Vatican Debates Possibility of Alien Life 721
Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first ever conference on alien life, the discovery of which would have profound implications for the Catholic Church. For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church. Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God 'made man in his own image' and Jesus Christ's role as savior would be confused; would other worlds have their own Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal? Just as the Church eventually made accommodations after Copernicus and Galileo showed that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and when it belatedly accepted the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution, Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible's teachings. 'Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God,' says Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and one of the organizers of the conference. Others do not agree. 'If you look back at the history of Christian debate on this, it divides into two camps. There are those that believe that it is human destiny to bring salvation to the aliens, and those who believe in multiple incarnations,' says Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist. 'The multiple incarnations is a heresy in Catholicism.'"
The alien god (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:5, Interesting)
some branches deal with things that may or may not exist. God may well be similar to quantum theory, with faith corresponding to observing
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Interesting)
You might like this debate, ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvZz_pxZ2lw [youtube.com]
Christopher Hitchens does a good job as usual, but Stephen Fry really does steal that show. It is a shame that they didn't have stronger opponents.
Re:Keep It Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Um, just because it's magical doesn't mean you have to explain it with magic. If something has an unexplained behavior, the logical course of action is to influence it and make deductions based on the outcome. You use conscience as an example. Well there are degrees of awareness you know. There are the moments of torpor that leave you with little of it, and there are the adrenalin pumping moments that leave a heightened sense of existence. So already we know of a way to manipulate this magic, so I'm sure as technology improves we will understand it better.
A funny question posed in a philosophy debate is how do you know you experience conscience? What if you only had some mechanism that was inferior to conscience similar to the way some people can detect more variations in light qualia?
Re:So can science define existence? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that it stops people from believing it with extreme fervor. I view the most common problem with religion as the fact that there are so many of them. And all of them are held to be absolutely, 100% true and most often, entirely exclusionary. "My God exists, and is the only god. Any other gods are a blasphemy" and all that.
Why is it that, supposing that there is one true faith with a set of predetermined moral values that do not change, just hypothetically, this faith is not the clear winner? Does God, often depicted as being omnipotent and all knowing, merely have the worst PR department in history? He has the opportunity to rig the greatest advertising campaign in the history of the universe, and still there are hundreds of copycats, knock offs, and competitors that are doing just as well, if not better?
To me, a much easier explanation would be that people rarely question the beliefs imposed on them in their adolescence, which would also explain why, up until globalization, faith was almost always easily determined by location.
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Religion has all the evidence that everything else we rely on has. You simply make the assumption that religion is false and then you are able to deny the testimony of witnesses (by calling them suspect) simply because of your assumption. Remove that assumption and the stories suddenly corroborate much more than is comfortable.
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:3, Interesting)
There are actually reasons why the computer simulation seems unlikely, just as most definitions of a god seem unlikely.
However, the simplest answer to this is Occam's Razor. Which seems simpler: A universe with a god frantically hiding evidence of his existence, for some perverse reason? A universe running in a simulation? Or a universe which is simply material, in which there is no god?
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine harder. You're a caveman. You have no idea about the low-level mechanisms behind life (including your own body). You have no idea how fire works, how trees grow, etc. You do know that you can carve objects that are more than they were before you started carving. You know that you can make fire, that you can make babies (with help) and maybe that you can make trees by planting seeds. You know that the smart guy in your group can make some stuff that you're not really capable of making. You don't really need to know how he made it; just that it works. You know that you can throw spears and it'll hit a deer and kill it, even if the deer doesn't really get that you threw it.
Now. Lighting shoots from the sky. What do you assume made that? Some magic? Or someone you can't see?
It's not really that much of a stretch, for primitive people. Quite logical, actually.
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Why? I don't recall any mention of this in the Bible. He never said, "oh hey, by the way, I'm going to be out golfing for the next couple thousand years. Try not to slaughter yourselves."
What science has that religion does not is falsifiability, and a vastly greater degree of self-consistency.
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless the emotions you feel don't have any significance. Then we could write off the feeling of being alive as an instinctive response, without any bearing on the nature of the universe.
