Aliens and the Enlightenment

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/great-debates/aliens-and-enlightenment

by benbreen • 2 years ago

47 55 2 years ago

The idea that other worlds would be your deal breaker on Christianity is strange. They were fine with two continents needing over a millennium to first hear about Jesus, but a plurality of worlds would be "irreconcilable."

Maybe they couldn't imagine space travel ever being possible?

hypertele-Xii3• 2 years ago

Space travel isn't currently possible. It ever becoming possible is pure speculation on your part. No man has ever left the Earth and set up shop elsewhere and lived. None. Zilch. It's science fiction.

TimTheTinker3• 2 years ago

Yes, in the same way that affordable flying cars are science fiction. The technology is known in theory; we just have (possibly insurmountable) political, financial, and legal hurdles to overcome before it will become possible.

paulluuk• 2 years ago

There are people living in space stations right now? Are you saying rockets are fake or do you mean that we don't have any permanent habitats on other planets?

E.g. https://whoisinspace.com/

BirAdam• 2 years ago

Space travel is not science fiction. Living somewhere other than Earth permanently is science fiction.

Science fiction often becomes reality. There are companies, governments, and NGOs working on extraterrestrial habitation as we discuss this. While it will be expensive and make many rather unhappy, it will likely happen… assuming that humankind doesn’t annihilate itself first.

the_af5• 2 years ago

They were fine with two continents needing over a millennium to first hear about Jesus, but a plurality of worlds would be "irreconcilable."

I think there's many ways to think about this.

First, the place where Christ was supposed to have been born is "special". Clearly he (or god) chose to be born in some continent and not another. Now multiply to... how many planets are there in the universe? What's the chance that Earth in particular was a special planet to be born in?

Second, I think the tale of Christianity is meant to be both unique and universal. It's not "this is the shape it happens to have taken in our world", it's meant to be "this is the shape it universally takes" (e.g. "love one another [...]", what if aliens are biologically incapable of love? What if they are a hive mind? Etc). The lessons are meant to be for the cosmos. This excludes all other worlds, or at the very least it'd require a fundamental revision of what Christianity means.

Third, look at the time frames. How long did it take from Christ being born to natives in other continents being "saved"? Very little given the time life (not even human life) has existed on Earth. So if we're going with the "missionary" hypothesis, i.e. that people of Earth are supposed to evangelize to aliens all over the universe, how long is this going to take? Is this even technologically possible before the universe ends? Does this mean some aliens are doomed no matter what, because they live so far from us they'll never get to hear about Jesus?

I'm an atheist but I can see some sort of religion being created that encompasses all of the universe. It would have to be different to Christianity though. I think this is why these thinkers thought the "multiple worlds" hypothesis was at odds with their religion.

throw0101a2• 2 years ago

First, the place where Christ was supposed to have been born is "special". Clearly he (or god) chose to be born in some continent and not another. Now multiply to... how many planets are there in the universe? What's the chance that Earth in particular was a special planet to be born in?

Some discussion:

When asked how aliens could be redeemed, [Vatican Observatory head] Father Funes referred to the Gospel parable of the lost sheep. Aliens, he speculated, could already be redeemed because they could have remained in full friendship with God, while the human race “could be precisely the lost sheep, the sinners that need the shepherd.”
But what if they were sinners like us? Father Funes replied that just as Jesus is believed to have come to save mankind, so he was sure that they, “in some way, would have the chance to enjoy God’s mercy.”

[…]

The question has also been debated within the Church since the Middle Ages and was discussed by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, whose fictional “Space Trilogy” featured extraterrestrial beings.

* https://www.ncregister.com/news/alien-life-out-there

throw0101a2• 2 years ago

The idea that other worlds would be your deal breaker on Christianity is strange.

"Vatican Holds Conference on Extraterrestrial Life":

* https://www.universetoday.com/44713/vatican-holds-conference...

* https://phys.org/news/2009-11-vatican-extra-terrestrial-life...

* https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican-discusses-extraterres...

See also the book Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?, co-authored by the director of the Vatican Observatory (Br. Guy Consolmagno, SJ):

* https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/228109/would-you-ba...

boomboomsubban2• 2 years ago

If only Horace Walpole had lived another 212 years and been Catholic. Then he might not have considered them irreconcilable.

graemep3• 2 years ago

This is full of distortions and omissions.

Firstly, an "earth centred" cosmology did not assume all things were made for man. It held the earth was a small part of the solar system, which in turn was surrounded by far larger (infinite?) heavens.

It is also worth thinking about what Medieval people place at the very centre of the earth, and therefore the exact centre of the universe.

She mentions some possible answers to why Christ came to earth. One possible answer is that HE did not only come to earth. Another is that other species are redeemed in different ways. Another is that they will hear of Christ from us.

aebtebeten• 2 years ago

"We gave him this big box of chocolates when he first arrived. Why? What'd you guys do?"

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20081124.gif

graemep3• 2 years ago

I thought of that too! Love it.

The version I like best is:

Aliens arrive on earth and visit various people. The first religious leader they meet is the Pope "Do you know our lord and saviour Jesus Christ?".

