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I suspect finding evidence of other lifeforms in the universe, even highly intelligent lifeforms, would briefly be novel, but would have very little long-term effect on most people's daily lives.



Many people's religion has a huge effect on their daily lives, and news like this would have a huge impact on their faith.

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?


religions have an uncanny ability to either ignore scientific facts or bend their religion to fit with the facts. Remember that originally it was thought that the Earth was in the center of the universe because God had put it there. When the facts changed religion was eventually bent to acomodate the facts.

Science changes and religion adapts.


Religious tradition and dogma changes yes, but their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves.

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.


The holy books aren't like a country's constitution. They're all 'interpreted'. "What this passage means is...".


To be fair, a country's constitution must also be interpreted. That's why things like Supreme Court rulings are so important. The SC gets to decide, "What this amendment means is..."


True, but it's to a much lesser extent. The constituion of a country is pretty clear on who is in charge, how to select the people who are, how many representatives, how they're set up, where the power lies. The bulk of the information is pretty straight-forward. There's certainly plenty of edge cases, but it's not really presented in terms of parables.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/8009299/Po... I always found the Catholic Church's response amusing.

"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.


"but their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves."

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.


"...their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves."

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 ; )


Just a note, the "virgin" that applies directly to Mary (Luke 1:34, "And Mary said to the angel, 'How will this be, since I am a virgin?'", among other passages) is written in Greek, not Hebrew. Granted, there are some prophetic passages in the OT that use virgin (e.g. Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."), but just make sure everyone's on the same page when challenging dogma. Is the Greek word thought to be mistranslated as well?


That's a mistake alright, but it's made by naive atheist commenters on the intertubes (and/or poorly researched books).

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).


Right. Note my comment didn't say religion would be destroyed.


> news like this would have a huge impact on their faith.

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.)


Really?

Living as pet slaves for extra-terrestrial overlords would have little "long-term effect on most people's daily lives"?




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