Thread: The Religion(s) of Alien Civilizations

Just a thought, here. If we encountered extra-terrestrial intelligent life, they would be straightaway introduced to our Babel of religious attitudes and beliefs - our whole bewildering tableau of crosses, crescents, prayer wheels, yin and yang, etc. What about their religious traditions? What would they be like?

Some of my fellow nonbelievers here may figure that any civilization advanced enough to visit us would not have religion. But that I think is just too optimistic - experience shows that the 'regime of truth' is something that is highly 'overdetermined' by the great variety of discourse paradigms. Not only can multiple, internally coherent interpretations of "the same" phenomena be adduced, but all phenomena seem to be theory-laden. There are really no "brute facts" that we can appeal to, without them being embedded, at least tacitly, in a theory of the world.

Look, for example, at how the Swami here effortlessly shifts between (what Westerners would recognize as) the different discourses of mysticism and physics; and in ways that purport to describe the world, but that are not falsifiable. Couldn't his kind of worldview be espoused by an alien homo sapiens sapiens species? What other kind of spiritual/nonempirical worldviews might such a species of intelligent aliens come up with?

If aliens had their own scriptures, what would they be like? Or their own religious symbols - ? Their own theologies? If you are a believer, how would you respond if you saw actually familiar religious iconography - like the sign of a cross - but attached to a belief system that bore no resemblance to Christianity?

If you are a non-believer, would the existence of religion even amongst intelligent beings with vastly superior technology, make you rethink the validity of non-belief?

Granny says she purt sure...

... dem Hispexicans is mostly Catholic.

A civilization capable of interstellar travel would be sufficiently technologically and scientifically advanced as to not accept any "supernatural" explanation for existence of the universe.

I think that such a civilization if they are "spiritual" would most closely resemble Buddhism with no diety but offering a path to self enlightenment and understanding.

If these beings had a religion with a supernatural deity or deities, it would not make me a believer. It would make me highly suspicious of the aliens and their intentions.

Originally Posted by Modus Ponens

Just a thought, here. If we encountered extra-terrestrial intelligent life, they would be straightaway introduced to our Babel of religious attitudes and beliefs - our whole bewildering tableau of crosses, crescents, prayer wheels, yin and yang, etc. What about their religious traditions? What would they be like? ...

I guess they would be Catholics.

http://youtu.be/rYDEqITnOAo

Originally Posted by waltky

Granny says she purt sure...

... dem Hispexicans is mostly Catholic.

"we" wan. Indeed "catholic" is nearly the same as the word "universal"



http://youtu.be/-Kid2tPGshI

Originally Posted by Jonsa

A civilization capable of interstellar travel would be sufficiently technologically and scientifically advanced as to not accept any "supernatural" explanation for existence of the universe.

I think that such a civilization if they are "spiritual" would most closely resemble Buddhism with no diety but offering a path to self enlightenment and understanding.

If these beings had a religion with a supernatural deity or deities, it would not make me a believer. It would make me highly suspicious of the aliens and their intentions.

Yup!! what Jonsa said..

Originally Posted by Jonsa

A civilization capable of interstellar travel would be sufficiently technologically and scientifically advanced as to not accept any "supernatural" explanation for existence of the universe. ...

How do you "know" that there was a natural reason - if there was a reason at all - for the creation of the universe? What we know about nature is only part of this universe here and the universe has a beginning. How are you able to say that there is not a supernatural explanation for the existance of nature? Additionally: Are not all explanations always metaphysics (= supernatural)?

http://youtu.be/glrBz3GrFsQ

Originally Posted by Jonsa

A civilization capable of interstellar travel would be sufficiently technologically and scientifically advanced as to not accept any "supernatual" explanation for existence of the universe.

I think that such a civilization if they are "spiritual" would most closely resemble Buddhism with no diety but offering a path to self enlightenment and understanding.

I'm inclined to agree. But... recall how readily the austere mysticism of the Theravada, morphed into the Mahayana, with all of its baroque supernatural detail. It is in the nature of homo sapiens sapiens to identify causal relationships; determining which such relationships are "valid" and which "are not," (i.e. are supernatural violations of the causal order) is hardly a straightforward matter.

Our science has only reinforced what religion has long taught us - that there are unseen forces all about us, giving structure to the world and governing our lives.

Originally Posted by Jonsa

If these beings had a religion with a supernatural deity or deities, it would not make me a believer. It would make me highly suspicious of the aliens and their intentions.

Maybe you should think it over? If there are strong parallels between the spiritual belief systems of other intelligent species and our own (when these beliefs indeed have no connection with our own particular history), why should that not count as evidence for the extra-mental validity the objects of these beliefs - ? Especially given that these beings would have already long passed through stages of historical development similar to ours...

Originally Posted by Anobsitar

How do you "know" that there was a natural reason - if there was a reason at all - for the creation of the universe? What we know about nature is only part of this universe here and the universe has a beginning. How are you able to say that there is not a supernatural explanation for the existance of nature? Additionally: Are not all explanations always metaphysics (= supernatural)?

http://youtu.be/glrBz3GrFsQ

You have a problem. If you create the a supernatural power, there is a question:

- How this supernatural power was created? For this reason the theological solution always is the less straight, and the less probable.

Originally Posted by Anobsitar

? Additionally: Are not all explanations always metaphysics (= supernatural)?

Ah, here's the rub. Causal relationships might indeed be ultimately unverifiable and (hence) metaphysical. A fortiori when it comes to questions of origins. My own preference here is that the cosmos is eternal and there is literally nothing to "explain." The existence of cosmos is a brute fact, and it is simply a mystery why there is something rather than nothing (any attempt to explain the being of the cosmos, just lands us in an infinite regress of explanations).

But the perpetual being of the cosmos, does not itself preclude the existence of powers and principalities which dictate our lives. Atheists typically decry the existence of such powers, because they exercise moral authority over us, without apparent sufficient reason. But if the belief in such intrinsically morally superior agents is paralleled in the belief systems of other intelligent civilizations, well - maybe that's evidence that these principalities govern this place, whether we like it or not - ?