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Could Extraterrestrial Intelligence Sway Religious Beliefs?
by Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com ContributorDate: 24 January 2011
The discovery of extraterrestrial life might not shake people's faith in their religious beliefs, but it could lead them to wonder if Jesus Christ had incarnations on alien planets, scientists and theologians say.
These speculations and more arose from researchers presenting at a meeting of the Royal Society in London last year addressing the potentialimpacts of aliens on society, who detailed their analysis this month in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.
In one of the studies, which were released Jan. 10, astrobiologist Chris McKay at NASA Ames Research Center noted the consequences that aliens might have on society depend on whether humanity discovered only extraterrestrial life or also extraterrestrial intelligence.
"The discovery of life could very well or would probably be of microbes and could perhaps be on Mars or Europa, while the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence would almost certainly be from signals originating quite distant from us," McKay told SPACE.com.
"The implications of extraterrestrial microbial life would be that we would know the answer to the question of whether life is common — we might find it twice in our solar system — and we'd be able to learn more about life on Earth by comparing it to life from elsewhere," McKay added. "The detection of extraterrestrial intelligence, on the other hand, would not only answer the question of whether extraterrestrial life existed, but also be such an amazing event that it would be very hard to try and predict all the impacts it would have on society."
Aliens vs. religion?
One impact that extraterrestrials might have on society is in the sector of religion, said theologian Ted Peters at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, Calif. For instance, aliens might lead religions to question whether a second genesis of life elsewhere belongs within the biblical understanding of creation. Might Jesus Christ have appeared more than once in the universe? [10 Alien Encounters Debunked]
