Heaven and Beyond. What lies beyond our sight?
Aliens?
Most people are accustomed to alien life forms in their backyards and don’t think twice about them. But perhaps you do, especially when English Ivy, introduced by European colonists in 1727, creeps up your tree to the canopy, killing it. More recently, our neighborhood has been dealing with stink bugs that arrived from the Orient in container ships. According to Washington State University researchers, changing weather patterns have increased the habitat for stink bugs throughout the country.
And though immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. are called aliens, they aren’t the ones I’m writing about. The papers are full of the pros and cons of integrating people of different skin colors, languages, religions, and cultures into American society. From insects and immigrants, we can see how difficult it is to adapt to things alien to our environment. What if the situation becomes even more extreme and science fiction becomes a reality?
I am curious why the U.S. Congress became so interested in U.F.Os that funding was tucked into a measure in the annual defense policy bill passed last December. It directs the National Archives to collect documents about unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and nonhuman intelligence. Conspiracy theories abound, and suspicions persist that the government has been concealing information about UFOs for decades. I started wondering about the upsides and downsides of finding intelligent life somewhere in space.
Planetary travel and chance intergalactic meetings can excite and scare those who believe it is possible. Whether the thought is exciting or causes fear depends on a combination of psychological, cultural, and societal factors. Meeting an alien will require people on our planet to change beliefs held since childhood. Remember how long it took for the Catholic Chuch to accept that the world is round? Men like Galileo Galilei were tortured in the Inquisition before their calculations were accepted. People in the Flat Earth Society still think the world is flat, not round. Adapting to a multi-inhabited universe would require change at warp speed.
Some with strong religious and cultural beliefs will view extraterrestrial arrivals as a divine or spiritual event. Within the Aztec Empire, many believed that Cortés was Quetzalcoatl, a god who would return to overthrow the god Tezcatlipoca, who demanded human sacrifice. Other people would view arrivals from space as a threat to the religious and cultural indoctrination they grew up with. A perceived threat to their way of life and well-being would most likely trigger a fear response. Extraterrestrials might stir evolutionary instincts geared toward survival that could lead to intergalactic wars.
In 2014, the Center for Theological Inquiry received $1.1 million to study the societal implications of astrobiology. Many taxpayers were enraged, saying it was a waste, but others said the day will come when humanity has to respond to aliens from space. An increasing number of scientists agree that this is not an idle fantasy and that extraterrestrial visits are a question of when, not if. Their reasoning is influenced by the rapid discovery of thousands of planets seen through the Kepler space telescope.
By January 25th, 2024, space telescopes identified and confirmed 5,572 exoplanets and 4,145 planetary systems, with 59 potentially Earth-sized exoplanets occupying a “habitable” zone around their star. Some studies analyzing Kepler data calculate that the Milky Way could have as many as six billion Earth-like planets. The truth is, we really don’t know. We do know that the more scientists peer into space, the more likely they’ll find something.
Fear of the unknown and unpredictable scenarios are the most common reasons for not wanting to find extraterrestrials. Media and popular culture play a role in stirring up fear. Movies, TV shows, and books range from friendly and benevolent to hostile and menacing. It is easy to be influenced by their portrayals, even when you know they are the imagination of some writer’s brain.
Seeing is believing for those who say they’ve encountered UFOS and extraterrestrial beings. Whether real or imagined, if the experience is positive, the person feels excitement and curiosity. Negative sitings produce fear of future encounters. When such reactions and opinions become supported by their social circle or broader society, they shape the perspectives of a wide range of individuals. Scientific study provides a more reasoned way to view extraterrestrial incidents than believing in your senses, which can easily be fooled. Anyone tricked by a Magician understands what I mean.
To study human uniqueness, scientists consider the principles around nature’s uniformity, plentitude, and mediocrity. They surmise that the physical processes seen on Earth are found throughout the universe, that everything is possible as long as there are no impediments to life forming, and that there is nothing special about Earth’s status. In other words, alien life will likely exist and, if encountered, will require humans to adapt to changes beyond our imagination.
In The Cosmic Question, Carl Sagon wrote that space exploration leads directly to religious and philosophical questions. According to the Center for Theological Study, the main problem is the mediocrity principle that says there is nothing special about humans. It challenges Abrahamic teaching that God purposefully created human beings and that they occupy a privileged position in relation to other creatures. Rather than rely on the bible for the creation story, scientists look to space. They study images captured through satellite telescopes, sophisticated instrumentation, and computers that analyze the data. In Religion and Extraterrestrial Life, David Weintraub notesthat “we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”
When alien lifeforms are discovered, religions will have to adapt or perish. The Koran says that “All things in the heavens and/or the Earth” are Allah’s, so they have a built-in mechanism for adaptation. BBC investigator Brandon Ambososino quotes the Talmud as saying, “God spends his night flying throughout 18,0000 worlds. It’s another setup for accepting alien life forms. Though the Mormon church denies its members are taught they will get their own planet in the afterlife, the Broadway show The Book of Mormon influenced many people. I had a Mormon acquaintance who, on her deathbed, shared the planet she was headed for.
The ones who will have the most difficulty adapting to life beyond earth are people who take the Bible literally. Many fundamentalists continue to reject Darwin’s theory of evolution, believing instead that God created the world in seven days. They will have a hard time since salvation is an Earth-only concept. Given the immense timeline of the universe’s existence, there are probably life forms much older than ours. Survival will require giving up Earth-centric religious beliefs for an order that expands into the unknown. More spiritually and socially advanced extraterrestrials may have to teach us how to become children of the universe.
References:
Ambrosino, B. (2016)If we made contact with aliens, how would religions react? BBC. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161215-if-we-made-contact-with-aliens-how-would-religions-react
NASA website. Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System: Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161215-if-we-made-contact-with-aliens-how-would-religions-react
Lewis, B. (2023)There may be hundreds of millions of habitable planets in the Mikey way, new study suggests.LiveScience. Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/space/exoplanets/there-may-be-hundreds-of-millions-of-habitable-planets-in-the-milky-way-new-study-suggests
Alper, B. & Alvarado, J. ( 2021) Religious Americans less likely to believe intelligent life exists on other planets, Pew Research Center. retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/28/religious-americans-less-likely-to-believe-intelligent-life-exists-on-other-planets/
Heaven and Beyond is a 20 x 24, framed acrylic canvas painting. Available for $450, free shipping within the continental U.S. For additional information, contact the artist at marilynne@eichinger.com
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