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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

Would Finding Aliens Shatter Religious Beliefs?

• http://www.livescience.com, Mike Wall
 The discovery of life beyond Earth would shake up our view of humanity's place in the universe, but it probably wouldn't seriously threaten organized religion, experts say.

Religious faith remains strong in much of the world despite scientific advances showing that Earth is not the center of the universe, and that our planet's organisms were not created in their present form but rather evolved over billions of years. So it's likely that religion would also weather any storms caused by the detection of E.T., researchers say.

"I think there are reasons that we might initially think there are going to be some problems," said Doug Vakoch, director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "My own hunch is they're probably not going to be as severe as we might initially think."
 
Vakoch spoke Sunday (June 24) at the SETICon 2 conference, in a panel discussion called "Would Discovering ET Destroy Earth's Religions?"
 

24 Comments in Response to

Comment by PureTrust
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Wow! It's amazing to see just how close to home these little comments of mine are hitting among this anti-freedom group!

Comment by panocha
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I agree. Let's get it over with.  Let's use this space for meaning debates of issues that trouble the nation, not issues of trouble-makers.

Comment by Ufactdirt
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 Guys, do it quickly. I can't stand his nonsense any longer!

Comment by bolopunch
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O.k., let me join your fun. Why don't we take him to my ranch for a vacation. I have a big house there with a lot of rooms where he can recuperate after undergoing a lobotomy. Give me a hint of approval and my people will arrange for his immediate leave of absence from this site -- for the good of his mental health.  

Comment by Joseph Vanderville
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Annonymous75, thanks for taking the pain of explaining to a very confused weak mind what it means to say "Cheers, JV". Since he can't get out of this page like how a tick is caught in an adhesive tape, let's take him for a ride. He is fun while he makes himself a butt of a joke while around. Thank your luck, Freedom Forum has a natural Don Quixote!

Comment by bolopunch
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There seems to be a "retarded" mentally having difficulty understanding comments. Is this why childish explanation is necessary everytime one makes a comment?

Comment by Anonymous75
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You must at least have self-respect or reasonable ego -- not just echo. JV and the Avengers have an ego of righteousness. You have nothing but the echo of either a loony or a terrorist. Cheers, JV.

[Note: Don't make a retarded mistake in your read that it is JV saying "Cheers", nuthead ... it is Cheers for JV or should be read as Cheers to you, JV ... just to be sure that a kindergarten mentality like yours gets it right.]

Comment by PureTrust
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Do you realize what you are doing, JV, when you use your GV alter-ego to soothe yourself? You are doing the exact thing talked about in the "Bad Memories can be Neutralised" article found at http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/114044-2012-06-27-bad-memories-can-be-neutralised.htm.

Amazing!
 

Comment by George Voit
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Ha ...ha...ho.oo, he, he..ee! JV, you are too much for him, Sir. Professor, I know you since I first met you as Guest Speaker in our graduate law school symposium while I was taking my Ph.D. some time ago in 2005. I know you very well Sir, and I hope you still remember me. You are awesome. I could write a book about you. This little square peg in a round hole has no idea who he is dealing with.

 
Comment by Joseph Vanderville
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Thanks for taking your hat off to me. With your hat off, you give the people a chance to see a real egghead.

Comment by PureTrust
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Hey, JV. I've gotta commend you. Your writing quality is "up" a little from what it was a few short months ago. Have you been taking night literacy courses?

One of the things that I have a hard time doing is working by aliases. I am so picky with my language usage, that I would need full-fledged, full-time concentration to do it the way you are doing it. My hat's off to you.
 

Comment by Joseph Vanderville
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Who won't be scared.  Those "weirdos" are incapable of doing anything rational. Even their thought process is disturbed or convoluted. What comes out is pure nonsense.

Comment by panocha
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JV, you mean that this "weirdo" using the name PureTrust, is either a hiding  Extraterrestrial [a fugitive ET] or Larken Rose who wants Americans to kill a government official and shoot cops dead? You scare me.

Comment by PureTrust
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1 Corinthians 4:12b-13a (NIV1984)

"12b When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; 13 when we are slandered, we answer kindly."
 

Comment by Anonymous75
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Who can disprove or even suspect, that the name PureTrust, the person who likes to appear pious and religious by occasionally talking about God and mentioning the Bible is actually a pseudonym or just a cover-up of Larken Rose who does not only hate the Federal Government but wants to kill government officials and shoot cops dead? He is a confused personality, as you can see in his writings that are neither here nor there.

Comment by Joseph Vanderville
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The dull-headed don't get it. Guys, your reference to my position repeatedly written probably in a dozen of my comments on this subject confused the "weirdoes". You assume they have a working memory and the capacity to understand what you are writing about, unfortunately, they don't have any of these. Next time please write more clearly, the more elementary, the better, like reducing or scaling down your witty comment to the level of kindergarten or to the mentally retarded so that those dumbbells can understand you.

Comment by PureTrust
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You have forgotten, haven't you, about what the writer to the Hebrews said in Hebrews 13:2 (NIV):

"Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it."

So, we DO have angels walking among us. And since they are walking among us, and we greet them without realizing that they are angels, how much closer to aliens can we get?

On the other hand, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus." Really close, at times.
 