There are two possibilities: That your emotions are a reflection of some deeper spiritual meaning, or that they're simply instinctive responses that have evolved to help keep humans alive. Now, answer me truthfully: if your emotions had no spiritual connection, would you be able to tell?
Re:AHEM... (Score:1, Interesting)
Discussions of faith based religion on /. usually results in the flames of the atheists, agnostic / logical minds. Very difficult subject to discuss here with any level of intellect, or respect.
As a devout christian (no, I don't see myself as any better than anyone else), I believe the universe is fully populated with intelligent life. Our planet earth is merely a petri dish culturing life & the inevitable conclusion of sin which we brought upon ourselves. Additionally, many other planets (in other star systems), whose populations looking on in sympathy for us, our race self destructing as the inevitable result. I associate the concept of the Supreme Being as one of an intelligent energy force that exists beyond our primitive perceptions, our brains too primitive to truly comprehend, so the concept of God is easier for us to grasp.
One favorite example of our dilemma is the "Christian Conservative". Here you have someone wrapping themselves in self-righteousness using the CC label, but are often found doing questionable acts of a homosexual nature in airport lavatories. Lying through their teeth and delusions of grandeur are also common as demonstrated by the recent return to the spotlight of Moose Barbie, the "Wicker Witch of Wasliia" (Sarah Palin).
Another pathetic example of just how evil we humans can be is the Islamic clergy commonly found in today's headlines. They have NO problem with Iranian muslims brutally murdering other Iranian muslims, but if an American muslim/soldier is out there shooting muslim wingnuts in sucide vests .. well, this is call for jihad against the evil Americans. What a crock of shit!
Re:Is it just me (Score:1, Interesting)
...maybe we've been visited....
But we have been visited about 2000 years ago by God himself. We celebrate that every year on December 25th. Jesus claimed to be God in human form. He came to his own but his own rejected him and had him crucified. He didn't stay dead, but demonstrated a technology far greater, if you can call it a technology, than instantaneous travel to the furthest corner of the universe. What Jesus Christ promised to those who believe him immortality. That to me this is infinitely greater than being able to instantly travel to the remotest corner of the universe.
He came from a place he called heaven, but was constantly talking in parables and pictures of what people knew - life on earth. Heaven is an eternal place, whereas Earth is time bound. Jesus said:
John 3:12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
Human beings, such as science fiction writers are often pretty imaginative. However, the apostle Paul understood this:
1Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him."
After 1 billion years, the first nanosecond of eternity has gone by.
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:3, Interesting)
If it wasn't obvious before, it's obvious now that you have an agenda. I am not asking that you abandon it, but that you be aware of it as you read and respond, and try not to let it get in the way of an honest discussion.
Similarly, it is obvious (duh) that you have a set of beliefs. I am not asking that you abandon them, simply identify them and be willing to examine what it might imply if they were not true. At least try to envision the world from my point of view.
I ask this because your post is, as usual, riddled with unproven assertions. I have tried to keep mine free of them -- I do not say "there is no God" or make references to "imaginary friends" every two sentences. I'll expand on this later, but such preaching is insulting to my intelligence. If you are unable or unwilling to do so, don't be surprised if the discussion dissolves into simple "yes he does" and "no he doesn't" shouting, with no reason behind it.
You see, biblical faith is NOT unreasonable. It is based on good historical evidence that would hold up in any law court.
If this were true, you would be able to make a logical argument for it. Yet so far, you've made emotional appeals, appeals to authority, and other attempts to go around a solid, logical, intellectual discussion, and instead "expand my thinking outside the box of my own limited rationality, into the realm of faith."
You've told me several times, and quite clearly, that God does not work within the realm of the scientific method.
In other words, this is your own interpretation. I may not have treated it kindly with the word "unreasonable", but this is why faith is needed.
Rom 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, which is your REASONABLE service...
Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us REASON together, says Jehovah; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.
Claiming that something is reasonable is not the same as showing that it is reasonable. Why is a living sacrifice reasonable, and why would a loving god demand one?
But the real flaw in this argument is that it can be used against you. If all that is needed to make a reasonable argument is to claim that we should use reason, I could say "Richard Dawkins is more rational than you, and doesn't believe in God. QED."
Simply claiming something is not enough to show that it is true.
