that is just part of our innate survival instinct. If and when that moment happens in my lifetime, I really hope that the largest group is the “Learners” who are asking…what can we learn from them?
Robert Gougeon
April 19, 2016
Now, of course, ‘life on another planet’ could be satisfied by anything from finding microbes, to finding civilizations, or finding some form of life we’ve never encountered before. So, naturally, our collective response will likely vary accordingly.
Regarding your hope that the largest response will be by people asking “what can we learn from them?”, I think that we can look at our own planet for clues of our likely response.
If they are inferior to us in their capacities, then we will enslave them. It is simply what humans have done with every life form it has encountered and found to have some utility to the human project. Those which fail to meet this level of utilitarian interest are simply ignored or destroyed if they should find themselves or their habitat in conflict with those utilitarian objectives. The catalogue of species extinction in the modern human era is one that science, as learner, has provided.
Under such circumstances, I would expect the largely self-serving human spiritualist agendas will continue largely unaffected as they have for thousands of years. In this context, I think it is important to remember that witch hunts, Atlantic slavery and Indigenous exterminations in the Americas, to mention a few human encounters with Otherness, came as often as not wrapped in warm spiritual (specifically Christian) blessings.
If, on the other hand, they turn out to be superior to us in their capacities, well then we likely have another story. This story would be outside the pale of our range of memory and experience on this planet.
Would we start praying to their gods to assuage their good humour?
Would we draw upon our own long history of colonizing others to calculate our response?
Would we count upon their benevolence, when we have so little history of it ourselves?
Or would they simply recognize our worth, and enslave or destroy us?
Would they take pity on us and let their children play with us as pets?
In any case, given that I questioned in my first post, the fundamental idea that the character of the creation is a direct reflection of the character of the creator, I still don’t see why discovering any empirical form of life tells us much of anything about the nature of spiritual reality. To presume so, would seem to presume that spiritual reality is limited by the characteristics of an empirical creation. If I make a paper airplane and toss it through the air, it does not mean I am made of paper and fly in the same fashion, to use an imperfect comparison.
In other words, spiritual reality needs to be encountered in its own terms and not in those of science. The history of science, as I understand it, was very much the systematic stripping away of any spiritualist connotation from experience to arrive at the purely observational patterns and regularities which logic and empirical observation would reveal. While some might argue that the lawful patterns and regularities so discovered reveal something about the workings of its creator, this is not a scientific argument insofar as it makes a non-empirical claim about empirical observations.
If we are going to make spiritual claims about spiritual reality then, I think, we need spiritual evidence. Empirical evidence, from which spiritual connotations have been stripped, simply isn’t going to tell us much of anything about that. You can jump on that empirical rocket ship and ride it as far as the empirical fuels will take you, I suspect you’re never going to find a non-empirical reality on that journey.
So how do we discover spiritual evidence for spiritual reality?
Hmmm, now there’s a peek through a different looking glass but, for now, I’m not sure finding empirical evidence of life on another planet is part of the answer.
Yes, it’s important to remember that the definition of “life” is broad and could cover anything from an intelligent civilization to bacteria. The discovery of the former would be far more profound than the latter, of course, but the implications of finding any kind of life are worthy of considering. Anything is possible in the vastness of the cosmos but personally, I believe that we will discover life slowly through a series of smaller events–far less than dramatic than a signal from another civilization. Like finding methane (only produced by something living ) in the atmosphere. Many astrobiologists believe that the building blocks of life exist on other planets, and if life sprung up here, why not there? This might be harder for people of faith or strict religious doctrine to accept –hence the importance of starting the conversation.
Robert Gougeon
April 23, 2016
I can’t speak for people of strict, doctrinal faith, however, given the vastness of the physical universe according to the scientific story, if we are spiritually alone as the chosen species in a creation designed exclusively as a moral stage for the human drama to play out, then morally-speaking that vastness suggests the Creator has a sense of humour regarding our sense of self-importance. That vastness would seem to be designed to humble the least humble amongst us and create a sense of doubt to test the faith of the most faithful. As if, just when the books of faith established a direct connection between a tribe and the Creator on planet earth, the Creator opens up a vastness that is designed to de-center that very connection.
So is the empirical vastness of the physical universe just a spiritual trick to test the faithful?
In which case, what would finding other forms of life mean for the moral story of those faithful?
Does de-centering planet earth, de-center the moral stage which the book-based faiths have plotted for their adherents? An earlier episode of such de-centering took place, of course, with Galileo, which, though the Christian churches wobbled a bit, planetary pun intended, they still count millions of adherents as in their orbits.
