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Vatican Conference on alien life and Christianity
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The Vatican is holding a conference with scientists and religious leaders to discuss what the effects the discovery of intelligent life beyond the Earth would have on the Roman Catholic Church. Such a discovery would have profound implications for Church doctrine and Christianity in general.
“Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God “made man in his own image”.
“Furthermore, Jesus Christ’s role as saviour would be confused: would other worlds have their own, tentacled Christ-figures, or would Earth’s Christ be universal?”
On the subject of the Messiah, Ray Bradbury once wrote a story called 'The Man', collected in The Illustrated Man, about a crew of Earth astronauts who find Christ on another planet whose inhabitants seem to be more receptive to his message of peace and good will.
Some secularists suggest that the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe would be a great, perhaps fatal blow to religion. But religion is, if nothing else, adaptable. Christianity has reconciled itself to scientific discoveries ranging from a sun centered solar system to (for the most part) evolution.
The interesting question is, will aliens have religion such as we humans understand it? Is belief in God and transcendence a solely human trait or something that is universal for any being with intelligence and consciousness? The challenge to Earth religions may not be so much the fact of alien life, but what such aliens believe.
A Dramatiztion of 'The Man' by Ray Bradbury
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