re: #144 mmmirele

My response? Some versions of Christianity would react VERY BADLY to intelligent life that was not part of the (mythical, nonexistent, never happened) fall of Adam and Eve. In fact, even if the life was just some single-celled life forms in the under-ice oceans of Europa or something, they’d want to blow it up as Satanic. Because only God can create life, and he only created life here, or something.

Oh, and I do strongly, virulently disagree with giving tax money to theologians, even if it was with the stipulation that they needed to come up with ways to talk their fanatical followers out of nuking non-earth life into nonexistence. Which it probably wasn’t. Just don’t give theologians tax money. Let the Templeton Foundation fund that kind of stuff.

Along those lines, here’s a video from the people at Kurzgesagt, which posits why we should not look for aliens. It’s a thought experiment, but yeah, if the aliens are like us, they’ll want to blow us up, probably.

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As 10 yr old boys, the religious consequence of BEMs was of great interest. The nuns in Catechism had a ready answer—the aliens would have no theological consequence for Christianity. Christ comes here as a result of Original Sin, transmitted through Adam’s descendants. Their planet would have their own origin story and would get any needed redemption through a separate economy of salvation.