We've discovered and communicated with an extra-terrestrial species

[CaseS87]

Well not yet, but it is certainly possible sometime in the future. Imagine an alien civilization, imagine how its society would differ from ours. Chances are its system of "morality" would be completely different from ours, so different that it would probably take many years of study to begin to understand it.

If this scenario came true, how would it affect our religion? Who knows, we might even find out that these aliens have their own theology, not even closely resembling the major earth religions. What might even be more shocking to the religious community is that it is also likely aliens wont have any concept of a god, or anything supernatural.

Thoughts?

[theblackkeys]

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Well not yet, but it is certainly possible sometime in the future. Imagine an alien civilization, imagine how its society would differ from ours. Chances are its system of "morality" would be completely different from ours, so different that it would probably take many years of study to begin to understand it.

If this scenario came true, how would it affect our religion? Who knows, we might even find out that these aliens have their own theology, not even closely resembling the major earth religions. What might even be more shocking to the religious community is that it is also likely aliens wont have any concept of a god, or anything supernatural.

Thoughts?

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Define "our" system of morality.

[govman6767]

Ugg I can see it now. The aliens will invade us in the name of democracy (as aliens they may have an even better system of government.. who knows) GW will be put on trial for crimes against humanity and hung before the spring.

In all seriousness I believe in alien life. But I think they would ignore us out of pity. I just hope they don't pity us so much they don't obliterate us in the name of "doing us a favor"

[CaseS87]

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Well not yet, but it is certainly possible sometime in the future. Imagine an alien civilization, imagine how its society would differ from ours. Chances are its system of "morality" would be completely different from ours, so different that it would probably take many years of study to begin to understand it.

If this scenario came true, how would it affect our religion? Who knows, we might even find out that these aliens have their own theology, not even closely resembling the major earth religions. What might even be more shocking to the religious community is that it is also likely aliens wont have any concept of a god, or anything supernatural.

Thoughts?

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Define "our" system of morality.

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I define our system of morality as the way the majority of the people in our society at any given point in time determine what is morally good and morally wrong. That being said I think that EVERY human being has the same basic morals as I believe morality is nothing more than an evolutionary trait of our species.

[CityFan]

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I define our system of morality as the way the majority of the people in our society at any given point in time determine what is morally good and morally wrong. That being said I think that EVERY human being has the same basic morals as I believe morality is nothing more than an evolutionary trait of our species.

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In that case, wouldn't alien morality have devloped in a similar way? So actions that were in the interests of the species/society would be considered morally right, and actions that were destructive to the species would be considered morally wrong.

I doubt it would take us that long to understand. Unless, of course, these aliens had "evolved" through a very different process to our natural selcetion - I can't imagine what that might be.

[FortunaMaximus]

Sure, in the start, they would have to emerge randomly and evolve through natural selection.

To assign a moral or emotional component to those species is a human fallacy. That cannot be taken for granted, as there are differing levels of empathy and compassion in our animal kingdom.

There's no doubt animals with higher learning processes are capable of compassion and love. But I tend to think you have to care to take extra steps in evolution. Perhaps not about other individuals, but about life itself.

"Sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed." That line from one of Clarke's novels has haunted me on some level for years, and for good reason. This is an old Universe and there's a probability that the Fermi Paradox hasn't been violated because we don't have the search capability even intrasystem, never mind the Oorts or the nearest hundred suns.

But what can be taken for certain is that carbon is only an essential element for carbon-evolved life.

As for boron, silicon, who knows, maybe even EM flux, there exists enough constant activity that life can emerge if the organic or EM soup is of the right mix to trigger initial conditions for life.

If you're familiar with the Kardashev scale, you have to realize as far as possible technological civilizations go, we've barely had our cord cut. Seems illogical, somehow, that we would stay in our polluted Garden and not go elsewhere.

And in time, certainly, patterns will emerge. What those patterns prove or disprove will be intriguing. I don't know. I'm just another pattern recog savant. It'd be nice to have some anomalous data to work with.

[thylacine]

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Well not yet, but it is certainly possible sometime in the future. Imagine an alien civilization, imagine how its society would differ from ours. Chances are its system of "morality" would be completely different from ours, so different that it would probably take many years of study to begin to understand it.

If this scenario came true, how would it affect our religion? Who knows, we might even find out that these aliens have their own theology, not even closely resembling the major earth religions. What might even be more shocking to the religious community is that it is also likely aliens wont have any concept of a god, or anything supernatural.

Thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

While we can't necessarily think of all possibilities we can make reasonable generalizations about what is possible. Such an alien species would probably be both intelligent and social, to be able to succeed to this extent. Such characteristics would certainly be products of (biological) evolution, and as intelligent and social beings, they would have a culture which would itself evolve memetically. Thus they would have both an internal morality, having evolved as social beings, as well as a cultural morality. This is basically true for humans as well.

Of course, religion is completely irrelevant to questions of morality. The question is, would such a successful spacefaring species realize this or not. I think it is highly likely they would realize this, just as a decent proportion of humans realize this.

Failure to realize that religion is completely irrelevant to questions of morality is in the long term, an impediment to the success of an intelligent social species, so I think there is a selection effect that would tend to make spacefaring species not particularly religious.

[FortunaMaximus]

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Well not yet, but it is certainly possible sometime in the future. Imagine an alien civilization, imagine how its society would differ from ours. Chances are its system of "morality" would be completely different from ours, so different that it would probably take many years of study to begin to understand it.

If this scenario came true, how would it affect our religion? Who knows, we might even find out that these aliens have their own theology, not even closely resembling the major earth religions. What might even be more shocking to the religious community is that it is also likely aliens wont have any concept of a god, or anything supernatural.

Thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

While we can't necessarily think of all possibilities we can make reasonable generalizations about what is possible. Such an alien species would probably be both intelligent and social, to be able to succeed to this extent. Such characteristics would certainly be products of (biological) evolution, and as intelligent and social beings, they would have a culture which would itself evolve memetically. Thus they would have both an internal morality, having evolved as social beings, as well as a cultural morality. This is basically true for humans as well.

Of course, religion is completely irrelevant to questions of morality. The question is, would such a successful spacefaring species realize this or not. I think it is highly likely they would realize this, just as a decent proportion of humans realize this.

Failure to realize that religion is completely irrelevant to questions of morality is in the long term, an impediment to the success of an intelligent social species, so I think there is a selection effect that would tend to make spacefaring species not particularly religious.

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What?

[soon2bepro]

You can't even begin to make the very first of hypothesis about what "they" will be like without first assuming quite a bit about "them".

What are we talking about?

Life forms? If so, how do we define what a living being constitutes without referring specifically to earthly life?

Intelligent entities? If so, how do you define intelligence and entity? etc etc

[vhawk01]

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Well not yet, but it is certainly possible sometime in the future. Imagine an alien civilization, imagine how its society would differ from ours. Chances are its system of "morality" would be completely different from ours, so different that it would probably take many years of study to begin to understand it.

If this scenario came true, how would it affect our religion? Who knows, we might even find out that these aliens have their own theology, not even closely resembling the major earth religions. What might even be more shocking to the religious community is that it is also likely aliens wont have any concept of a god, or anything supernatural.

Thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

While we can't necessarily think of all possibilities we can make reasonable generalizations about what is possible. Such an alien species would probably be both intelligent and social, to be able to succeed to this extent. Such characteristics would certainly be products of (biological) evolution, and as intelligent and social beings, they would have a culture which would itself evolve memetically. Thus they would have both an internal morality, having evolved as social beings, as well as a cultural morality. This is basically true for humans as well.

Of course, religion is completely irrelevant to questions of morality. The question is, would such a successful spacefaring species realize this or not. I think it is highly likely they would realize this, just as a decent proportion of humans realize this.

Failure to realize that religion is completely irrelevant to questions of morality is in the long term, an impediment to the success of an intelligent social species, so I think there is a selection effect that would tend to make spacefaring species not particularly religious.

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What?

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Holy cow, did FM just ask someone ELSE to be more clear in a post?!?!? /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[FortunaMaximus]

Eat me. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Semtex]

Well what if its some kind of Ender's Game hive mind species? Forget about morality at that point.

[Jim T]

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If this scenario came true, how would it affect our religion? Who knows, we might even find out that these aliens have their own theology, not even closely resembling the major earth religions. What might even be more shocking to the religious community is that it is also likely aliens wont have any concept of a god, or anything supernatural.

[/ QUOTE ]

And what if the first communication we received from them were essentially Biblical verses? I mean, if we're going to make suppositions about these imaginary creatures, why not?

Talk about shocking!

[CaseS87]

This thread kind of went off in a direction that I didn't intend. Obviously we can wildly speculate what the nature of these aliens will be forever, and no one person would be more wrong/right than the next, but what we do know is that it is extremely improbable that they would even come close to resembling us in any way.

The intent of this thread was to discuss how religious communities would react as this discovery would have huge religious implications.

[Jim T]

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what we do know is that it is extremely improbable that they would even come close to resembling us in any way.

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How exactly do we know that?

[soon2bepro]

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The intent of this thread was to discuss how religious communities would react as this discovery would have huge religious implications.

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In star trek, religion, war, greed, disease are all but gone within 50 years of meeting similar inteligent lifeforms, who are a little more advanced than humans (this happens in year 2050 or something, right after a third world war).

With the new technological advances no one needs to work because a few altruistic or fame seeking people do that as a hobby. So there is almost no more private property, not because it's not allowed but because it doesn't make sense to them.

[govman6767]

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The intent of this thread was to discuss how religious communities would react as this discovery would have huge religious implications.

[/ QUOTE ]

In star trek, religion, war, greed, disease are all but gone within 50 years of meeting similar inteligent lifeforms, who are a little more advanced than humans (this happens in year 2050 or something, right after a third world war).

With the new technological advances no one needs to work because a few altruistic or fame seeking people do that as a hobby. So there is almost no more private property, not because it's not allowed but because it doesn't make sense to them.

[/ QUOTE ]

The major flaw in this type of thinking is solved with one question..... What if the Klingons found us first instead of the Vulcans ??

On a more serious note I do not think it's possible for the religious nuts living on this planet to believe in aliens.

But even if they did they would mold the aliens arrival to their beliefs...

God sent them here as punishment (if they were evil)
God sent them here as a reward (if they were good)

It's hard to make an argument against religion because you always get the same argument from them.....
God can do anything and be anything .... HA HA WE WIN THE ARGUMENT.

Personally I think we have nothing to offer the universe at this time and if aliens do exist they would look at this planet and laugh we would be the universal equivilant of a Seinfeld episode.

Unless aliens had male like sex organs then they would accept the DNA of numerous Females for cloning purposes.
Which is possible because they do not have stupid laws that prevent people from being cloned.

It is also my belief that the aliens WOULD BE considered evil by our religious nuts...
For a race to become that advanced technology wise they would have had to thrown morals right out the door.

[CaseS87]

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It is also my belief that the aliens WOULD BE considered evil by our religious nuts...

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Without a doubt.

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For a race to become that advanced technology wise they would have had to thrown morals right out the door.

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You have to remember that morality is an entirely relative term. It could be perfectly moral in an alien society for example for the mother to eat her first born or something, you get the idea.