The idea that aliens would prove religion is wrong.... makes no sense.

[teriyakiburns]

Anyone who thinks that the existence of aliens would destroy religion doesn't understand how religion works. Quite apart from anything else, there's no reason to believe, in the christian framework at least, that the creator of the universe would reveal himself to aliens the same way he revealed himself to mankind. Lewis's take on this has already been mentioned. And if you dive into polytheistic or animist religions, then there is literally no conflict between those faiths and the existence of aliens. The only religion that might be challenged by it would be islam, but as long as any "prophets" within the alien culture pre-date muhammed, they can simply say that they just don't count.

Depends on who these aliens are.
For example, in the movie Mission to Mars:

Spoiler

the aliens are revealed to be responsible for the creation of life on Earth, directly contradicting most holy books

A sufficiently robust faith can incorporate even that sort of thing, by framing the aliens as the tools of the creator. It fits neatly into the intelligent design movement.

 

[Otterly]

I also don’t think that if we find aliens it’s goi g to collapse society. Obviously if they’re actively hostile or have serious tech they share our lives will change.
But religious faith is faith. Faith defies proof. It defies rational evidence in many ways. How can you disprove God?
The idea that people would go crazy if benevolent or ambivalent aliens appeared is weird. They will shrug, say ‘oh cool’ and next week there will be some new pornhub categories.
We just spent three years with reality out the window playing pretend over a bad cold, and people are pretending men can turn into women. And the world carries on. Never underestimate the apathy.
Iain banks has some good stuff about alien deli on in his culture novels

 

[Hyperbola]

It never made any sense to me either, and I'm far from religious.

I would have thought the religious perspective would be to expect life in other places. A nigh infinite (possibly literally infinite, though we can't see that far yet) universe that is entirely dead except for Earth would seem to fit the idea of Earth being an accident far better than that of some God that likes life but accidentally bulk-ordered his raw materials, and is only concerned with one planet.

An infinite dead wasteland is pretty Lovecraftian - Earth isn't *special* in such a universe. Earth is a mistake, filtered through the anthropic principle. Any finite sequence is going to show up *somewhere* in an infinite random string.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Technically I don't think there's anything in the Bible which would mean that if aliens are real (which I'm pretty sure they're not) that suddenly Christianity is proven false. If anything that's just more people to convert to Christianity.

 

[AnsemSoD1]

Honestly if God has truly infinite, and I mean INFINITE power, then what's stopping him from creating ten or a trillion more unique lifeforms and universes.

 

[Fools Idol]

I think that the general idea is more knowledge about the Universe=less God. The last few hundred years of both science and archaeology have really put a massive question mark on the veracity of religion. Of cause that doesn't mean shit to the faithful.

There is an interesting possibly and that is that contact with aliens might even lead to a rise in religion. There's still new age "UFO religions" out there.

 

[Shroom King]

There is an interesting possibly and that is that contact with aliens might even lead to a rise in religion. There's still new age "UFO religions" out there.

If I was an alien planning a takeover of Earth, I would totally use religion as a tool to turn the various people against each other so I can roll into a weakened earth without even pulling out my lightsaber.

"Want to know how I can teleport? It is my faith in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." And then I would teleport behind some megajew like Soros or Zuckerberg and crucify them upside down.

 

[Power Appreciator]

Atheists when Jesus and Hitler both come back on the same spaceship and start eradicating niggers with nuclear warheads:

 

[AnimeGirlConnoisseur]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't Islam and Christianity already dealt with this to some extent? We didn't really consider Africans and Native Americans to be 'people' for awhile. I heard that in Belgium or the Netherlands they used to put black people in zoos. The discovery of and interactions with these people and their cultures didn't destroy Christianity or Islam.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

I also don’t think that if we find aliens it’s goi g to collapse society. Obviously if they’re actively hostile or have serious tech they share our lives will change.
But religious faith is faith. Faith defies proof. It defies rational evidence in many ways. How can you disprove God?
The idea that people would go crazy if benevolent or ambivalent aliens appeared is weird. They will shrug, say ‘oh cool’ and next week there will be some new pornhub categories.
We just spent three years with reality out the window playing pretend over a bad cold, and people are pretending men can turn into women. And the world carries on. Never underestimate the apathy.
Iain banks has some good stuff about alien deli on in his culture novels

Agreed, plus the book "A Calculating God" has multiple aliens showing up one day at a Canadian museum looking for scientific proof of God.

