God And The Aliens

Religion and science fiction have had an odd relationship. Take Star Trek for example: the original series rarely dealt with humans religions, but there were a few oblique references to Christianity being in existence in a  few episodes. But by the time of Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry declared that humanity  had thrown off superstition, and we as a species were now atheist. Oddly, though, just about everybody else in the universe was religious. And just as massively unlikely as it would be for humanity to become entirely atheist in just a few centuries was the unlikeliness of the mono-religious nature of every other species. Klingons all had the same religion, as did the Vulcans, the Bajorans and whoever else.

Babylon 5, on the other hand, had religion as a common and varied feature of many species, including humans. The only reference to religion fading out by the time of B-5 that I can recall was in one of the “Untold Stories” episodes that was filmed *years* after the series ended. But even so, other episodes showed that a thousand years after the time of B-5, the Catholic Church was still a force of some note.

Still, it remains an interesting question: what happens to religion if certain science fiction cliches come to pass? Perhaps the most likely ponderable is: “what happens to current human religions if we descover extraterrestrial life?” If that life is simple – bacteria, lichen, that sort of thing – I doubt any current religion would really care one way or the other. Where things get twitchy is if we come across a clearly intelligent species. If they come here, hover over our cities and land on the White House lawn. What happens if we learn to communicate with them and they turn out to be atheists? Religions around the world will be in an uproar. What if they turn out to have a religion that is directly comparable to, say, Hinduism or Catholicism? Clearly, those of the comparable religion will probably be pretty smug… those of other religions will probably feel… hell, I don’t know *what* they’d feel. And if they have their own religion(s) that is entirely unlike human ones, then what?

Many people of faith have tried to decide what the mere knowledge of intelligent extraterrestrials would do. There is a discussion of just that HERE. Some believe it would shake the Christian faith; others believe that it would strengthen it. Of course, all this would kinda depend on just what the aliens have to say about God.

One can hope that alien religions won’t include tenets like “kill all the humans” or “force everyone to convert,” but instead will be something more like “people can worship or not as they choose.” But even so, there is a likely source of trouble: humans. For some examples, take a look at this Free Republic thread. A sizable fraction of the respondants seem entirely convinced that since the Bible doesn’t mention aliens and the salvation thereof, they cannot exist. People tend to not react well when faced with the existence of what they firmly believe cannot exist. Other posters believe that any intelligent life discovered would be, in fact, demons in disguise. And while it would be sensible to be skeptical and cautious in the face of an advanced race of interstellar beings, going in with the assumption that they are, in fact, evil incarnate and that you need to fight and destroy them would *not* be the way to keep them from slagging our planet.

I suspect that one quick religious reaction to the announcement of aliens would be the creation of all new religions based around either worship of the aliens, or worship of whatever the faithful think the aliens worship. It will *not* be helpful if our first contact is with some smartass who decides to fork over his species equivalent of the “Twilight” novels with the claim that these are the holy texts worshipped across the cosmos.

Another source of trouble from humans would be the human missionary urge. What happens if they get here and are not only atheist, but had never even encountered the notion of God before? When the missionaries get to them, will the aliens laugh ’em out of the room… or go on a bender of conversions? Just what we *don’t* need is to have the aliens hovering over New York convert to Catholicism, while those hovering over Cairo convert to Shia Islam. Imagine suicide bombers with antimatter backpacks, and auto-da-feys using gamma ray lasers. Oy.

And then there’s another sci-fi cliche: time travel. Time travel features in a  *lot* of sci-fi. But let’s face it, they tend to get the targets wrong. If someone had a practical, reliable time machine, you can bet your ass that one of the first targets will be a religiously important moment. How many Christians *wouldn’t* want to pop back in time with a video camera to catch the sermon on the mount… and to hang around for a little while to see the Crucifixion and – probably most importantly –  the ressurection? How many Muslims wouldn’t want to go back to see Mohammad point at the moon and cause it to crack in half or ride off into the sky from the Temple Mount? How many Jews wouldn’t want to see the parting of the Red Sea or take a peek at the tablets with the Ten Commandments?

But sci-fi rarely features these episodes… and for good reason. If you have a time traveller go back to see Christ come back to life, unless you chicken out (the time machine is busted, the time traveller misses it by a few days or lands thousands of miles off course, etc.) you either have to confirm or deny the religion in question. If you portray this vital religious moment as hogwash, you piss off the believers. If you portray it as the real deal, you mark yourself as a religious nut. Eaiser to just avoid it. This is not to say that sci-fi *always* avoids the topic. “Behold the Man” for example, which is a tale sure to thrill the bejeebers out of the evangelicals in your life.

Time travel will, I feel fairly confident, remain the stuff of fiction for a very long time to come. But aliens? In principle, they could be here *now.* And if their existence is made known, you can be that every religion on Earth is going to notice. Whether that leads to good or bad will be left up to the believers. And given the history of True Believers, times will be… interesting.