Short form… the Pope’s Astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, says:
1) Aliens are out there
2) They have souls
3) He’d baptise ’em… but only if they asked
4) Intelligent Design is “bad theology”
Regardless of your views on religion/Christianity/Catholicism, these are respectable, adult positions for a Catholic priest to hold. Space aliens have been almost wholly the property of science fiction, and religion and science fiction have rarely mixed well. And when they do mix (such as “Deep Space Nine” or “Babylon 5”), what is usually depicted is that each alien race has its own distinct religion. But assuming that we ever meet aliens and that we are mutually comprehensible… it seems to me that there will be some religious interestingness. Almost certainly there will be some cargo-cult sort of religion form among the less advanced race. But there may also be some attempt at evangelizing each other. With any luck, whoever we eventually run into won’t be rampaging across the universe on some sort of Covenant/Necromonger/Muslim Jihad to convert or kill all before them, and we’ll be able to get along. And if we can, almost certainly there will be attempts at converting them to human religions. A Catholic Klingon is an interesting notion. A Scientologist Vorlon would be something of a head scratcher.
Science fiction tends to tackle some topics well before religion does… cloning comes to mind. And so SF has been attempting to understand aliens for more than a century, while religion has not. It is impossible to guess when we might actually meet aliens… but it’d be best for religions to try to wrap their minds around this concept sooner rather than later. One of the spookier visions of the future that I can envision has aliens landing on the White House lawn, ready to welcome us into the Galactic Federation… only to be set upon and burned at the stake by relig-u-whacks convinced that the aliens are actually demons. For all I know, the aliens might see evangelism as the direst insult imaginable; but that’s a lower order of probability than being offended at being attacked as Satan’s minions. And so… bring on the priests who’re willing to baptise the Martians.
7 Responses to “‘baptise an alien’”
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Seems like the only real SETI risk (one Hawking has misses) is alien transmission of a new religion or meme. I guess it could be a great payoff
if it were a system to keep people from being shitty to each other, but
it could also be the end of the world as we know it.
-G.
Good idea, Gar. Have you been reading Non Sequitur? Since the summer there has been an occasional tale of the Ekert, which is a creature that absorbs bad feelings (which are replaced by good feelings that the writer apparently feels are innate and covered by bad feelings). In the story arc, there’s a US government agency that recognizes that a loss of cowardice, cupidity, and general nastiness, will combine to destroy the motives for government.
Wouldn’t it just be our luck if we got the interstellar JWs? I mean, pass up first contact because we don’t want their damned flyers?
Jim
The Catholic Intelligentzia has been quite enlightened about ETI matters.
in 1986, when I was a MS Physics student at the Univ. of Buenos Aires (Argentina). I co-organized and co-chaired the 1st Latin-American SETI Conference there.
One of the featured speaker was a famous Argentinean theologian/philosopher and Jesuit priest, exposing about ‘SETI and Religion’.
He said that ETI were beyond the missionary role of the Church, because Jesus come down to Earth to save Mankind souls–not all the Universe’s.
Therefore ETI conversion and salvation were not issues for the Church.
According to him, God relationship with ETIs must be dealt on a species-by-species basis.
We have come a long way from Galileo…8-)
PS: I always wondered what would be his opinion on Silverberg’s tale ‘Good News from the Vatican’.
Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote about converting residents of other planets back in 1200s, a wee bit before “science fiction”…
Its OK, each time an alien crosses the Rio Grande they are baptized. OH!!!! He didn’t mean those kind of aliens.
Oh, and Andre, Simon? You left out Philip Jose’ Farmer. And Clarke had a couple of short stories on the religious theme. And Heinlein! Never forget Nehemiah Scudder.
The Catholic Church has not been sitting idlely by on the subject of cloning either. I’ve read several articles on the ethics of thearaputic and reproductive cloning, see http://www.ncbcenter.org.