I don't think the discovery of extra-terrestrial life (whether intelligent or otherwise) would compromise religion whatsoever. Why would it?
What if the aliens don't want to be told that they were created by our god?
I don't think the discovery of extra-terrestrial life (whether intelligent or otherwise) would compromise religion whatsoever. Why would it?
No, it will simply prove that the Scientologists are right.![]()
That might depend on whether man can actually create those building blocks spontaneously, rather than utilising what has already been created.
What if the aliens don't want to be told that they were created by our god?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by " spontaneously" but it's certainly theoretically possible to create primitive building blocks of life forms from existing chemical reactions without organic input under controlled conditions.
If this can be proven under laboratory conditions, where would this leave religion?
Even if man succeeds in creating elementary life (real life forms) from non-living building blocks, I don't see how this reflects on any but perhaps the most fundamentalist of religious outlook. Any such discovery should supplement and enhance religious thought, not stifle it.
I anticiapated that very reply.
On the contrary, far from enhancing the need for a god, it would undermine the requirement for a god to be needed to produce life forms and therefore undermine religious theocratic teachings!
To believe in a religion or the existance of a god, one has to reject logic and rational thinking!
I'm not quite sure what you mean by " spontaneously" but it's certainly theoretically possible to create primitive building blocks of life forms from existing chemical reactions without organic input under controlled conditions.
If this can be proven under laboratory conditions, where would this leave religion?
It means to spontaneously create something without any change from another substance.
Are you stating that we could theoretically create matter without any prior substance, effectively creating something out of nothing?
If you are then I would like to see the citation.....
Essential to the new calculations is the assumption that a vacuum cannot be thought of as containing absolutely nothing.
But there are many things we can't do, either practically or theoretically: violate charge or energy conservation, decrease the total entropy of the Universe, or figure out where our initially inflating Universe came from.
Nonsense.
If you show that you something can be created out of nothing, it still doesn't answer the more intriging 'why' question. Why anything, really. The goal posts will always shift when you are attempting to address ultimately unanswerable questions.
The sooner everyone learns to respect everyone's beliefs the better.
I don't know too much about all the various religions, but would finding life on another planet disprove any of them? Or can life on other planets be accommodated into religion like current science has?
Science really is not equipped to answer philosophical questions and equally the converse is also true.