What do we do if SETI is successful?

If SETI is successful it would be a fascinating to sit back and observe the deeply religious.

The Catholic church answered this question ages ago. I assume the other major religions did too. It's really not concerning at all to the institution; the major problem would be with people who don't actually understand their own religion.

Granted, this would be a lot of people, but I think it'd be a midrange of "kinda religious, but not enough to dive in"-types who are mostly freaking out over the revelation.

I don't think it would make any difference.

Religion is completely disconnected from reality, making up things as they go.

A signal from a life form would either be conspiracy or a signal from god, so strong that we cannot understand it.

Either way, no real difference with what we have today.

So, how does the story go? Only earth is blessed by god, because Jesus crashed here, and all the alien races are toast because they didn’t have a chance to learn about Christ, Savior of the strange bipeds from Earth?

I’m sure they came up with an elaborate story how Jesus loves sentient mollusks from Alpha Centauri, but I hope most people are smart enough to realise how little sense it all makes. I for one am curious how this plays out, if I’m lucky enough to witness it.

tl;dr Humans were first and most important, but if you're omnipotent and building an ant farm, it's logical to provide a nearly infinite number of things to interest and enrich your creations. If there are other creatures, and they're given a rational soul, they were also made aware of God's existence.

At the end of the day, the Catholics (at least) don't believe they were given full knowledge of the universe at some arbitrary point in the past. Instead, we were plopped into it and expected to explore and understand it. This will require us to occasionally update our teachings - just like how scientists need to update their teachings when they discover they didn't understand something before.

It's unbelievably obnoxious to simply assume everyone who doesn't scoff at religion simply isn't "smart enough". You clearly haven't taken much time to understand the topic if you can't come up with even one good argument. Even Richard Dawkins is able to connect with religious logic to a degree.

Check out: "UFO, End Times Delusion" as an example of a fundie take on extra terrestrials. A bit old now, not sure if they've updated it, but it's the kind of stuff I was raised in in the 80s/90s.

Note that I didn’t refer to religion as a whole, but the combination of Catholicism and sentient alien life in particular. I am definitely able to sympathise with believing in a kind of architect giving it all a sense of meaning, even if I don’t share that notion. But desperate attempts of wringing a somewhat coherent argument out of texts written for a feudal society millennia ago? That’s just coping.

It would depend a lot on what the alien species was like.

If they go "oh yeah Religion, that's a quirk of your biology, don't worry you will outgrow it in time" then yeah, that's problematic.

If they go "Oh, you say that the savior Jesus Christ was a human? That answers one of our biggest questions. The story never made much sense before. Boy, those Angels must be pretty freaky looking for you then." then that's entirely different.

Oh, then sure, I won't argue with you there. It's up to you at that point to find the arguments convincing or not.

I think the idea of Imago Dei is actually the most believable part. I am absolutely convinced that we're the forerunners of this universe. The first scenario where a creation becomes aware of its creator - even if I'm imagining the wrong architect.

Most will quickly look and discover the bible is silent on the topic which leaves plenty of room for God to create other aliens.

I'm not familiar with every religion, but I think most can say the same.

The Catholics learned a lot during their witch-hunts regarding heliocentrism..

There's a wonderful scifi novel based on these themes, called "The Sparrow"

Pretty harrowing reading.

Just how scientists learned a lot during their witch-hunts regarding Ignaz Semmelweis. I haven't trusted medicine since.