Television pundit Stephen Colbert put it best in an interview with Vatican astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno: “If we accept that there is alien life on other planets, doesn’t that totally blow Jesus out of the water?”

It is a question that has occupied theologians (and science fiction writers) of all stripes for years but has gained greater traction as we have ventured farther into our solar system and beyond. It picked up currency with the recent release of classified video showing U.S. Air Force pilots encountering “a fleet” of fast-moving, free-spinning unidentified flying objects near San Diego.

Increasingly, astronomers, astrophysicists and other scientists are joining theologians at conferences and think tanks to ask what it would mean if aliens have an idea of a god — or if they don’t. What kind of disruption would the discovery of alien intelligence mean to religion? To our understanding of what it means to be human?

This edition of ReligionLink examines the issues, conflicts and possibilities the search for extraterrestrial intelligence would have to our understanding of our place in the universe.

Background

UFOs in the news

• Read “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean for The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2017. The takeaway: The U.S. government declassified records of a secret UFO-investigative unit it ran for years, including a video showing Air Force pilots encountering a “fleet” of unknown, rotating objects.
• Read “Belief in Aliens May be a Religious Impulse” by Michael Shermer for Scientific American, Oct 1, 2017.
• Read “If we made contact with aliens, how would religion react?” by Brandon Ambrosino for BBC Future, Dec. 16, 2016.
• Watch “Religions, Exoplanets and Extraterrestrial Life,” a lecture by Vanderbilt astronomy professor David Weintraub, posted April 1, 2015.
• Read “Would Finding Alien Life Change Religious Philosophies” by Megan Gannon for Live Science, Oct. 9, 2014. The takeaway: Faith groups with more literal interpretations of sacred texts are more likely to believe in the existence of extraterrestrials.
• Read “How Would Christianity Deal with Extraterrestrial Life?” by Mark Strauss for Gizmodo, July 24, 2014. The takeaway: The author outlines current lines of thinking about theology and the possibility of intelligent aliens.
• Read a 2013 Survata survey that measured the level of belief in the existence of aliens among religious groups. The takeaway: Muslims are the most likely to say they believe aliens exist; among Christians, Eastern Orthodox adherents are the most likely to.
• Read “Aliens & God: Would Finding Extraterrestrial Life Destroy Religion?” by Mike Wall for The Huffington Post, June 25, 2012.
• Read “Can ET and Christmas Co-exist?” by Robert Krulwich for NPR, Dec. 22, 2010.
• Read “Judaism and Life on Other Planets,” an undated essay by Rabbi Benjamin Blech for Aish.com.
• Read “Would Intelligent Aliens Undermine God?” by Robert Lawrence Kuhn for Science and Religion Today, March 18, 2010.
• Read “Vatican astronomer cites possibility of extraterrestrial ‘brothers’” in an unsigned story from the International Herald Tribune as printed in The New York Times, May 14, 2008.
• Read “The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake for Scientific American, Jan. 6, 1997.

Resources

Definitions

• big history — the history not of Earth, but of the universe
• exoplanet — planets outside our solar system that orbit stars
• exotheology — speculation on the theological significance of extraterrestrial life
• Fermi’s paradox — Physicist Enrico Fermi posed the question: Our universe is so vast, it should be teeming with life. But why haven’t we found any?
• SETI — an acronym commonly used by scientists; it stands for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence”

Religion and science organizations/associations

• Beyond: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in Tempe is focused on the “big questions” of science, including what it means to be human in a universe where we may or may not be alone.
• The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences is at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. The center engages Christian and multireligious reflection on the latest scientific research and progress in the natural sciences, including cosmology.
• The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion is an interdisciplinary study center at St. Edmund’s University in Cambridge, England.
• Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion is in Oxford, England.
• The SETI Institute is dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It is in Mountain View, Calif.

Religion and science blogs/websites

• The Catholic Astronomer is a blog run by the Vatican Observatory and is written by its scientists and clerics.
• Irtiqa is a blog focused on Islam and science, including astronomy and astrobiology. Salman Hameed runs it.
• Judaism and Science is a website dedicated to the intersection of Judaism and science. Roger Price, a lawyer and science hobbyist, runs it.
• Space.com is a news site for all things about the exploration of space and astronomy. It maintains a page of stories about SETI.

