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Vatican Seeks Alien Life

November 10th, 2009

Fox News has posted and article about the Vatican holding an astrobiology conference in order to help determine what the existence of alien life might mean for the Catholic church.

Might as well just have a conference on what reality means to the church.  Alien life is likely, and either exists or doesn’t, and either exists in a form we can discover in the near future, or not.  In either event, religion must accommodate reality if it is a serious, reality-based activity.  The Catholics’ readiness to accept ridiculous evidence for miracles, exorcism, papal infallibility, spread lies about AIDS and condoms, already shows their institutional disdain for reality, so the whole exercise is a joke.

I feel sorry for the Jesuits and astronomers among the Catholics.  They have to live in the gap between reason and irrationality on a daily basis, and they must enjoy a form of communal insanity.

It’s something akin to the “god of the gaps” again, with the false spin that there is a gap between religion and science that needs to be filled.  Here’s the relevance to the Pope:

Working with scientists to explore fundamental questions that are of interest to religion is in line with the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made strengthening the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

First clue: faith and reason are different.  Completely.  There is no relationship between them.  The Pope is pursuing a fool’s errand.  But I can’t just pick on the easy and ridiculous target that is the Pope.  I have to acknowledge some of my fellow astronomers are astonishingly stupid:

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.

“Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe,” he told a news conference Tuesday. “There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe.”

What dialogue?  It’s a monologue!!!  Science doesn’t need or care for anything religion has to say on this topic, and religion has to accept what science tells it on this topic.  That’s how science and reality work.  And science doesn’t “posit” any such thing, Chris.  You’re making up shit.  Did the Vatican pay for your trip to the conference?  Vying for the Templeton Prize?  This “rich middle ground” is a false gap, and it pains me to see a scientist spouting this apologist nonsense.

The Vatican does have an observatory and competent astronomers.  That’s about the only positive thing I have to say here on this particular topic.  If the Catholics and the other religions had any faith in their faith, they’d have a revelation from God and tell us if aliens exist.  That might let us eliminate the hypotheses of some religions at least.  They won’t.  They have too much money and power to actually risk.

If the Catholic Church wants to do and fund science, great.  All the rest of this apologist stuff is nonsense to any rational person.

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9 Responses to “Vatican Seeks Alien Life”

  1. Dave Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 7:13 pm

    I used to be one of those people who believed we could bridge faith and reason. I also believed in NOMA, and these two ideas were mutually exclusive, but both are popular with people who like religion and like science, as I did. I was always looking at the great minds of the past like Aquinas, Averroes, etc and thinking that if they could bridge faith and reason, we could do it now. Then later I just admitted the obvious; they never DID bridge faith and reason, because that’s not really possible. In their time, given what they knew about the universe and by exclusion what they didn’t, the attempt was understandable. Today it’s simply a fool’s errand, and obviously so. I went to Catholic school for three years, where one of my early and dear mentors was a Catholic priest. I still have an emotional/aesthetic attachment to Catholicism, but I recognize that the church itself is an enemy of reason, and there’s no two ways about it. I also used to go to U of A, and I’ll leave that alone except to say that my general opinion of its faculty is pretty low with a few exceptions.

  2. David Ellis Says:
    November 22nd, 2009 at 9:43 am

    I don’t think the existence of aliens would be, in and of itself, a threat to Christianity. It can easily accomodate the idea.

    Much more vexing would be AI and uploading. The question of whether uploads have souls would be quite a theological dilemma for Christianity (a premise wonderfully explored by Norman Spinrad in his novel Deus X).

  3. gordsellar Says:
    November 27th, 2009 at 9:58 pm

    Yeah, David,

    I think the Church would maybe disagree. With AI and uploading, they can simply say, “Those aren’t people, they have no souls.” Hell, I suspect the great apes present more challenge than that.

    The historical issue with aliens is, of course, a conflict with the central premise with Christianity: that God gave up His Only Son for the salvation of humanity.

