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Aliens and the Enlightenment

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Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#41

Post by throw0101a »

the_af wrote: post #29
boomboomsubban wrote: post #2

The idea that other worlds would be your deal breaker on Christianity is strange. They were fine with two continents needing over a millennium to first hear about Jesus, but a plurality of worlds would be "irreconcilable." Maybe they couldn't imagine space travel ever being possible?

> They were fine with two continents needing over a millennium to first hear about Jesus, but a plurality of worlds would be "irreconcilable." I think there's many ways to think about this. First, the place where Christ was supposed to have been born is "special". Clearly he (or god) chose to be born in some continent and not another. Now multiply to... how many planets are there in the universe? What's the chance th…

> First, the place where Christ was supposed to have been born is "special". Clearly he (or god) chose to be born in some continent and not another. Now multiply to... how many planets are there in the universe? What's the chance that Earth in particular was a special planet to be born in?

Some discussion:

> When asked how aliens could be redeemed, [Vatican Observatory head] Father Funes referred to the Gospel parable of the lost sheep. Aliens, he speculated, could already be redeemed because they could have remained in full friendship with God, while the human race “could be precisely the lost sheep, the sinners that need the shepherd.”

> But what if they were sinners like us? Father Funes replied that just as Jesus is believed to have come to save mankind, so he was sure that they, “in some way, would have the chance to enjoy God’s mercy.”

[…]

> The question has also been debated within the Church since the Middle Ages and was discussed by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, whose fictional “Space Trilogy” featured extraterrestrial beings.

* https://www.ncregister.com/news/alien-life-out-there

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#42

Post by n4r9 »

n4r9 wrote: post #11
graemep wrote: post #3

This is full of distortions and omissions. Firstly, an "earth centred" cosmology did not assume all things were made for man. It held the earth was a small part of the solar system, which in turn was surrounded by far larger (infinite?) heavens. It is also worth thinking about what Medieval people place at the very centre of the earth, and therefore the exact centre of the universe. She mentions some possible answers…

> Firstly, an "earth centred" cosmology did not assume all things were made for man. Well, this one has sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. In a previous life I was in relatively close academic proximity to Patricia Fara (author of OP). I doubt she'd make such a claim lightly. So I started chasing citations. OP states at the start of the "Analogy and Conjecture" section: > Earth-centred cosmologies had assumed that…

[flagged]

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#43

Post by TimTheTinker »

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #39
TimTheTinker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that interstellar travel is impossible with current tech. But based on what I know, I don't see any reason to believe a manned mission to Mars is impossible with current technology. Do you have specific reasons we can't, or examples of technological gaps?

- One year in weightlessness will almost disable someone and give him blindness, rapid bone loss, cachexia, cardiovascular problems, and sometimes immune diseases. - One year enduring radiation sickness.

- artificial gravity through rotation

- various strategies to block incoming cosmic rays: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_ionizing_radiatio.... In particular, hydrogen-rich plastics.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#44

Post by boomboomsubban »

throw0101a wrote: post #40
boomboomsubban wrote: post #2

The idea that other worlds would be your deal breaker on Christianity is strange. They were fine with two continents needing over a millennium to first hear about Jesus, but a plurality of worlds would be "irreconcilable." Maybe they couldn't imagine space travel ever being possible?

> The idea that other worlds would be your deal breaker on Christianity is strange. "Vatican Holds Conference on Extraterrestrial Life": * https://www.universetoday.com/44713/vatican-holds-conference... * https://phys.org/news/2009-11-vatican-extra-terrestrial-life... * https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican-discusses-extraterres... See also the book Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? , co-authored by the directo…

If only Horace Walpole had lived another 212 years and been Catholic. Then he might not have considered them irreconcilable.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#45

Post by the_af »

throw0101a wrote: post #41
the_af wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were fine with two continents needing over a millennium to first hear about Jesus, but a plurality of worlds would be "irreconcilable." I think there's many ways to think about this. First, the place where Christ was supposed to have been born is "special". Clearly he (or god) chose to be born in some continent and not another. Now multiply to... how many planets are there in the universe? What's the chance th…

> First, the place where Christ was supposed to have been born is "special". Clearly he (or god) chose to be born in some continent and not another. Now multiply to... how many planets are there in the universe? What's the chance that Earth in particular was a special planet to be born in? Some discussion: > When asked how aliens could be redeemed, [Vatican Observatory head] Father Funes referred to the Gospel parabl…

Thanks for the reply! Upvoted your comment because it's genuine discussion.

I have to say I disagree though, or rather, I find Funes unconvincing (hey, a fellow Argentine!). First, it's just his personal opinion and not that of the Vatican or any official dogma, and I have no doubt individual Christians can still believe regardless of whatever happens in the cosmos. I think the "Enlightenment" perspective from the article is more about deeply thinking about the consequences and whether the idea of the Christian god is compatible with intelligent life in multiple planets.

I think Funes' line of thought is a bit of hand waving, and essentially an "I choose to believe regardless". For example:

> Aliens, he speculated, could already be redeemed because they could have remained in full friendship with God, while the human race “could be precisely the lost sheep, the sinners that need the shepherd.”