C.S. Lewis has already been mentioned and a few (too few) other writers have explored this topic. I think a few fantasy settings have dealt with religion in an interesting manner vis a vi fantasy species, with the setting known as "Banestorm" doing a neat job.

So no fedora tippers , aliens wouldn't make everyone euphoric (at least not in the cringe way) and tbh Muslims might classify them as Djinn.

 

[Otterly]

The last few hundred years of both science and archaeology have really put a massive question mark on the veracity of religion. Of cause that doesn't mean shit to the faithful.

I dont think science has disproven religion as a concept at all. I say that as a scientist. I think our views on the geology stuff have changed but I also don’t think that’s too big a deal. The concept of a God, or a first mover remains. We have absolutely zero handle on what consciousness is for example, and the idea of a soul has exactly as much physical evidence for it as emergence or the reductionist approach .
Two quotes from Heisenberg:
““The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
“Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.”

 

[Mr Bunny]

Or the "Aliens" are demonic entities and they can mate with humans.

 

[Fools Idol]

I dont think science has disproven religion as a concept at all. I say that as a scientist. I think our views on the geology stuff have changed but I also don’t think that’s too big a deal. The concept of a God, or a first mover remains. We have absolutely zero handle on what consciousness is for example, and the idea of a soul has exactly as much physical evidence for it as emergence or the reductionist approach .
Two quotes from Heisenberg:
““The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
“Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.”

There's a difference between religion and believing in an all mighty creator. Maybe God exists in some form or another but the Abrahamic God is just as much bullshit as the Norse, Greek, Aztec and every other myth/gods.

Religions often have some associated texts that haven't stood the test of time. Science, archaeology and just general world history have really put many of these holy texts in doubt. The Bible is the example most are familiar with but literally every single holy text out there from every religion suffers form these factual and historical inconsistencies with realty. Every religion fails to describe the world and it's inhabitants outside of the narrow slice that the authors knew.

These holy texts are the very foundational knowledge that all religions are built on, if they are inaccurate and irreconcilable with realty then the whole thing falls like a house of cards.

 

[Amerikaner Teddybär]

A good counter to this would be "Are you implying aliens don't have religion of their own? Would they not want to investigate the various religions of the world?" Euphorics ain't exactly known for thinking through things.

 

[std::string]

I suspect this whole "aliens disprove religion" thing is very Christian-centric thinking, like most atheist rhetoric.

Fedora tippers barely know anything about Christianity so I'm not surprised they know absolutely nothing at all about other religions.

Buddhism for example has zero problems with aliens considering Buddhist cosmology heavily stresses the fact that there are an uncountable number of worlds with sentient beings in them out there in the universe.

 

[Sparkling Yuzu]

Not that it really works, since humanity is still the one with souls, and the aliens are glorified animals.

How can you know that when you are talking about theoretical aliens intelligent as we are?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

How can you know that when you are talking about theoretical aliens intelligent as we are?

Because I'm right

 

[Sparkling Yuzu]

Because I'm right

I disagree with the idea that humans are somehow not an animal and animals don't have souls. Look how sweet animals can be. Don't tell me a cute lil dog with big puppy eyes has no soul.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Thing is, if aliens are real you'll probably end up converted to their religion. They've got the better computers and can exploit human psychology.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't Islam and Christianity already dealt with this to some extent? We didn't really consider Africans and Native Americans to be 'people' for awhile. I heard that in Belgium or the Netherlands they used to put black people in zoos. The discovery of and interactions with these people and their cultures didn't destroy Christianity or Islam.

They believed they had souls, that's why the Spanish ordered them all baptized and then taught religion, which for some reason involved mining gold and silver for 18 hours a day or working in some rich dude's tobacco field while he fucked your wife. It was also illegal to enslave Indians, only the Angl*s did that because 18th century Angl*s liked to larp as some unholy mix of slave masters in the Bible and the Greeks/Romans. Blacks were okay to enslave because of the Curse of Ham and all.

Human zoos were created by atheistic science and they existed in the US too, like when they put a dude from the Congo named Ota Benga in the monkey house at the New York zoo.

 

[Shidoen]

If aliens do exist and I get the chance, I’m gonna Columbus the galactic highway with Jesus and shit.