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What do we do if SETI is successful?

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174 points leephillips | 2 comments | 20 Oct 25 17:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.511s | source
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skc ◴[21 Oct 25 20:04 UTC] No.45660974[source]▶
If SETI is successful it would be a fascinating to sit back and observe the deeply religious.
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kulahan ◴[21 Oct 25 20:08 UTC] No.45661015[source]▶
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.

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9dev ◴[21 Oct 25 20:23 UTC] No.45661204[source]▶
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.

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kulahan ◴[21 Oct 25 20:34 UTC] No.45661344[source]▶
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.

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1. 9dev ◴[21 Oct 25 20:46 UTC] No.45661483[source]▶
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.
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2. kulahan ◴[21 Oct 25 21:01 UTC] No.45661652[source]▶
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.