    The problem for Catholics being that this is understood as the singular event in the history of the universe. Now, if God did this only for humanity, that’s pretty, well, Evil. After all, what about all the other millions of species out there who never had their, ahem, “Own Personal Jesus”?

    Well, either God just abandoned those species to Purgatory, which makes God quite unFatherly and unLoving, or else God sent Jesus to every last one of them, in which case the death and resurrection of Christ becomes a parlor trick, repeated time and time again (and no longer all that special).

    Now, to you or I (or a good part of the laity) this might seem like an odd fixation, and I agree: the Church probably would retcon its backstory to fit whatever was discovered; but make no mistake, this is serious enough an issue that they sent Giordano Bruno to the stake over it 409 years ago. And the potency hasn’t been lost. It’s obviously still a concern to the modern Church, since they’re doing all they can to maintain the specialness of humanity in the universe. (Why else impose telelogy on evolution, as they so often do?) One only need listen to a couple of sermons to see that this comforting sense of “we matter” is central to the Church’s survival strategy in an era where most of its truth claims are looking more and more untenable, even to followers.

    (Which reminds me: I must read Blish’s A Case of Conscience soon!)

    Though I will point out to Mike that in my experience, a number of educated Catholics I know don’t actually believe in papal infallibility, the Virgin Birth, exorcism, miracles, or — most pointedly — the rules about condoms. Lots of educated Catholics I know actually resent that the organized Church focuses on the most dumbass bits of its ostensible mandate and ignores things that actually matter, like how the Bible castigates the perpetuation of poverty, and in the New Testament, rails against clericalism, orthodoxy, and the like.

    (I’m in a funny position, having left the Church ages ago but finding it not just the most positive of the (mostly horrifyingly racist/sexist/materialistic) religions in Korea, and an actual force for a lot of good in lives here. My employer, the Korean branch of the Church, was long regarded positively for its egalitarianism in accepting students from all over the country and giving internships to medical graduates regardless of regional background (which, in a mostly homogenous society, is the rough equivalent of being famously anti-racist in a more mixed society).

    That said, I also don’t disagree about how muddled reason becomes when one is exposed to too much mysticism, and I think the Church, if it really wants to survive a third millennium, will need to weed a lot of that out — maintaining ceremony and comforting messages but not insisting anything that the scientifically-educated would call “supernatural.”

    Then again, there will always be lots of people who aren’t scientifically educated, won’t there?

  4. gordsellar Says:
    November 27th, 2009 at 10:17 pm

    Ooops, I embedded a Youtube clip in there, but since it clunked out, here’s the link:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQcNiD0Z3MU

  5. Mike Brotherton Says:
    November 27th, 2009 at 11:48 pm

    “Though I will point out to Mike that in my experience, a number of educated Catholics I know don’t actually believe in papal infallibility, the Virgin Birth, exorcism, miracles, or — most pointedly — the rules about condoms. Lots of educated Catholics I know actually resent that the organized Church focuses on the most dumbass bits of its ostensible mandate and ignores things that actually matter, like how the Bible castigates the perpetuation of poverty, and in the New Testament, rails against clericalism, orthodoxy, and the like. ”

    Well, those aren’t “Catholics,” then, but some other offshoot.

    And if they don’t believe in any superstitious nonsense, they aren’t religious and shouldn’t self-identify as such. There is something wrong with them that they continue a ridiculous association that doesn’t reflect their beliefs.

  6. David Ellis Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 9:47 am


    I think the Church would maybe disagree. With AI and uploading, they can simply say, “Those aren’t people, they have no souls.”

    Yes, but when the AI and uploads are demanding their civil rights and the uploads of millions of Catholics are walking into the church in their synthetic bodies to enter the confessional and Catholics worldwide are struggling with the question of whether their brother, mother, etc who uploaded went to hell I suspect a casual dismissal will be less simple than that.

    Regardless, I highly recommend you read Deus X. Its a fascinating read.