 

International sources

• Jim Al-Khalili

  Jim Al-Khalili is a professor of physics at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England, and a frequent presenter of television programs about science for the BBC and Britain’s Channel 4. He is the editor of Aliens: The World’s Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life.

• Lewis Dartnell

  Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiologist and a science communicator at the University of Westminster in London. He gives frequent lectures on the search for intelligent alien life, what it might look like and want and how it might change us. He is the author of Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide.

• Kathryn Denning

  Kathryn Denning is an associate professor of anthropology at York University  in Toronto, Canada, where she teaches a course called “Anticipating the Alien.” Her focus is on what it means to be human in the universe and she works with SETI on studying the way scientists search for aliens.

• Nidhal Guessoum

  Nidhal Guessoum is an astrophysicist at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and the author of Islam’s Quantum Question: Reconciling Muslim Tradition and Modern Science. As part of a panel discussion on the implications of finding other worlds at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011, he spoke about the potential impact on Islam. He is a Sunni Muslim.

• Peter Harrison

  Peter Harrison is a former professor of science and religion at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, and an expert on the dialogue and tensions between science and religion. He is the author of The Territories of Science and Religion. He is now director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

• Michael Heller

  The Rev. Michael Heller is a Catholic priest, philosopher and cosmologist at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. He has written numerous books and articles — mostly in Polish — about the nature of the universe, its origins and something he calls a “theology of science.” He received the 2008 Templeton Prize.

• Alister McGrath

  Alister McGrath is a former atheist and now an evangelical Christian and a theology professor at the University of Oxford’s Harris Manchester College. He is a prolific writer and public apologist for Christianity and is author of several books, including The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language and a Culture, and The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, with Joanna Collicutt McGrath.

• Florence Raulin Cerceau

  Florence Raulin Cerceau is a director at Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence and an associate professor at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. She is a historian of astrobiology and of the search for intelligent alien life.

• Martin Rees

  Sir Martin Rees is a cosmologist, Astronomer Royal of the British Empire, a member of the House of Lords and the winner of the Templeton Prize in 2011. He contributed an essay on man’s place in the universe to Aliens: The World’s Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In 2010 he said in an interview with Prospect magazine that SETI will be one of the most important challenges for science over the next 20 years. Contact via the Royal Society.

• Dirk Schulze-Makuch

  Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a professor at the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Technical University in Berlin and the author or co-author of five books on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including The Cosmic Zoo: Complex Life on Many Worlds.

• Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti

  The Rev. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti is an Opus Dei priest and a professor of fundamental theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He previously was an astronomer and researcher at the Observatory of Turin in Turin, Italy. He is editor of The Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, where he tackled the question of what the discovery of intelligent aliens might mean to theology.

• Clément Vidal

  Clément Vidal describes himself as a “big questions philosopher.” He is a researcher and an assistant professor at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. Among his areas of study is the potential impact the discovery of intelligent alien life would have on society.

• Michael Waltemathe

  Michael Waltemathe is the chair of practical theology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Bochum, Germany. Much of his research focuses on a “religious vision” of space travel and exploration.

• David Wilkinson

  The Rev. David Wilkinson is a professor of theology and religion at Durham University in Durham, England. He is also an ordained Methodist minister with a doctorate in the study of star formation and the evolution of galaxies. He is the author of Science, Religion and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

National sources

• James Matthew Ashley

  James Matthew Ashley is an associate professor of the history of Christianity and systematic theology at the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind. One of his areas of study is science and theology.

• Gary Bates

  Gary Bates is an evangelical Christian and young-Earth creationist associated with Creation Ministries International in Atlanta. He speaks frequently about UFOs and Christianity.

  He has said the discovery of extraterrestrial life would “make a mockery” of the doctrine of salvation.

• Benjamin Blech

  Benjamin Blech is a rabbi and a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University in New York City. He has written about what the discovery of intelligent alien life would mean to Judaism.

