Space aliens are welcome at the Vatican

May 17, 2008

Guest Post by Morbo

An official at the Vatican got some ink this week by announcing that it’s OK to believe in space aliens.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, a Jesuit priest who directs the Vatican Observatory, told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that life on other planets could be part of God’s plan. Funes asked:

“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere? Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ‘sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? It would still be part of creation.”

Funes went on to say that such a belief “doesn’t contradict our faith” and that refusing to even admit the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be the same as “putting limits” on God’s abilities.

This is the kind of quirky story that the media loves, but in fact it’s really nothing new for the Catholic Church. When I was kid in Catholic school, I remember the nuns giving us little encyclopedias that explained church dogma in simple terms. There was an entry about life on other planets. Nothing in Catholic doctrine, it said, ruled that out. Of course, that life would have to be part of God’s creation.

Buried within the story is a more interesting nugget: A Vatican official has once again reminded us that the Bible is not a science book.

Funes said exactly that and went on to endorse the Big Bang theory. Previous Vatican science advisors have stated that the church has no problem with evolution, as long as there is role for God in the process. This is useful, because sometimes Pope Benedict XVI sounds a little confused on “intelligent design.” I hope these science advisors will steer him in the right direction.

It’s also good to know that old-style, young-Earth creationism isn’t getting much traction at the Vatican these days. I certainly have my differences with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, but it’s always refreshing to see them resisting a slide into ignorance. Statements like this will also prevent U.S. Protestant fundamentalists from claiming the church as an ally in their anti-science classroom crusades.

On matters of human reproduction and sexuality, the leadership of the Catholic Church remains stuck in the Middle Ages. On cosmology and human evolution, they have advanced to the 21st. Perhaps in another 400 years they’ll come around on birth control and gay people. There is always hope.

Now if they’d only release a statement on bigfoot.

Oh how God must love the religous soul! I think this Catholic science advisor is onto something – possibly much like St. T. Aquinas. -Kevo

  • Does the Vatican spokesman contend that to each of the countless other worlds in the universe God sent his only son to die for their sins?

  • On matters of science, perhaps the Catholic Church knows that it lost a lot of credibility because of its unfortunate dispute with Galileo. It’s good to see that the Church can learn from its obvious mistakes, even if it takes several centuries.

    I doubt that most young-Earth creationists have even heard of Galileo.

  • I’m sure the aliens are breathing a sigh of relief that their continued existence is condoned by the Catholic Church.

    But here’s the rub: what happens if their concepts of religion (in the broadest sense, allowing for godless explanations of the cosmos) are completely (gulp) alien from ours, ideas we haven’t even conceived of? And suppose they’re far advanced from us, as almost certainly any creatures we discover will be, and have long shed their primitive notions of gods and demons and whatnot?

    Are we going to take action then, cast them out of existence, or what? What else could we do? So why not rid ourselves of them now, preemptively strike them out of existence and save future generations all this trouble?

  • Hey, if we are supposed to believe in a virgin birth, death and rebirth, why not space aliens. Hell, I’d have an easier time believing in aliens…if life exists here why not elsewhere.

    Virgin births? Not so much.

  • But what is the Vatican’s position going to be on interspecies marriage. I suppose it will track the Vatican’s present position on homosexuality – – lusting after a Klattoonian will be ok, but marrying a Klattoonian will not, and god forbid, may you rot in hell if you even think about forming the double-backed beast (unless Klattoonian’s already have two backs, in which case it will be “forming the three-backed beast) with a Klattoonian, which God certainly could never have contemplated, and certainly not condone

  • I doubt that most young-Earth creationists have even heard of Galileo.

    They probably haven’t heard of Jupiter (the god or the planet) either.

  • Folks,for all we know there may be PROOF of life on other planets tucked away in those Vatican archives. You know how closely these centuries of documents are guarded. LOL,I think??

  • “How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere? Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ’sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? It would still be part of creation.”

    I highly doubt the Catholic church believes this. They are simply dealing with the very real probability of us discovering some sort of life form in the near future.

    For all we know, the first species we have contact with might have three genders and be practicing tri-sexual atheists that have a Utopian society free of all the ‘evils’ the bible is suppose to cure. And what in the hell would the catholic church do if that species were practicing muslims with their dogma paralleling Earth’s entirely.

  • It’s also good to know that old-style, young-Earth creationism isn’t getting much traction at the Vatican these days. — Morbo

    That’s why Hagee calls them what he calls them.

    MsJoanne, @5

    Careful with your disbelief in virgin birth; there’s a lizard which does exactly that, whenever necessary. Morbo had a post on it a few months back.

  • But, libra, does it go from self reproduction back to male-female reproduction then back again?

    Some self contained little animule 😉 differs from human reproductivity. Please do correct me if I am wrong. I’m not aware of that happening.

  • 1) seem to remember that there is at least one example of a shark having a virgin birth…..

    2) I thought there was at least one species of lizard that switches back and forth according to temperature.

    3) Gee, the Catholic Church has FINALLY chosen to catch up with Giordano Bruno (who they burned at the stake in 1600, and who proposed the doctrine of multiple inhabited worlds.)

  • –Previous Vatican science advisors have stated that the church has no problem with evolution, as long as there is role for God in the process. —

    The role of god in the Vatican’s idea of evolution (called Theistic Evolution) is exactly equivilent to the role of the parsley sprig on your plate of Surf & Turf. It’s there for decorative purposes only, it contributes nothing of real value to the dish, when it comes time to get down to the meat of the matter the first thing you do is dispose of it, and the only reason it gets put there in the first place is to placate the Parsley Grower’s Association.

    The whole point of evolution is that it doesn’t need a god to work.

  • Ms J, @12.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16784022/

    Don’t know whether they can or do go back and forth; this was the first observed case. The article doesn’t even say what the sex of the hatchlings was, though I’d expect them all to be females (one of the reasons I have always been a tad suspicious about the Virgin Mary giving birth to a boy; where had the other chromosome come from?)

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