So are the faithful simply those who ignore empirical evidence as spiritually irrelevant? Or is their spiritual faith truly tested by such physical discoveries?
What is the connection, if any, between the moral universe of the spiritually faithful and the physical universe of the empirical scientist? The latter, as I mentioned in an earlier post, seemingly designed to be investigated devoid of spiritual or moral implication in order to understand its inner workings and bend it to a human purpose.
The difficulty for science, of course, is once having removed any notion of moral purpose from the physical universe, human purpose, embedded in the vastness of physical space, appears to be a largely random and arbitrary sense of direction, for which, ‘survival’ is the poor substitute for divine guidance, never mind for divine ‘commandment’. Humpty Dumpty all over again.
Two quick points: This reminds me of the obvious question: What scares you more? – the potential that we are not alone in the Universe or finding out that we are all there is? For me- it’s definitely the latter.
And because “faith” cannot be measured empirically -I think that it is critical to this discussion to hear from people of faith and religious doctrine–whatever it may be. What does this possibility truly mean to them?
Cindy Backen
March 21, 2016
From the standpoint of my religion, you might say that God is the universe. This makes the most sense for me. The Creator is responsible for everything.
I think I answered this when I answered the first question. But- I do think god/creator created the universe and everything in it – finding other life- which would be very exciting for me – would be to me life finding a cousin – a family that is distant enough to not feel like family but must be as god/energy created everything. no issues with being Jewish and life in space- its just one of the scavenger hunts god gave us.
Thanks so much for your comments:) I enjoyed your metaphor of the scavenger hunt and “finding a distant cousin”. And I love your openness to the possibilities of life elsewhere –and being part of the journey that we are already on. As someone wisely said ( and I’m sure that there are may who have said the same thing ) –we are all God’s creatures. And for those of us who believe in God and the Divine ( whatever your belief system and whatever you perceive God to be ) —the rest of the Universe, and whoever and whatever contains, is an inevitable part of our human journey. We are born/ “programmed ” to explore. It’s who we are and what we do –if we weren’t–we’d still be sitting on the other side of the world believing that the earth is flat. As we push beyond our borders and forge new frontiers, I can’t help thinking of it as a series of doors that are just waiting to be opened—hence, your “scavenger hunt”… But, I guess that larger question that I keep going back to –are we ready for what we find?
I agree with you completely – this is how I see it- and as to are we ready ? When we are ready it will unfold. I suspect that there are other beings out there monitoring us and evaluating the very same question – our “eyes will open” when we are ready – just wonder what percentage of humans will be ready at that time – I bet some will not be and then…..it will be very interesting!
This is a good question. I do believe in God but my image of Him and his influence has been limited to only us and to only us here on earth. And let’s face it, He has plenty of competition down here as it is – and it’s more than just Islam and Judaism! What about Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism? And what about all the Agnostics and Atheists down here, too?
Do the higher powers of this other intelligent life have intergalactic scopes, too?
Looking at just Christianity alone, I have been told when I’ve asked this question to the few leaders that I know, they have generally responded with “Creation is all creation, not just what’s happened here on earth. It’s all part of His work.”
If that’s the case, are there parallel forms of Christianity out there, too? And, parallel forms of the rest of the World’s great religions, too? Admittedly, I could be asking for way too much with that last question.
As you can see, I have a lot more questions than I have answers. Yes, discovery of extraterrestrial life would certainly impact my faith and consequently my worldview, too. At first blush, I think it would undermine my faith, especially if it wasn’t reflected somehow in our stranger’s faith.
If it wasn’t, my worldview would be similarly affected. The role of religion in defining the differences of our global members would give way to the realization that we should be defining the commonalities of our faiths to pull us together. Could that even happen? I’m not so sure…
No sooner do I write the above and I wonder if it’s really not an alien visitor but Satan in the flesh after all! Or is this some kind of flashback of a B grade movie I once saw?
Yes, I need help with this!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. It’s so true, isn’t it, that all we have is questions at this point and not a lot of definitive answers. The question might seem to many to be purely hypothetical and I guess, technically, that’s true. After all, we don’t know for an absolute certainty that there is life elsewhere, especially intelligent life, but recent discoveries are certainly making that appear a lot more likely. We are the first generation to grapple this with any degree of seriousness. It’s no longer–” what if? ” But more like–“what will we do when??” The question is philosophical more than scientific at this point, but there will be implications for not just religions but society in general when that moment that Dr. Mountain refers to ultimately happens–the moment we discover we are not alone.