Tolkien, CS Lewis, Simon Greenleaf and Lee Strobel are a few of the people I have mentioned who have researched the Christian gospel.
This smells like an appeal to authority, but may be something less. However, I should point out that Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins, and a personal hero, George Hrab, have all concluded publicly that the Christian gospel, along with most other things we'd call religion, is complete bunk -- a delusion.
They have done so through their own reason, and they have done so without condemning all believers -- though they are quick to call out the crazier believers, or the flaws in the belief itself.
I could also mention that many people highly trained in critical thought -- scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov, Noam Chomsky, Marie Curie, Crick and Watson, and many others -- hold similar views. While Einstein is debated, he could at best be called a deist and a cultural Jew, and it would be a very conservative sort of deism.
Did that sway you at all?
If not, would you expect mere mention of those who support your own opinion to sway me?
Do you really think that it is wrong to depend on and consult an authority, a source that is more knowledgeable about a given subject?
First of all, let me turn this tactic on you, and appeal to authority. Here is a quote from Bertrand Russel:
[I]t is n
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:3, Interesting)
I have given you a few pieces of EVIDENCE of why I believe in the message of the Bible and in Jesus Christ.
Hmm... this time, the best you've given me is a link to a short web summary, which I then refuted. Is there anything else? Maybe this book:
There are others who have written thick books on the subject. Here is one of the better ones:
Sounds great! Can you quote a passage here, and save us both some time? I mean, it's obviously convincing to you...
Since it would take considerable investment on my part, I should like to know it would be worth the investment. A quick Google shows several critiques -- the most complete being Jeff Lowder's The Jury Is In -- The Ruling on McDowell's "Evidence" [infidels.org]. Interestingly, this book is available in its complete form on that very site I've linked, while the original book is only available (as far as I can tell) in printed form, even though Josh McDowell has other books available for free.
Skimming this, I see no obvious flaws, and I see several patterns which have been common to your own arguments here. For example:
As he habitually does throughout this book, McDowell relies here upon the fallacy of appeal to authority, calling in supposed experts whose opinions we are to accept just because McDowell tells us they know what they are talking about. This is something no careful student in any field of study ever does.
Emphasis mine.
While it's a nice diversion, I see no reason I would want to pay money to read an entire book of it, in a format I don't enjoy (I prefer electronic texts), without the opportunity to immediately respond; rather, I would likely end up writing a book myself, one very much like "Jury".
A quick excerpt from Jury:
It will come as no surprise when I confess to having pursued the apologetics racket for some years, both as an eager reader of Inter-Varsity Press books and as a student at a major evangelical Seminary. My experience is not at all unusual. It is repeated again and again. Virtually every radical New Testament scholar one meets turns out to have rejected his or her evangelical past long ago, often after having seen through the same arguments McDowell and company keep retreading and daring the heathen to refute. Why do all those "bigoted" religion professors on secular campuses or liberal seminaries persist in ignoring McDowell and his allies? Simply because they have all been there before. They used to play on the same team McDowell coaches, only, unlike him, they realized long ago it was an unwinnable game.
Again, emphasis mine.
As I said before, the Bible is like a deposition taken from eyewitnesses. The fact that these eyewitnesses lived almost 2000 years ago is immaterial.
On the contrary, the fact that these eyewitnesses lived so long ago is directly relevant -- a lot can happen in two thousand years.
In all your replies, you have stated that you do not believe these witnesses,
I have stated that I am skeptical of the account, for many reasons, among them that I doubt the witnesses themselves existed.
mainly because you do not believe in anything your senses cannot tell you.
Please stop.
If I have ever ascribed to you a view which you do not hold, I apologize, but I certainly don't think I've done so in this exchange. Yet you've done so in virtually every message.
I think I am being extremely polite given how consistently you lie about me.
If I am to be generous, I could say that you are correct, in that I don't tend to believe things which never pass through my senses. That is, I don't tend to believe things which are only fabrications of my own mind. But there are certainly things I believe for which the evidence is indirect.
Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, is this list supposed to impress anyone? I mean c'mon, how many of them are named Steve?!" [ncse.com]
You'll need more than just a short list of arguments from authority if you want anyone to take you seriously or even care about what you think.