Religious viewpoints on extra-terrestrial sentient life...

Post Reply New Topic

Ahh Well I think if intelligent life found us they would be quite intrigued with us, they will definitely want to study our society.

I bet there is intelligent extraterrestrial life out there. The odds that this isn't true are astronomical. It is happening on our own planet, humans are still mostly animals living on instincts, but our intellect is evolving. The point of true intelligence is when humans completely evolve from our instincts. If it is happening on our little speck of a dot in the vast universe, it most likely already happened elsewhere as well. Any planet that has life has most likely got a whole complex ecosystem like Earth's. Any evolving alien species must have some sort of 'instincts' to survive and exist within the ecosystem. Then evolve technology and civilization wise until they don't need the ecosystem, and then their instincts are useless.

Their civilizations and technology could be millions and millions of years old. Maybe to the point of having the knowledge of the beginnings of their civilization lost into history. From the beginnings of their evolution as mere animals to societies and true intelligence.

Our little civilization would be a great opportunity to maybe learn about their own beginnings. Any intelligent life out there, and they have all this intelligence. They ain't going to just fly around in their ships for fun. They are probably curious as hell, their biggest drive would to be gain more insight into the universe and the meaning of life.

Too far out?

Evolution away from instincts is an impossibility, either there will be new instincts to replace the old, or there will be no creature. It is inconceivable how much we are driven by one illogical drive or another, and to claim we can escape them is to ignore how important these things are for us. Instincts are not useless after technology, they are the defining characteristics of an organism, embedded so deeply that it is impossible to describe the essence of the animal's behavior without them. Just had to comment on that one piece of things.

Maybe new instincts that coincide with life in a technological civilization? Could that be a possible path in evolution? Our primal instincts are useful for non-technological society that lives off the ecosystem. I believe primal instincts do not mix in well at all within a technological civilization.

And the division between primal and modern is somewhat hard to tell. The only things I can think of are that people of the future would be better off with less emotions but that might only go well with increasing levels of intellect. I just know that some instincts that some people regard as negatives are another person's positives.

Instinct could be the very reason we ever make contact with aliens. After all, the urge to reproduce is instinctive, which leads to increased population, which eventually leads to the desire/requirement for a bit of liebensraum, and when you've filled up the planet you have, where else do you go?

(Of course that does lead to the little problem of what to do when someone is already lieben in the raum you want, and just a google of the term liebensraum shows you exactly where that can lead.)

Intelligent life on other planets? In my opinion, probability of .999...

The big question is, will we ever be able to make contact with these other civilizations? The sheer size of space is going to make this rather difficult. If we were to intercept a signal from a mere 1000 light years away, even if we travel at close to light speed it would still take us over a thousand years to get out there. And a lot can happen to a civilization in a thousand years.

Just as a lot can happen to a civilization's religions in a thousand years.

I don't see any reason for extraterrestrial beings to have a unified perspective on gods -- Just like here, I can imagine multiple viewpoints. I can also imagine the extraterrestrial beings *as* the gods themselves. And their own gods might be travellers from even more remote worlds.

One fault of scientists who study the possiblity of intelligent life on other worlds is that they automatically assume life would have to live in an atmosphere that is survivable to OUR standards. Consider that it took thousands of years for humans to evolve and adopt to our atmosphere, and life will adopt whatever it needs to in order to survive it's terrain through the process of evolution.
So who is to say intelligent life couldn't have been brought to to adopt to a completely different atmosphere, one in which we could not survive? Who'se to say they could survive in our atmosphere?
We already have evidence here on Earth alone to back up these claims. We have land creatures, and we have sea creatures. A land creature won't survive for so long in water, and vice versa. Because evolution developed gills and such things for them to breath in water, while it gave us our respiratory system to breath oxygen.

John 14: 2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

I remember when I used to go to church, there was someone who said this, I don't think others there agreed with it, but he said to us that there are aliens but they were like how Adam and Eve were suppose to be, inmortals without a sin, and as Lucifer (The Devil) went to earth, only the earth was damned, the other worlds didn't because there were no demons there. That's one of a few religous points of view I suppose.

If there are actually aliens and intelligent life out there, they must had some kind of religion, if they are advanced enough that religion doesn't exist, it probably exist before, if they are similar to us.

If they are exactly like us, in mentality, there could be parallels between our worlds.
They would have started somewhere, very likely that they had religions before, just like humans did and do now, at first to be able to control their people.

Would they be christians? I don't think so. Christ, Jehova, and all the terms and the Bible itself is absolutely an earth thing, if they are religious, they would have different stories, different names and stuff.

If they happen to be a lot more advanced in technology and science than earth, very likely they wouldn't be religious anymore.

Perhaps the 'being like us' might be more being like US with Asperger's rather than us as Neurotypical, or even some other way entirely. They could be more like dolphins or whales, or insects or sentient slime and we would never know.

not much religious life in slime mold, but then, it is just cause I didn't see little churches when they were under my microscope. . .

Merle

Well, the evolving technology of UFOs has a benevolent angle to it. It doesnt have to be malevolent.

Perhaps we are being mentored. We are being shown something so that we strive for it. They dont wish direct contact, but they want to lead us a certain way. To give focus.

Not that I particularly believe that, but its as likely as demons leading us astray.

HA! Perfect pwn!

merle

All we can say certainly is that, statistically, there almost HAS to be intelligent life out there scattered about the universe. I seriously doubt earth is an exception, lets put it this way;
if you pick up a single grain of sand off the beach and compare it to the rest of our world, well our world is LESS than that much of the universe. I see nothing that makes our world special, we are a planet in a system of planets that rotate around our sun, a star. All active stars are essentially suns to someone or somewhere.
But scientists make a mistake in their blind assumptions that intelligent life would have to live in conditions favorable of supporting human life. Because honestly we know NOTHING of them for now. As I stated in my other post here, it has taken us MILLIONS of years to adopt and evolve to our atmosphere, so who is to say that intelligent life on another world may not have evolved to a different atmosphere over as long of a time? One that perhaps humans couldn't survive in?

Last edited by snake321 on 17 Aug 2007, 6:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

well, after hearing rumour that scientists have possibly managed to make photons travel faster than light, that opens up the possibility that other things can do it too, which in turn opens up the possibility (eventually) of FTL travel. So we might yet get a chance to find out what exactly IS out there.

(Also, if we can do it, then other intellligent life could do it, or might have already done it.)

The future might just get more interesting now. (because so far the future has sucked quite badly, and isnt all that much different from the past, in a living memory sense. Goddamit, where are the rocket cars and the robot servants already?)

In Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, we go out looking for intelligent life elsewhere, and eventually find it. Only to discover that it's us.

Schrödinger's Aliens!