Posted on 11/05/2005 4:49:35 AM PST by Momaw Nadon
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Galaxy-gazing scientists surely wonder about what kind of impact finding life or intelligent beings on another planet would have on the world.
But what sort of effect would it have on Catholic beliefs? Would Christian theology be rocked to the core if science someday found a distant orb teeming with little green men, women or other intelligent forms of alien life? Would the church send missionaries to spread the Gospel to aliens? Could aliens even be baptized? Or would they have had their own version of Jesus and have already experienced his universal or galactic plan of salvation?
Curious Catholics need not be space buffs to want answers to these questions and others when they pick up a 48-page booklet by a Vatican astronomer.
Through the British-based Catholic Truth Society, U.S. Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno has penned his response to what he says are questions he gets from the public "all the time" when he gives talks on his work with the Vatican Observatory.
Titled "Intelligent Life in the Universe? Catholic Belief and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life," the pocket-sized booklet is the latest addition to the society's "Explanations Series," which explores Catholic teaching on current social and ethical issues.
Brother Consolmagno told Catholic News Service that the whole question of how Catholicism would hold up if some form of life were discovered on another planet has piqued people's curiosity "for centuries."
He said his aim with the booklet was to reassure Catholics "that you shouldn't be afraid of these questions" and that "no matter what we learn, it doesn't invalidate what we already know" and believe. In other words, scientific study and discovery and religion enrich one another, not cancel out each other.
If new forms of life were to be discovered or highly advanced beings from outer space were to touch down on planet Earth, it would not mean "everything we believe in is wrong," rather, "we're going to find out that everything is truer in ways we couldn't even yet have imagined," he said.
The Book of Genesis describes two stories of creation, and science, too, has more than one version of how the cosmos may have come into being.
"However you picture the universe being created, says Genesis, the essential point is that ultimately it was a deliberate, loving act of a God who exists outside of space and time," Brother Consolmagno said in his booklet.
"The Bible is divine science, a work about God. It does not intend to be physical science" and explain the making of planets and solar systems, the Jesuit astronomer wrote.
Pope John Paul II once told scientists, "Truth does not contradict truth," meaning scientific truths will never eradicate religious truths and vice versa.
"What Genesis says about creation is true. God did it; God willed it; and God loves it. When science fills in the details of how God did it, science helps get a flavor of how rich and beautiful and inventive God really is, more than even the writer of Genesis could ever have imagined," Brother Consolmagno wrote.
The limitless universe "might even include other planets with other beings created by that same loving God," he added. "The idea of there being other races and other intelligences is not contrary to traditional Christian thought.
"There is nothing in Holy Scripture that could confirm or contradict the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe," he wrote.
Brother Consolmagno said that, like scientists, people of faith should not be afraid of saying "I just don't know."
Human understanding "is always incomplete. It is crazy to underestimate God's ability to create in depths of ways that we will never completely understand. It is equally dangerous to think that we understand God completely," he said in his booklet.
He told CNS that his booklet tries to show "the fun of thinking" about what it would mean if God had created more than life on Earth. Such speculation "is very worthwhile if it makes us reflect on things we do know and have taken for granted," he said.
He said asking such questions as "Would aliens have souls?" or "Does the salvation of Christ apply to them?" helps one "appreciate what it means for us to have a soul" and helps one better "recognize what the salvation of Christ means to us."
Brother Consolmagno said he tried to show in the booklet that "the church is not afraid of science" and that Catholics, too, should be unafraid and confident in confronting all types of speculation, no matter how "far out" and spacey it may be.
For science fiction fans, Trekkies, or telescope-toting space enthusiasts, the booklet's last chapter reveals where there are references to extraterrestrials in the Bible.
Brother Consolmagno said the Bible is also replete with references to or descriptions of "nonhuman intelligent beings" who worship God. For example, he said the Scriptures talk about angels, "sons of God" who took human wives, and "heavenly beings" that "shouted for joy" when God created the earth.
The booklet, however, offers no "hard and fast answers" to extraterrestrial life, since such speculation is "better served by science fiction or poetry than by definitions of science and theology," he wrote.
He said the booklet is meant "to put a smile on your face" and, perhaps, make people think twice about who could be peeking at Earth from alien telescopes far, far away.
It’s light-speed time dilation. To hime, he’s only been gone a week. To us, it has been 6 years. I bet he still thinks Bush is president, so lucky him!
Besides, it’s a neat subject, and a certain amount of undead threads keep FR happy.
Freegards
Crap, I hate it when this happens! Particularly when they promise subspace translight travel so that there are no relativistic screw-ups!
Less exotically, I was replying to a post dated for the subjectively-perceived present date, had not read the dates for the previous postings, and assumed that this was a real-time objectively current discussion. Always late to the party, dang it!
Besides, it’s a neat subject.