"Yes, he comes by every few years".

"Every few years? We have been waiting two thousand years for him to come back!"

"Maybe he does not like your chocolates"

"What do chocolates have to do with it?"

"When he first visited us we gave him a big box of chocolates. What did you do?"

n4r9• 2 years ago

Firstly, an "earth centred" cosmology did not assume all things were made for man.

Well, this one has sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. In a previous life I was in relatively close academic proximity to Patricia Fara (author of OP). I doubt she'd make such a claim lightly. So I started chasing citations.

OP states at the start of the "Analogy and Conjecture" section:

Earth-centred cosmologies had assumed that the universe had been designed specifically for human beings, but Newtonian modernisers deemed that it was only ‘according to the old vulgar Opinion, that all things were made for man’.

This passage looks to be carried over from a 2004 paper written by Fara [0]. The quotation "all things were made for man" is attributed to William Derham - an English clergyman, scientist, and contemporary of Newton - in a text titled "Astro-Theology" [1]. Derham's own reference for this is in fact another of his own texts titled "Physico-Theology" [2], in which he states:

This was no very eafy queſtion to be anſwered by fuch as held, that all things were made for man ; as moſt of the ancients did ; as Ariftotle, Seneca, Cicero, and Pliny ( to name only fome of the chief) . And Cicero cites it as the celebrated Chryfippus's opinion, Præclarè enim Chryfippus, cætera nata eſſe bo- minum causâ, & deorum. " For Chryfippus rightly judged that all things were created for man and for the Gods."-De fin. bon. & mal. 1. 3. And in his De Nat. Deor. 1. 2. fin. he ſeri- riouſly proves the world itſelf to have been made for the Gods and man, and all things in the world to have been made and contrived for the benefit of man (parata , & inventa ad fructum hominum, are his words ) . So Pliny in his preface to his 7th book faith, Nature made all things for man ; but then he makes a doubt, whether the fhewed herſelf a more indulgent parent, or cruel ftep-mother, as in book iv. chap. 12. note 2. But fince the works of God have been more diſcovered, and the limits of the Univerfe have been found to be of infinitely greater extent than the ancients ſuppoſed them ; this narrow opinion hath been exploded. And the anfwer will be found cafy to theſe queſtions, Why fo many ufelefs creatures ? In the Heavens, Why fo many fix'd ftars, and the greateſt part of them ſcarce vifible ? Why fuch fyftems of planets, as in Jupiter, Saturn, & c. ( See my Aftro-Theology. ) In the earth and waters, Why fo many creatures of no ufe to man ?

It looks to me like Derham makes a pretty good case here for Fara's claim, at least in "most" of the ancient cosmologies.

[0] "Heavenly bodies: Newtonianism, natural theology and the plurality of worlds debate in the eighteenth century", p.149. https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2004JHA....35..143...

[1] "Astro-theology Or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from a Survey of the Heavens", Book 2, Chap 2, p.18. https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&hl=fr&id=GpjG22...

[2] "Physico-theology Or, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from His Works of Creation", Book 2, Chap 6, p.5. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Physico_theology/Ouk_...

owendlamb2• 2 years ago

It is also worth thinking about what Medieval people place at the very centre of the earth, and therefore the exact centre of the universe.

You mean Satan, as depicted in Dante's Inferno, yes? Certainly Satan thinks himself the center of the universe!

It seems to me (from summaries that I've read) that the Divine Comedy shows the one "center of the universe" at the bottom of hell to be a false center, the real center being at the peak of heaven, outside of the physical order altogether, in the depths of the Trinity's interrelations.

datadeft3• 2 years ago

I think the Sumerian clay tablets (that is the bible is partially based of) reveal a lot more about the origins of human civilizations.

graemep3• 2 years ago

Very partially. The first book of the Old Testament is mostly retellings of existing myths.

I agree clay tablets tell us about the origins of civilisation - but TBF she is writing about the "enlightenment". However, it clearly had multiple causes, including political and economic ones as well as new discoveries.

datadeft3• 2 years ago

Absolutely. I was just referring to the invention of writing which is based on current understanding was done by Sumerians. It raises many questions in me, how did we end up with such a sophisticated language (and many other things like the sexagesimal number system for example).

hellectronic2• 2 years ago

The Bible is hardly based on the clay tables. Genesis, the first book of Moses, tells the story of the flood, which the Sumerian refer to as Gilgamesh.

krapp2• 2 years ago

AFAIK the Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Bible by thousands of years.

datadeft3• 2 years ago

I think there is more than just the Gilgamesh story. Don't the clay tablets mention that the first man was created by a god?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/hxqchw/co...

_0xdd• 2 years ago

Disappointed, I thought this was going to be about the window manager. /s

motohagiography• 2 years ago

odd to say Newton wrote nothing about "celestial" life when the volme of his esoteric work outweighs his scientific work by orders of magnitude. aliens don't really break any theologies either, as the idea of people being vehicles for God's ethics vs. that of the rest of nature tracks across most of them.

