All of God's creatures

The Vatican says it's OK to believe in aliens.

But not gay aliens, presumably. ;)

Comments

[Mike]

Nah, you can believe in gay aliens too, as long as they're celibate. Or sinful. I'm pretty sure Catholics are allowed to believe that other people sin.

[Aaron]

I have some questions...

Do aliens have souls? Do they go to heaven? How do they get there? Do they have Bibles? Do the bibles tell of this guy Jesus Christ who died for their sins on some impossibly distant planet called Earth? Or maybe they got a different Son of God. Or maybe Jesus is just really busy, going from planet to planet getting crucified all over again. Is it always crucifiction? (his job sucks)

Do all aliens believe in God? Do the ones that don't go to hell? Do aliens have heretics? False gods? Religious wars?

Or maybe aliens don't have souls at all. Like really smart dolphins. I suppose that means alien abortion is OK. Does it mean we can raise aliens for food?

Do aliens have Sunday school where the kids ask questions their religious instructors can't answer?

[Dan]

Can we just have a constant Catholic bashing thread ?

For those who don't find ejaculatory thrill in ridiculing Catholicism--and there seem to be an amazing few who do not, and who would like to begin a consideration of the alien issue in theology, I recommend CS Lewis' Space Trilogy as a start.

The rest, please proceed to the bathroom to clean up and recharge for another self-gratifying tarry into those plentiful contradictions that apparently help you sleep at night.

[Angrier and Angrier]

Dan-

As a "lapsed Catholic" myself, I find the knee-jerk reaction of people like you and David K to be irritating. I haven't seen anything on here that rises to "Catholic bashing." Questioning the concept of religion as a whole? Yes. But not "Catholic bashing."

I have an idea. Instead of having a thread for "Catholic bashing," why don't we establish a thread for overly sensitive knuckleheads to vent. (Actually, that may be the purpose of the entire blog).

[Angrier and Angrier]

Speaking of space, NASA is making a mysterious announcement at 1pm today about something scientists have "looked for in our galaxy for the past 50 years."

I would have to guess a black hole. Any other guesses?

[Jeff]

As a "lapsed Catholic" myself, I find the knee-jerk reaction of people like you and David K to be irritating

The knee-jerk reaction of individuals like Aaron to automatically ridicule the Christian or Catholic religion is also irritating.

I'm assuming that he was trying to be tongue-in-cheek funny, but after the fourth or five sentence it started to become a litte much.

[Marty West]

Religion is a fairy tale.

[Angrier and Angrier]

Jeff-

If you and Dan take offense at Aaron's comment as anti-religious, that is one thing. But to call it "anti-Catholic" is simply inaccurate and overly defensive on Dan's part. I don't see Methodists on here bellowing about generally anti-Christian comments as being "anti-Methodist."

The "chief astronomer" is not the "Vatican." The American press is notorious for finding some crackpot priest who has some official sounding title and calling him "the Vatican." That's like saying some researcher who received an NIH grant speaks for the Bush Administration. The Vatican, that is the real Vatican, needs to do a much better job of controlling it press operation. It can start with getting more control over L'Osservatore Romano...that newspaper is, I think, highly responsible for the American press' misreading of things.

[Angrier and Angrier]

The guy is the Director of the Vatican Observatory which is financed by The Vatican and which is housed in the summer residence of The Pope. It is the Vatican, moron.

As for your comparison with NIH, the Director of NIH (compared to the Director of the Vatican Observatory) is appointed by the President and reports to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and DOES speak for the Bush Administration.

[David K.]

Well you are right A&A, I am offended, but not by Aaron's comments (i find them intriguing and/or amusing) but by your including me in knee jerk reactionism. When I am defensive of Catholic's I do so for the same reason I am defensive of other areas, because I see a geniune unfair criticism being made. Your knee-jerk anti-criticism would be a more accurate reading of the situation, just because I have defended the Catholic faith in some areas, just as I have defeneded many other things, isn't "knee-jerk" even if you think the defense is wrong.