Like you , I would have all kinds of questions to ask of any intelligent and advanced civilization that we might communicate with —especially when it comes to their faith and beliefs. I think it’s only human to want to see if they “match” ours. And if not, who is “right”? That could certainly be a mind bender and for many people, a crisis of faith.
What seems to be the approach of some Christians when it comes to this little discussed topic- ( hopefully that changes to some degree with this blog )- that all of the Universe is God’s creation—mirrors my own thoughts to some degree. You know–the one that I worry is perhaps too simple? :)But so far—it’s working for me.
I do worry, though, as you point out that there may be people who equate any “aliens” ( again–I dislike that term–too many negative connotations ) with Satan or an evil presence. That is one of the reasons that I feel it is so important to start the conversation. There will be no answers found on this blog—unless the Creator decides to log in–lol . Just the questions and the conversation. Seems like a good place to start. Thanks for helping to get it going.
Well, my first thought is that the human ‘tribes’ having been dealing with the ‘discovery’ of the Other for some time. One imagines, pretty much since the beginning of any human ‘tribe’, that politics and spirituality have been negotiating such relationships in various forms, from violent conflict to diplomatic negotiations… whether the barbarians surrounding the ancient Greeks, the Roman Silk Road to the Orient, the New World, wars of religion, etc., etc.
One can scan the current state of this planet, as the 24 hour news channels do, and a fairly full range of options seem to be playing themselves out. From Syria, to North Korea, to Mexican drug cartels, to softwood lumber, to reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, to name but a few headliners, the list of negotiating Otherness goes on and on.
So, how will negotiations proceed with another form of life on another planet?
Well after the initial ‘huh?’ moment, it might go something like this…
The capitalists will be looking to see if they have cool stuff to trade or if not whether they can be put to work in some profitable fashion.
The militarists will be looking to see if they have more powerful toys than ‘us’.
The spiritualists will be asking whether they can summon more powerful demons or deities.
The scientists will be asking…, ‘gee, wonder what they’re made of?’
Which perhaps brings us to a curious point. The scientists will be looking for empirical evidence, which presumes they will have to be empirical beings. Which sounds like a strange requirement for the spiritualists.
Or another way round, back to the original question: why would any empirical discovery affect a spiritual worldview?
The typical answer would presumably be something along the lines… if the spiritual worldview presumed, required, morally obliged a particular state of a particular empirical world.
Now, some spiritual traditions do seem to harbour such claims, Christ, for example, is seen by some to be the unique, universal bridge between the one and only mortal world and the one and only divine world, and that bridge is travelled rich with moral requirements.
But why would spiritual reality be limited to a particular empirical one?
Doesn’t sound like a very powerful demon/deity if that’s the case.
In which case, people who believe that their spiritual worldview requires just the particular empirical reality they are ‘familiar’ with, may be in for a rude “awakening”!
On the other hand, those who have no such spiritual expectations or requirements, may already be ‘awake’ to the possibility that there is stuff out there which our empirical vision can’t ‘see’ now and will likely not be able to see even after we, empirical beings, discover curious signs or symptoms, empirical footprints, so to speak, of spiritual Otherness elsewhere in the vastness of the empirical universe, on the other side of some hill, ocean, galaxy or black hole, or peering just over the edge of our empirical universe ; )
So, just a few sleepy thoughts about what ‘waking up’ might be like…
Interesting thoughts. Your breakdown of the various groups ( militarists, scientists, spiritualists ) and their response to the discovery of other intelligent life in the Universe actually reflects how quickly humans adapt to new realities. Unfortunately it usually involves assessing how we can best benefit ( use ) this new information but perhaps that is just part of our innate survival instinct. If and when that moment happens in my lifetime, I really hope that the largest group is the “Learners” who are asking…what can we learn from them?
Now, of course, ‘life on another planet’ could be satisfied by anything from finding microbes, to finding civilizations, or finding some form of life we’ve never encountered before. So, naturally, our collective response will likely vary accordingly.
Regarding your hope that the largest response will be by people asking “what can we learn from them?”, I think that we can look at our own planet for clues of our likely response.
If they are inferior to us in their capacities, then we will enslave them. It is simply what humans have done with every life form it has encountered and found to have some utility to the human project. Those which fail to meet this level of utilitarian interest are simply ignored or destroyed if they should find themselves or their habitat in conflict with those utilitarian objectives. The catalogue of species extinction in the modern human era is one that science, as learner, has provided.
Under such circumstances, I would expect the largely self-serving human spiritualist agendas will continue largely unaffected as they have for thousands of years. In this context, I think it is important to remember that witch hunts, Atlantic slavery and Indigenous exterminations in the Americas, to mention a few human encounters with Otherness, came as often as not wrapped in warm spiritual (specifically Christian) blessings.