• Nathalie Cabrol

  Nathalie Cabrol is a senior research scientist and director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. She is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist. She contributed an essay on SETI for the book Aliens: The World’s Leading Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

• Guy Consolmagno

  Brother Guy Consolmagno is a Jesuit and director of the the Vatican Observatory, as well as president of its foundation. He is a frequent commentator on religion and science and wrote the pamphlet “Intelligent Life in the Universe: Catholic belief and the search for extraterrestrial life.” The observatory is in Tucson, Ariz.

• David J. Collins

  The Rev. David J. Collins is a Catholic priest, a Jesuit and an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with an interest in science, religion and space. He sometimes teaches a course on outer space, science and religion.

• Paul Davies

  Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist and founder and director of Beyond: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in Tempe. His books include The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? In 1995 he won the Templeton Prize for work on science and religion. Contact via Skip Derra, media relations at ASU.

  Davies has suggested religious leaders have “downplayed” the threat that the discovery of alien life poses to religion.

• Steven Dick

  Steven Dick is an astrobiologist and editor of The Impact of Discovering Life Beyond Earth  and Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life and Theological Implications. In 2013, he gave a joint lecture on the same subject at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion.

• Stephen Freeland

  Stephen Freeland is an evolutionary biologist and director of interdisciplinary studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He studies the interface of science and religion and gave a joint lecture in exoplanets for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion.

• Jim Funaro

  Jim Funaro is an anthropology instructor at Cabrillo College in Aptos, Calif., and founder of the Contact Conference, an interdisciplinary conference on the future focused on contact with aliens. One of his main areas of interest is the cultural impacts of contact with alien life.

• Paul Gabor

  The Rev. Paul Gabor is a Catholic priest and vice director for the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tucson, Ariz. He is a frequent contributor to the Vatican Observatory’s blog. Contact via Katie Bannan Steinke, development coordinator for VORG.

• Salman Hameed

  Salman Hameed is an astronomer and associate professor of integrated science and humanities at Hampshire College. He is director of the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies.  He operates the science and religion blog called Irtiqa, which emphasizes debates about science in the Islamic world.

• Albert A. Harrison

  Albert A. Harrison is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Starstruck: Cosmic Visions in Science, Religion and Folklore and After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life.

• Marc Kaufman

  Marc Kaufman is a science writer and author of First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth. He writes the blog “Many Worlds.”

• Robert Lawrence Kuhn

  Robert Lawrence Kuhn is an investment banker, public intellectual and the creator of “Closer to Truth,” a PBS television show, website and series of videos and podcasts that examine the “big questions” of existence. Contact via his Facebook page.

  He wrote that the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrials would pose a bigger threat to Western religions than to Eastern religions.

• Mark Hillel Kunis

  Rabbi Mark Hillel Kunis has written about Torah portions that support the idea that God created life on other worlds. He lives in Atlanta.

• James Kurzynski

  The Rev. James Kurzynski is a Catholic priest in the Diocese of LaCrosse, Wis., and a hobby astronomer. He writes frequently for the Vatican Observatory blog.

• Josh Larsen

  Josh Larsen is the editor of Think Christian, a website that looks at religion and popular culture from the Reformed tradition. Think Christian is based in Palos Heights, Ill.

  He has written that Christians should be interested in and supportive of space exploration “as an act of worship.”

• Jonathan Merritt

  Jonathan Merritt writes and speaks extensively on faith and culture and is a senior columnist for Religion News Service. Merritt’s books include A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars and Jesus Is Better Than You Imagined. He can discuss the viewpoints and concerns of young evangelicals on a range of issues, especially on sexuality and sexual identity and the environment. He lives in Brooklyn. Contact through his website.

  He wrote an essay titled “Why Christians should get on board with space exploration” for The Week, Nov. 18, 2014.

• Michael A.G. Michaud

  Michael A.G. Michaud is a writer who specializes in technology and science. He is the author of Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears About Encountering Extraterrestrials and has written many articles on the possibility and potential impact of contacting intelligent extraterrestrials.