[Angrier and Angrier]

David K-

You rant and rave so much about anti-Catholic remarks that you make Bill Donohue look like a secular Mr. Rogers. The Catholic Church is one of the largest and wealthiest enterprises in the world and the Catholic congregation the single largest denomination, yet you bitch and moan like you are that Amish guy that got his ass kicked in Witness.

[Alasdair]

A&A - David K isn't so much a knee-jerk as an auto-genuflector ...

You are apparently also forgetting that Catholics are Catholicly offended, whereas Methodists tend to be more Methodically offended ... and the Wee Free tend to be Freely offended (but that's a topic for another post) ...

(grin)

[Aaron]

I'll admit to some gentle mockery, but not to bashing of any kind. And I'm genuinely fascinated by questions of this sort. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we believe all living things in the universe are Gods creatures but that only human beings have immortal souls. What are the implications for what we believe, morally, about a hypothetical other species of intelligent, self-aware beings? What innate rights, if any, do we ascribe to ourselves but deny to them?

Or tweak the hypothetical a little. Suppose we believe that all intelligent, self-aware beings have an immortal soul, but that belief in the Christian god, or accepting Jesus Christ as savior, or whatever specific version you prefer, is their (the souls) only path to heaven. Well, then, we surely would expect to find Bibles, or some similar form of Christian religious instruction, among the civilizations of an alien world. Either that, or we believe in a God so capricious as to fill the universe with souls whose only chance at salvation is to invent space travel and happen upon one specific little world in the all the vast cosmos.

[Sandy Underpants]

Aliens aren't religious. If they've gained enough knowledge to travel space, they surely don't have any questions left that would necessitate relying on superstition/religion.

Yeah exactly, I mean the universe is so cut and dry there can't POSSIBLY be things we may never understand. The only things that people should believe are the ones they can prove to themselves! Like how people could prove the world was flat...oh wait...or how people knew that there was nothing smaller than electrons...oh wait...or how we completely understand how the brain works..oh wait...

[Angrier and Angrier]

Anon-

You are right. It is better to live our lives based around an imaginary being created 5,000 years ago by some Jews stuck in the desert. While we are at it, we should resurrect Zeus, Ra and any other "sun god" or "ultimate god" or whatever was running around at the time.

Angrier and Angrier is arguing with nobody again.

[Megan D]

I will pray to the 8lb. 6oz. baby jesus. ;-)

Haha, your funny AA, you base your argument on the premise that God is imaginary, something that can neither be proven nor disproven, and yet you assert it as fact that we shoudl accept. Sure if we KNEW he was imaginary it would make no sense to follow him, but we don't, and some people believe the teachings of God and his followers are worth following. Some don't. You might follow other beliefs for whatever reason. But guess what, last time i checked YOU don't have all the answers, so why should I trust your judgment? My parents believe in God, many of my friends believe in God, and they make a whole lot more sense than you do most of the time, why shouldn't i follow their example and not yours?

[David K.]

Aaron, you are forgetting a third possibility, that aliens do in fact have souls, but much like the Jews served as God's avenue for spreading his message to the rest of the world through Jesus, we would act as the missionaries to the aliens.

[Alasdair]

I was going to type something witty about David K in a Missionary Position but this is a family-friendly blog, so I struck it out ...

Our society spends a lot of its time trying to deal with an Imaginary Being - the Reasonable Man ... it's a convenient fiction ...

If folk wish to have as their Deity something we don't happen to believe exists, who are we to discourage them ? Unless, of course, we happen to secretly believe their Deity *does* exist and we don't want 'em to have any advantage over us ?

Talking of imaginary beliefs, how about A&A's belief that the Director of the NIH "DOES speak for the Bush Administration" ? Got me convinced, that does ... next time I want to know the Bush Administration's views on economic policy or energy policy or political strategy, he's one of the first folk I'll want to talk with ... "Yeah, RIGHT !" ...

That's like saying that Our David here "DOES speak for the Vatican" ... perhaps that's David's Missionary Position ?

(grin)

[David K.]

Holy crap Alasdair, you ACTUALLY made a good joke! Poor satan must be freezing his tail off, I never thought i'd see the day.