Well, yes... but the story of the original sin and humans needing redemption, us being "lost sheep", Christ dying "for our sins", etc, are all fundamental to Christianity. They are not an "accident", they ARE the religion. If you remove this aspect (e.g. because hypothetical aliens don't need redemption) then it turns into something entirely different. You cannot excise this from Christianity and still have it remain the same religion at a fundamental level.

Also, this humanizes aliens too much. What if the alien lifeform is a highly intelligent hive mind comprised of cannibalistic entities with no notion of the self (as we understand it)? Are they "already saved"? Or should they be redeemed? And how, exactly?

This is still an Earth- and human-centered point of view. I believe this is what all those philosophers considered at odds with the sentience on multiple worlds hypothesis.

I can see a different religion still being compatible with multiple worlds, but not Christianity.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#46

Post by hellectronic »

datadeft wrote: post #7

I think the Sumerian clay tablets (that is the bible is partially based of) reveal a lot more about the origins of human civilizations.

The Bible is hardly based on the clay tables. Genesis, the first book of Moses, tells the story of the flood, which the Sumerian refer to as Gilgamesh.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#47

Post by micahdeath »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #20
paulluuk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people living in space stations right now? Are you saying rockets are fake or do you mean that we don't have any permanent habitats on other planets? E.g. https://whoisinspace.com/

They are not living in space, they are temporary visitors on an unstable structure that requires constant resupply from Earth, absent of which they will all die and the structure falls back to Earth and is destroyed. Even with indefinite resupply, astronauts have to return to Earth for health reasons, because our bodies did not evolve / were not designed for space. Astronauts get irradiated and lose reproductive fert…

We are lose reproductive fertility on earth too.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#48

Post by owendlamb »

the_af wrote: post #45
throw0101a wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, the place where Christ was supposed to have been born is "special". Clearly he (or god) chose to be born in some continent and not another. Now multiply to... how many planets are there in the universe? What's the chance that Earth in particular was a special planet to be born in? Some discussion: > When asked how aliens could be redeemed, [Vatican Observatory head] Father Funes referred to the Gospel parabl…

Thanks for the reply! Upvoted your comment because it's genuine discussion. I have to say I disagree though, or rather, I find Funes unconvincing (hey, a fellow Argentine!). First, it's just his personal opinion and not that of the Vatican or any official dogma, and I have no doubt individual Christians can still believe regardless of whatever happens in the cosmos. I think the "Enlightenment" perspective from the ar…

What you say about Jesus' redemption being essential to Christianity is true. But you ask, what forms can this redemption take? Catholics like myself believe that Mary was conceived without sin and remained sinless her whole life by cooperating with the graces God gave her at every moment. At what moment did Jesus' crucifixion "save" her? At the moment of her conception—which, mysteriously, occurs before the crucifixion in time. So Mary never fell, but was saved from falling from the very start, and continued to be saved every moment of her earthly life.

From her example it's no large leap to say that other rational animals might also have been saved precisely by being prevented from falling. Still Mary would retain the special privilege of being the Mother of God. But there is plenty of room in the hierarchy of being for other unfallen men below her.

As for hive minds and such, once we identify a will in the action of any set of material, that set of material should be recognized as a single person. The field of metaphysics will no doubt help us find the right times to apply the words "rational", "animal", "man", "human", etc. to any new and strange physical configurations we discover. The key will be finding the boundary between one single will and another, whether or not that corresponds to what we would call a "stable" "physical" boundary.

Particularly I don't think referring to a "notion of the self" helps the search for these things, since the Christian view is not that any animal's "notion of self" generates its intelligence, but that God Himself infuses intelligence where He wills, and any creature's "notion of self" at one time or another is merely a result, not the cause, of its intelligence—and I even think it's possible to have either one without the other.

If you've got the time and interest, check out Dr. Paul Thigpen's book Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith, a fantastic overview of the debate over extraterrestrial life in the context of Christian history. The author's thesis is that the existence or nonexistence of extraterrestrial life—in any of a multitude of forms—poses no threat to the Christian, and particularly Catholic, faith.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#49

Post by orourke »

What’s most fascinating to me is the certainly with which they believed that other worlds were inhabited. Horace Walpole, for example, even abandoning his faith over the theological difficulties it presented. Hundreds of years later, however, we’re left with the Fermi Paradox.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#50

Post by owendlamb »

graemep wrote: post #3

This is full of distortions and omissions. Firstly, an "earth centred" cosmology did not assume all things were made for man. It held the earth was a small part of the solar system, which in turn was surrounded by far larger (infinite?) heavens. It is also worth thinking about what Medieval people place at the very centre of the earth, and therefore the exact centre of the universe. She mentions some possible answers…

> It is also worth thinking about what Medieval people place at the very centre of the earth, and therefore the exact centre of the universe.

You mean Satan, as depicted in Dante's Inferno, yes? Certainly Satan thinks himself the center of the universe!

It seems to me (from summaries that I've read) that the Divine Comedy shows the one "center of the universe" at the bottom of hell to be a false center, the real center being at the peak of heaven, outside of the physical order altogether, in the depths of the Trinity's interrelations.

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