This could present the greatest challenge to the major Abrahamic religions, which teach that human beings are purposefully created by God and occupy a privileged position in relation to other creatures. The third, the mediocrity principle, claims that there is nothing special about Earth’s status or position in the Universe. That’s because, claims Sagan, “The origin of life on suitable planets seems built into the chemistry of the Universe.” For the purposes of Seti, the second principle claims that as long as there are no impediments to life forming, then life will form or, as Arthur Lovejoy, the American philosopher who coined the term, puts it, “no genuine possibility of being can remain unfulfilled”. Second is the principle of plenitude, which affirms that everything that is possible will be realised. This means that the same processes that produce life here produce life everywhere. Guiding Seti are three principles, as Paul Davies explains in the book Are We Alone? First, there’s the principle of nature’s uniformity, which claims that the physical processes seen on Earth can be found throughout the Universe. So what issues might the discovery of intelligent aliens raise? Let’s start with the question of our uniqueness – an issue that has troubled both theologians and scientists. As he notes, Peters isn’t the first or only one to use the term, which dates back at least 300 years, to a 1714 publication titled ‘Astro-theology, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God From a Survey of the Heavens’. Working out these questions might be called exotheology or astro-theology, terms defined by Ted Peters, Professor Emeritus in Theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, to refer to “speculation on the theological significance of extraterrestrial life”. We would need to consider whether our faiths could accommodate these new beings – or if it should shake our beliefs to the core. As Carl Sagan has pointed out in (the now out-of-print book) The Cosmic Question, “space exploration leads directly to religious and philosophical questions”. But the implications of Seti extend well beyond biology and physics, reaching to the humanities and philosophy and even theology. With few exceptions, most of the discussions about Seti (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) tend to stay in the domain of the hard sciences. The upshot is that the more we’re able to peer into space, the more certain we become that our planet isn’t the only one suitable for life. Of those discovered so far, more than 20 are Earth-size exoplanets that occupy a “habitable” zone around their star, including the most recently discovered Proxima b, which orbits Proxima Centauri. “We can quite reasonably expect that the number of known exoplanets will soon become, like the stars, almost uncountable,” he writes. That number may reach one million by the year 2045, says David Weintraub, associate professor of Astronomy at Vanderbilt University, and author of Religions and Extraterrestrial Life. By 2013, they had found almost 850, located in over 800 planetary systems. In 2000, astronomers knew of about 50 of these ‘exoplanets’. There are several reasons for this confidence, but a main one has to do with the speed at which scientists have been discovering planets outside of our own Solar System.
This is not just an idle fantasy: many scientists would now argue that the detection of extraterrestrial life is more a question of when, not if. And that includes the way we respond to the discovery of aliens. For example, when we ask, “What is life?” are we asking a scientific question or a theological one? Questions about life’s origins and its future are complicated, and must be explored holistically, across disciplines.
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Such a discovery would raise a series of questions that would exceed the bounds of science. The FFR’s argument might well be undermined, however, when the day comes that humanity has to respond to the discovery of aliens.
“Science should not concern itself with how its progress will impact faith-based beliefs.” While the FFR stated that their concern was the commingling of government and religious organisations, they also made it clear that they thought the grant was a waste of money. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which promotes the division between Church and state, asked Nasa to revoke the grant, and threatened to sue if Nasa didn’t comply. In 2014, Nasa awarded $1.1M to the Center for Theological Inquiry, an ecumenical research institute in New Jersey, to study “the societal implications of astrobiology”.
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