Well, it will be until about 2017, when the Pope (yeah, same one) releases his--well, this is probably a violation of temporo-peregrinatorial policy, so better shut up. All I can say is: Keep your eye on the Valle Marineris in the summer of 2014 when a new Rover package misfires its retros but lands safely in the atmosphere-dense bottom of the canyon, and the first images back, showing the consequences of the landing, lead to an international firestorm of legal and moral debate, prompting the Pope to issue his statement (I've forgotten the Latin, but its English translation is:) That Which Can Sue Has a Soul, a conclusion based on the ideas that (a) one who sues can understand, however imperfectly, a concept of justice, (b)that he, she or squaa perceives a concrete injustice performed against oneself or another, and (c) believes that restitution must be made to correct the injustice--clearly indicating that the creature is sentient, has a moral code which is social rather than merely individual and idiosyncratic, and believes that the balance of justice must be maintained.
Oh--and that "manned mission to Mars" thing--it's not happening.
Ever.
bttt
Man I’d love it if life was found on Mars, just so it was nice.
I used google translate, the Pope’s future encyclical could be called: “Quod potest, cui mens litigare”, but I suspect that the Pope’s latin might be a tad more precise than google’s. There should be a chapter about keeping their tentacles off our Earth women.
Freegards
Might be “Quicquid agere posset, cui mens”. Or “Facit quicquid lis habet animam”.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to imply something like “I sue, therefore I am...”
CS Lewis probed the edges of the question in his Space Trilogy. Personally, I think it would be fascinating if an incredibly advanced race landed here and began preaching about the glory of God, and how primative, narrow and undeveloped a mind would have to be to fail to see the evidence of God as it exists throughout the entire universe.
That’s better than me, the best I could do would be “Atthay ichway ancay uesay ashay aya oulsay”.
Freegards
Tentacled Martians are a pure Wellsian fictional boogeyman construction, based on a 19th-century Victorian squeamishness about octopi and other tentacled creatures. (Well, I shouldn't talk--I've rarely been able to stomach calamari myself.)
For a more up-to-date and believable description of Martian (or, as the natives call it, Malacandrian) life, check out the slightly fictionalized account of Professor E. Ransom's adventures on Mars, in C. S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet. It's a real eye-opener. Be sure not to miss the last chapter, where Ransom corrects (and adds to) Lewis' account of the Martian adventures.
I have no idea why xenobiologists have not been all over this thing. Maybe it's the "fiction" label usually put on it.
No, this is the Lawyer's Creed, and therefore probably copyrighted. Unauthorized usage would result in a concrete and specific application of the principle it contains.
I don’t think you’ll get the best of Mrs.D O. She’s good...:O)
Both angels and demons are extraterresterials as they were not born of the earth...
I know who I'm thinking about, but I'm not sure they're the same entities that you're thinking about. Mine are the restless children, whose parents keep a firm hand on them till the prayers are finished--and no doubt they are all over the internet as soon as they can get home--or sooner, if they have those diabolical Apple (redundant--sorry) I-pads ot I-phones or I-anything.
The other possibility is my buddy Horace, who is actually out the transept door as soon as the last phonemes of the Benedicat vos are out of Father's mouth--however, he generally eschews cyberspace, and is just eager for lunch.
If you have any specific information about other (and malevolent) entities, I would appreciate hearing about them.
I think.
How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
Some will be very dangerous.
I wouldn't even mind if it was testy and argumentative!
“Tentacled Martians are a pure Wellsian fictional boogeyman construction, based on a 19th-century Victorian squeamishness about octopi and other tentacled creatures. (Well, I shouldn’t talk—I’ve rarely been able to stomach calamari myself.)”
Well, you’ll have to pry my collection of Weird Tales outta my cold dead hands. As far as squid or octopi goes, you either have to cook it fast under high heat or cook it slow for hours. Anything in between is like eating rubber bands. Beer will help with that.
“For a more up-to-date and believable description of Martian (or, as the natives call it, Malacandrian) life, check out the slightly fictionalized account of Professor E. Ransom’s adventures on Mars, in C. S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet. It’s a real eye-opener. Be sure not to miss the last chapter, where Ransom corrects (and adds to) Lewis’ account of the Martian adventures.”
It’s where I took my FR handle from. That Hideous Strength could have been written yesterday. My other favorite Christain sci-fi/speculative fiction guy is Gene Wolfe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Wolfe
He has a good take on good aliens too. Plus, he’s a Korean War vet and helped invent the machine that makes pringles.
Freegards
Well duh on me! A bit slow on the uptake from time to time. Should have been obvious.
That Hideous Strength could have been written yesterday.
Shoot, it could have been written tomorrow! Or "could be going to have been written tomorrow." The Latin quotation on my FR home page (click the name below) is from the book.
My other favorite Christain sci-fi/speculative fiction guy is Gene Wolfe:
I seem to recall reading some of Mr Wolfe's work some years ago, but cannot now recall much of anything about it--this says more for my advancing age than it does about the quality of his writing.
Plus, he’s a Korean War vet and helped invent the machine that makes pringles.
May his name be honored above that of, well, some other guys!
Well, gee, there was this Christian guy what was named, like, St. Thomas Aquinas, who not only didn't reject it, but made Aristotle's investigative method the foundation of his Summa Theologiae.
He's going to be so embarrassed when he finds this out!
You’re in Tennessee?
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