  7. gordsellar Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 10:58 am

    Mike,

    “Well, those aren’t “Catholics,” then, but some other offshoot.”

    Well, but that’s what they argue of the clergy of the Roman Church — that they’re a bunch of reactionaries who have co-opted something that wasn’t originally like that — a mystical meta-system of religious beliefs. They sometimes cite Elaine Pagels. They sometimes know a lot about Church history.

    “And if they don’t believe in any superstitious nonsense, they aren’t religious and shouldn’t self-identify as such. There is something wrong with them that they continue a ridiculous association that doesn’t reflect their beliefs.”

    Well, you’re preaching to the deconverted, but part of me has reconciled to accepting that a lot of people simply need to, or think they need to, or simply do believe in a deity. (And even, hard though it is for me to admit, that some religions have had some relatively positive effects on societies, not just negative ones.) Given that, I’d prefer to simply expect (and demand) that religious leaders help their followers accept (and grapple with) the scientific facts as best they can.

    Huh, I should definitely ask you to crit this one novel I’m thinking of writing a few years from now… I’ll email you offlist about it, I’m curious about your reaction. Not really SF, more, um… oh, I’ll save it. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the idea.

    I should also note that while all the teachers in my (Catholic) high school were Catholic except one Hindu and one Greek Orthodox, when I was taught evolution it was pretty much straight Darwinian evolution. I don’t think teleology was even injected into it. It was strictly the science. Dinosaurs were real, and evolution was by natural selection, not design. (Design wasn’t even suggested or brought up in my science class.)

    (Which is not to say that my Catholic schooling didn’t distort or mislead in other ways, but just to note that it’s not like in the US; an explicitly religious schooling doesn’t necessarily mean complete and outright science mis-education.)

    David,

    You have a point. I think maybe we’re both right: aliens will provide a much bigger dilemma for the clergy and the theologians, while uploading will, I think, provide a much bigger problem for the laity. At least, I think that’s how it would break down at first.

    Of course, the Church is biofanatical (if that’s the right word) enough to find most commonplace forms of contraception anathema; I don’t think they’ll be able to accept uploading unless it means losing more than half of their followers in a generation, and even then, it’d be a struggle. I suspect, in fact, that for many, the decision to upload will also mean the decision to leave the Church — a liberating decision, involving the potential for real, palpable (almost) everlasting life instead of the dubious promise of same on some spiritual plane. I can even hear the construction of the argument against it, a very C.S. Lewis-type one positing “extreme artificial longevity without God” on the one hand, and “eternal life with God” on the other. I don’t think that’ll convince too many people, though.

    As with any such “moral” ultimatum, many will die needlessly, many more will find it the impractical straw that breaks the camel’s back, and only the least flexible (and mostly least interesting) people will choose to remain within the confines of orthodoxy. However, I could see a splinter church emerging, or something. I’d like to see what clergy who go apostate and upload would do… now that’s interesting.

    Certain strains of Buddhist would do better with that dilemma, I imagine: everyone’s favorite Lama once said, essentially, that he couldn’t see why an AI wouldn’t have a soul, if it were a sophisticated enough consciousness. Rabbits and smeerps? Sure, but we’re talking about ideological (ie. memetic) systems, after all, and they can do all kinds of weird things in order to survive and propogate.

    I will check out the Spinrad eventually — it’s on my shelf waiting, worry not! (I grabbed a bunch of his novels when last in Canada after enjoying Greenhouse Summer.)

  8. David Ellis Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Spinrad’s nonfiction book SCIENCE FICTION IN THE REAL WORLD is also well worth reading if you’re at all interested in literary criticism and SF.

  9. David Ellis Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    “but we’re talking about ideological (ie. memetic) systems, after all, and they can do all kinds of weird things in order to survive and propogate.”

    No argument there. Witness one of the wonders of American religious mutation: the prosperity gospel.

    How people can listen to these preachers and think what they say has any resemblance to what Jesus is depicted as teaching in the Bible boogles the mind.

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