I love alien theories because they are the perfect example of a critical theory that provides a post-hoc explanation to literally everything as the logic of the idea. Astrology is another one, conspiracy theories about a malignant state is another, dialictic materialism and its transhumanist descendents just happen to be the prevailing one, simulation theory is an emergent one.

whats nice about the aliens one is that if there were aliens among us, the implications about how we must seem to other beings on earth is an analogy, and it asks us to consider how we would hope for our own stewards to behave toward us and what ethical ownership should be.

FrustratedMonky2• 2 years ago

Sometimes reading things like this from the Enlightenment period, I wonder how humans can move backwards so much. Within last 100 years we developed atom bomb, went to moon and yet we can still have the current anti-science religious radicals in the US. They can be driving a car full of technical marvels, and have an iPhone, but still believe in creationism and that the earth is 6000 years old.

Then, see article like this, and realize, people were having some pretty advanced ideas in the 1800's.

mcculley• 2 years ago

Humanity has not moved backwards. Just more people vulnerable to certain kinds of memes have the ability to publish them to a big audience. Even if we have billions of people believing nonsense, we still have billions moving forward.

FrustratedMonky2• 2 years ago

I worry about when the line gets crossed, when there are more non-science group and outweighs the making-progress group.

I'm just surprised that in the modern world, it isn't 99%-1%.

In US it is more like 45%(burn the witches) -to- 55%(yeah, I'll take a measles vaccine so my kids don't die).

zikduruqe• 2 years ago

people vulnerable to certain kinds of memes

That, but also with the vast amount of information at our fingertips, we are finding out how big and complex our societies and world really is. It is too much for some to handle and process, so they like to boil it down into simple terms that make sense to them. Hence, conspiracy theories and memes.

itsanaccount3• 2 years ago

I wonder how much articles like this are popping up as the hive mind of humanity becomes aware of the phenomenon that exceeds our physics watching us as years of government suppression finally cracks. Watching Lue Elizondo going on the daily show with his clinical understatement being met by the interviewer yelling "you're talking about fucking aliens man!"

Its been wild to me to see people start to grapple with the evidence. Good to know the thought of life elsewhere has a long pedigree.

the_af5• 2 years ago

Almost all (all?) ideas in the article are philosophical arguments from Enlightenment thinkers. I wouldn't call this "evidence" for the existence or absence of aliens.

What evidence is there of aliens that people are starting to grapple with?

itsanaccount3• 2 years ago

Sticking strictly to easily verifiable events I would point to this:

https://apnews.com/article/ufos-uaps-congress-whistleblower-...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/former-intel-official-o...

https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/navy-officer-support...

https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sch...

The problem here is that rebuttals like this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/analysis-whistleblower...

>> As a scientist, I’m trained to be skeptical, and I know that most UFO sightings have mundane explanations. Visual evidence is also notoriously difficult to interpret, and even the dramatic Navy videos have been debunked.

And that's allowed to convince people this is all nonsense, there's no evidence, just hearsay. The problem is the two pilots who went before congress to testify about the 2004 Nimitz videos released to the NYT in 2017 said they were dealing with these contacts for 2 weeks. A US carrier battle group with full adversarial radar (AN/SPY-1) was tracking an anonymous highspeed phenomena during exercises but all that was ever released were a pair of gun camera videos.

Wheres the radar data?

dEnigma• 2 years ago

Seems like the article is making fun of these claims more than anything.

The plurality of worlds debates provided wonderful opportunities to make definitive pronouncements without the inconvenience of providing solid evidence: after all, it was impossible to be proved wrong.

alganet• 2 years ago

"There must be some more land somewhere", a very old idea.

orourke• 2 years ago

What’s most fascinating to me is the certainly with which they believed that other worlds were inhabited. Horace Walpole, for example, even abandoning his faith over the theological difficulties it presented. Hundreds of years later, however, we’re left with the Fermi Paradox.

krapp2• 2 years ago

The Fermi Paradox doesn't demonstrate that other worlds aren't inhabited, just that our assumptions about infinite exponential growth and resource consumption and the inevitability of interstellar civilizations emerging as a function of intelligent life may not apply.

snakeyjake• 2 years ago

Hundreds of years later, however, we’re left with the Fermi Paradox.

The only paradox about the Fermi Paradox is why so many people who claim to be educated take it seriously.

Faster-than-light travel is impossible.

There aren't galaxy-spanning civilizations because creating a galaxy-spanning civilization is impossible. You cannot have a civilization where it takes 106,000 years for a message to traverse it.

If there are multi-stellar civilizations it is impossible to detect them at present. If humans lived on an earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, we would not be able to detect them at all, even with every single radio telescope on earth acting as a giant interferometer.

I assert that any intelligence that has mastered the mass-energy equivalence skills needed for interstellar travel (again, at slow-ass speeds) no longer cares about planets or biological life anyways. They would park off the ends of masses that are radiating energy and harvest it to turn into endless expanses of fantastical constructions that make planets look like jokes.

Aliens and the Enlightenment

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