Would the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life Influence Your Faith?
Whistleblower claims are raising broader questions about faith and non-human life
Media accounts of former U.S. intelligence officer Dave Grusch linking the Vatican to allegations of a government cover-up of extraterrestrial technology is making the rounds on social media (e.g., here and here). This reminded me of a survey I developed with one of my children in 2015 about the effects of discovery of exterrestrial life on faith. In evangelical circles, I had always gotten the impression that there was a strong evangelical belief that non-human life could not exist if God had specially created humans. We wanted to test this informally by modifying the Peters Exterrestrial Life Information Survey and asking readers of my blog to fill it out.
I don’t remember why, but we never published the results. So, while I don’t want to take the time for much analysis, I can provide the descriptive statistics for what it is worth. Three hundred and twenty-nine people (329) took the survey. The largest religious group was evangelical with 182, followed by 45 mainline Protestants. The rest were scattered across faith groups and non-believers. My general impression is that respondents in 2015 did not feel strongly that discovery of non-human intelligent life would influence their faith (see images below).
The only factor I want to pull out for this post is evangelical identification. As you can see, it makes a little difference but not as much as at least I thought it would.
When we asked if such a discovery would matter to the respondent’s faith tradition — that is to the faith of other people who believe the same — there seemed to be more uncertainty. In fact, the number of people who were not sure more than doubled.
Individuals for themselves seemed pretty confident about their faith, but they worried that others might be compromised by discovery of exterrestrials. Of course, this is a convenience sample of readers of my blog who even in 2015 were a little on the moderate side of evangelicalism. Rounding up, 56% of the readers considered themselves conservative; 43% said they were moderate, leaving a couple of liberals hanging around for good measure.
Who knows where this would go today? Evangelicals as a group seem much more conservative and xenophobic than 2015. If evangelicals, as a group, are fearful of people in a neighboring country or even culture, then how will they feel about extraterrestrial or other dimensional forms of intelligent life? Pretty frightened, I would guess.
I am not at all surprised at the results of the survey. If anything I suspect the discovery of intelligent aliens would have even less impact on people's beliefs than that, at least in the short term.
UFOlogists like to point to a 1960 study commissioned by NASA called "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs", typically shortened to the "Brookings Report", which infers that there could be a collective freakout among the religious communities, but I very much doubt that would happen.
Religions -- and not just Christianity -- have been nothing if not adaptable over the centuries. There will always be a minority who will prefer to live in denial, like young Earth creationists, but for the most part, the majority of people of religious faith would take the discovery of aliens in their stride.
Of course, religious authorities will play their part, rapidly issuing pronouncements explaining how the existence of intelligent alien life is entirely compatible with their faith, and setting up commissions to study the issues, depending on the circumstances of the "first contact." A few more radical sects/denominations may denounce the aliens as demonic creatures from the spiritual realm -- a young Earth creationist once told me that's what he would have to believe if aliens were ever found -- but for most it will be business as usual.
Christians who believe that you must be born again to avoid eternal conscious torment in Hell are already barely exercised by the fact that around 99% of people who were not born into the Christian faith -- that's around 46 million people a year -- will die and (according to them) go to Hell never having understood there was a choice. So I can't see how their faith could be challenged by the existence of billions of non-human intelligent beings. After all if they don't have souls (a likely claim), their fate (no life after death) would -- perversely enough -- be far better than that of all non-Christian human beings.
Over the longer term, it's safe to expect alien oriented cults and religions to spring up out of the "not religious but spiritual" crowd (mostly), but unless the aliens themselves have an alternative religion to offer, none of these would seriously challenge the traditional faiths. There might also be an acceleration of the trend away from Christianity that we have seen in successive younger generations, but I doubt it would be that significant.
If we should worry about anything regarding making first contact with an advanced alien civilization, it's what the sudden knowledge of the existence of super-advanced technology would do to the world economy. Investors would wake up the following morning having no idea how to value any of the stock prices in their portfolio. What value do you assign to Apple or Boeing if the alien technology makes their products look hopelessly obsolete? Stock markets would collapse throwing the world economy into turmoil.
But most likely we will discover the existence of intelligent alien life from afar, without any sudden influx of new science and technology to disrupt things, so it's very unlikely any of the worst case scenarios apply, but in terms of adjustment, I suspect religion will be the least of our problems as the world adjusts to the new reality.
As a child, Spock was the fictional character that I most identified with. As I have grown, this has become more so. Star Trek presents a picture of "M" class planets everywhere with all kinds of alien worlds as full of life as our own. But then scientists have come along and ruined the fantasy. The physics of stars, planets and the galaxies and galaxy clusters that hold them are cruelly brutal in reality. This has shown, time and time again, that space is a highly deadly place almost everywhere. Most places there can be no life at all as we know it as there is simply too much radiation. This extends out to whole clusters of galaxies where all of them are simply lethal. Then in places with much less radiation then there are problems with a host of different physics. Star systems being disturbed where planets are knocked out of their places. Stars that flare too much radiating and blowing away the atmospheres of their planets. Planets that are tidally locked to their star. The list just keeps going on. Looking through all these facts it is not illogical to suggest that there should be no "M" class planets anywhere, anytime.
This suggests that without a creator their should be no life here. Yet if there is a creator who fine-tuned everything from the biggest scales to the smallest so we would have a place to live, then it is possible we are not alone. In fact we are not for there are angels and demons and other beings that have been revealed. Looking at the data there has to be a creator for everything, rather or not there exists other beings like ourselves somewhere in our universe. If they are there it is because God created another improbable place for them to live. If not then it follows from all of the physics that we have currently uncovered. For more about the physics see the book "Improbable Planet" by Astrophysicist Hugh Ross. Their is no logical reason to have our faith shaken if we should find that God made someone else somewhere else. The Bible does not claim that they are out there or that they are not. But some have a "faith" that is based on something else. And all of those are subject to being capsized for they are as much a fantasy as all the planets on Star Trek. I do like the best Star Trek that has been made but it is as much of fantasy as light sabers and Jedi.