Comment by Joseph Vanderville
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Thanks guys for giving credit to where I stand which you do understand fully well. My position on same sex marriage is not political like that of Obama. The practice of same sex marriages is alienated from the mainstream population of this country, although a few is tolerated -- to that point where they are considered weird or different from us. When Extraterrestrial Beings land on Earth, their oddities or weirdness maybe difficult to distinguish from what we already have here among us. That when Extraterrestrial aliens land on Earth, those intelligent ETs will "shatter" our religious belief is a knee-jerk assumption if not perfunctorily hogwash.

Comment by PureTrust
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This is so funny. In the comments, below, JV writes a comment in the name of his alias, Anonymous75, and signs it JV. Then he realizes his mistake, and uses his Suka alias to try to cover it up. Funny, funny.

I probably shouldn't have said anything. Now he'll know the jig is up. I should have left him guessing. He'll still be up in the air about something else that I won't mention. Heh, heh.

Comment by Suka
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I join Annonymous75 in cheering JV, the original spitfire of hope and happinnes of all Americans born here, and of those who legally came and live here in this land of free. God Bless the United States of America!

Comment by Anonymous
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I think what we are talking about here are Extraterrestrial aliens – not "Supernatural" aliens like angels and demons. This eerie and airy view of angels and demons is over the edge or out of the loop of discussion coming from one drowning with an overflow of adrenalin.

I agree with Annonymous 75 that Extraterrestrial Beings are "weird". They don’t think and act like human beings do. His citation of aliens among us that look like us but actually are not what they are or purport to be, is a case in point. I have gay friends that do those bizzare"stuffs", but I go 100% with JV’s observation that their presence among my circle of acquaintances had not changed my religious belief a bit.

Comment by Anonymous75
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Would Finding Aliens Shatter Religious Beliefs? Oh, no, not at all. Humankind had already created their own aliens now living here among us ... no need to find them in outer space.

For instance, sodomy and lesbianism practiced by "abnormal" human beings -- in other words practiced by "aliens" that look normal like us -- are as old as Religion itself. Sexually, their mental vision is different from that of ordinary human beings. A lesbian sees a woman as man, and a gay man sees another man as a woman, and both men and both women even marry each other and call themselves husband and wife – they are as weird as those aliens in the movies having both male and female reproductive organs are.

Due to religious belief or due to the absence of it, a lot of them are Godless, in fact a few of them just want to kill government officials and shoot cops dead for the weirdest of all reasons aside from pure lunacy; some of them worship the Moon, the Sun and the stars, the universe they believed their ancestors came from; they marry a dog or a cow, and in very remote sanctuaries inaccessible to civilization, they even eat people, probably similar to aliens from another planet pictured in movies that consider people a delicious gastronomy like what New York stripes or Porterhouse steaks are to their discriminating, highly sophisticated palate.

All those years, have our religious beliefs been "shattered" because those "aliens" are with us here on planet Earth?

Noo ooo ... ooo… sireeee …eee. We may feel discomforted or ill at ease because they are around us, some of us are even angry and became intolerant after having been embarrassed or revolted by their presence, but did we stop believing in God?

Of course not … are you kidding me?

Don’t fret … You live here in the United States of America, the greatest country on the planet.

Cheers! JV

Comment by PureTrust
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There are some Christian denominations that might have some upheavals if E.T. were truly found. Regarding Christianity and aliens, let me throw out a few points.

1. Christianity already believes in aliens. The name is angels. Any aliens that are found will NOT be the kind that you view in movies and TV shows. They will be something entirely different.

2. The language used in the Book of Jude in the New Testament, describes heavenly beings in such a way that it is virtually saying aliens.

3. Saint Paul, in Ephesians, talks about "... spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (NIV). While these "spiritual forces" are not generally understood to be aliens, they might be. And they might be fallen angels. Again, they are not anything like the movies.

4. Demons are wicked angels that have been stripped of the major portion of their angelic powers. Yet, these angels are the ones that might respond to mans' quest for E.T.. If man asks for them hard enough, he just might get them, and it just might not be fun.

5. Many staunch Christians have been taught that aliens do not exist. Christians, just like everyone else, can be very "unthinking" at times. They have never been taught that angels and aliens might be the same thing. So, if it hits them right square between the eyes, it might cause them some turmoil. But remember, aliens are not going to show up in form as you see them in the movies.

6. Once Christianity comes to grips with the fact that angels are aliens, it will serve to strengthen Christianity tremendously.

7. I am not any kind of authority on religion other than Christianity. However, many religions believe in supernatural beings. Therefore, it would be a simple step to get from supernatural to aliens.

8. WATCH OUT! Angels are very powerful. Any supposed "secret fights" between Government and aliens is really Government trying to steal angel-power from angels. Man might be given angel-technology, but he is not going to steal it.

9. If angels wanted to make themselves known to people in general, they would have done it easily, a long time ago. So, be careful. If scientists manage to force their hand, mankind just might get something that he is not expecting and does not want.

Comment by J E Andreasen
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No issue at all from our little corner of the world.  Indeed, we have presumed they were out there for a very long time.  The Lubavitcher Rebbe said it most succinctly (I paraphrase), stating that to assume life restricted to this world is to presume limits on G-d.  

See...  http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/1445448/jewish/Travels-Through-Time-Space-and-Beyond.htm 

And... http://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/9197/does-the-torah-discuss-aliens

Yaakov Barak ben Avraham



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