If, on the other hand, they turn out to be superior to us in their capacities, well then we likely have another story. This story would be outside the pale of our range of memory and experience on this planet.
Would we start praying to their gods to assuage their good humour?
Would we draw upon our own long history of colonizing others to calculate our response?
Would we count upon their benevolence, when we have so little history of it ourselves?
Or would they simply recognize our worth, and enslave or destroy us?
Would they take pity on us and let their children play with us as pets?
In any case, given that I questioned in my first post, the fundamental idea that the character of the creation is a direct reflection of the character of the creator, I still don’t see why discovering any empirical form of life tells us much of anything about the nature of spiritual reality. To presume so, would seem to presume that spiritual reality is limited by the characteristics of an empirical creation. If I make a paper airplane and toss it through the air, it does not mean I am made of paper and fly in the same fashion, to use an imperfect comparison.
In other words, spiritual reality needs to be encountered in its own terms and not in those of science. The history of science, as I understand it, was very much the systematic stripping away of any spiritualist connotation from experience to arrive at the purely observational patterns and regularities which logic and empirical observation would reveal. While some might argue that the lawful patterns and regularities so discovered reveal something about the workings of its creator, this is not a scientific argument insofar as it makes a non-empirical claim about empirical observations.
If we are going to make spiritual claims about spiritual reality then, I think, we need spiritual evidence. Empirical evidence, from which spiritual connotations have been stripped, simply isn’t going to tell us much of anything about that. You can jump on that empirical rocket ship and ride it as far as the empirical fuels will take you, I suspect you’re never going to find a non-empirical reality on that journey.
So how do we discover spiritual evidence for spiritual reality?
Hmmm, now there’s a peek through a different looking glass but, for now, I’m not sure finding empirical evidence of life on another planet is part of the answer.
Yes, it’s important to remember that the definition of “life” is broad and could cover anything from an intelligent civilization to bacteria. The discovery of the former would be far more profound than the latter, of course, but the implications of finding any kind of life are worthy of considering. Anything is possible in the vastness of the cosmos but personally, I believe that we will discover life slowly through a series of smaller events–far less than dramatic than a signal from another civilization. Like finding methane (only produced by something living ) in the atmosphere. Many astrobiologists believe that the building blocks of life exist on other planets, and if life sprung up here, why not there? This might be harder for people of faith or strict religious doctrine to accept –hence the importance of starting the conversation.
I can’t speak for people of strict, doctrinal faith, however, given the vastness of the physical universe according to the scientific story, if we are spiritually alone as the chosen species in a creation designed exclusively as a moral stage for the human drama to play out, then morally-speaking that vastness suggests the Creator has a sense of humour regarding our sense of self-importance. That vastness would seem to be designed to humble the least humble amongst us and create a sense of doubt to test the faith of the most faithful. As if, just when the books of faith established a direct connection between a tribe and the Creator on planet earth, the Creator opens up a vastness that is designed to de-center that very connection.
So is the empirical vastness of the physical universe just a spiritual trick to test the faithful?
In which case, what would finding other forms of life mean for the moral story of those faithful?
Does de-centering planet earth, de-center the moral stage which the book-based faiths have plotted for their adherents? An earlier episode of such de-centering took place, of course, with Galileo, which, though the Christian churches wobbled a bit, planetary pun intended, they still count millions of adherents as in their orbits.
So are the faithful simply those who ignore empirical evidence as spiritually irrelevant? Or is their spiritual faith truly tested by such physical discoveries?
What is the connection, if any, between the moral universe of the spiritually faithful and the physical universe of the empirical scientist? The latter, as I mentioned in an earlier post, seemingly designed to be investigated devoid of spiritual or moral implication in order to understand its inner workings and bend it to a human purpose.
The difficulty for science, of course, is once having removed any notion of moral purpose from the physical universe, human purpose, embedded in the vastness of physical space, appears to be a largely random and arbitrary sense of direction, for which, ‘survival’ is the poor substitute for divine guidance, never mind for divine ‘commandment’. Humpty Dumpty all over again.
Two quick points: This reminds me of the obvious question: What scares you more? – the potential that we are not alone in the Universe or finding out that we are all there is? For me- it’s definitely the latter.
And because “faith” cannot be measured empirically -I think that it is critical to this discussion to hear from people of faith and religious doctrine–whatever it may be. What does this possibility truly mean to them?
From the standpoint of my religion, you might say that God is the universe. This makes the most sense for me. The Creator is responsible for everything.