• Geoffrey A. Mitelman

  Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman is the founding director of Sinai and Synapses, an organization that brings together Judaism and science, mostly through the introduction of scientists into synagogue programming. He is also a scholar of biblical and Judaic studies. Mitelman can be contacted through the Sinai and Synapses website.

• Thomas O’Meara

  The Rev. Thomas O’Meara is a Catholic priest and professor emeritus at Notre Dame University. He is the author of Vast Universe: Extraterrestrials and Christian Revelation.

  In the book, he posits the possibility of other incarnations of God among intelligent alien species but concludes they would not be the same as Jesus, who “does not move to other planets.”

• Ted Peters

  Ted Peters is a research professor emeritus in systematic theology and ethics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and the Graduate Theological Union, all in Berkeley, Calif. He is the author of God in Cosmic History and Playing God?: Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom  and is co-editor of the journal Theology and Science.

• Mary Doria Russell

  Mary Doria Russell is a novelist whose 1997 book The Sparrow is about first contact with intelligent aliens and the Jesuit priest who is part of an expedition to their planet. The book and its sequel, Children of God, deals with how the contact changes theology. She lives near Cleveland.

• Michael Schulson

  Michael Schulson is a freelance writer who oversees Religion Dispatches‘ science and religion portal, “The Cubit.” He also writes at Undark. He lives in Durham, N.C.

  He wrote an essay for Religion Dispatches examining the implications to religion and science incurred by NASA’s gift of $1.1 million to the Center of Theological Inquiry.

• Sarah Scoles

  Sarah Scoles is a science journalist and former associate editor of Astronomy magazine. She is the author of Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. She is based in Denver.

• Michael Shermer

  Michael Shermer is a noted atheist, the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and executive director of the Skeptics Society. He has written several books, including How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God and Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. 
  

  He wrote an essay for Scientific American analyzing data that may indicate the search for intelligent alien life may be linked to the religious impulse in humans.

• Seth Shostak

  Seth Shostak is the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. He is often the public face of SETI — and therefore the public face of the scientific search for intelligent life beyond our solar system. He is the author of Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

• Kelly C. Smith

  Kelly C. Smith is an associate professor of philosophy and a Lemon Fellow of the Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University in Clemson, S.C. He can discuss the philosophy of science and the role of faith and reason in science.

  He has spoken at a Contact Conference about the ethical and philosophical issues surrounding the search for intelligent alien life on other planets.

• Matthew Stanley

  Matthew Stanley is an astronomer and a professor of the history and philosophy of science at New York University. In 2016, he gave a talk at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society on the question of whether we are alone in the universe, and if we are not, what would that mean to our sense of humanness. He is the author of Practical Mystic: Religion, Science and A.S. Eddington, about how scientists reconcile their religious beliefs and professional lives.

• William Storrar

  Wiliam Storrar is the director of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, N.J., an ecumenical institute for interdisciplinary research in religion. The center designates several topics to study for a year or more and has, to date, focused on religion and violence, law and religious freedom, evolution and moral identity, among others.

  In 2014, the center received a $1.1 million grant from NASA to study the societal implications of astrobiology, including its impact on religion.

• John Traphagan

  John Traphagan is a professor of religious studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches a course on extraterrestrials and previously taught one on the impact the discovery of intelligent alien life might have on religion. He is the author of Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Imagination: SETI and the Intersection of Science, Religion, and Culture.

• Douglas Vakoch

  Douglas Vakoch is president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a San Francisco nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to transmitting intentional signals to nearby stars. He has said that while there may be some problems for religion when intelligent aliens are discovered, they may not be as large as some people think.

• Sara Imari Walker

  Sara Imari Walker is an associate professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration and deputy director of Beyond: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz. She is also the leader Emergence, an ASU research group focused on the origins of life here and elsewhere in the universe.

• David Weintraub

  David Weintraub is a professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and the author of Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It?.

• Jennifer Wiseman

  Jennifer Wiseman is an astronomer and director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also an astrophysicist and studies the formation of stars and planets.

   

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