I couldn’t help but laugh at this remark:
I first met Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, head of the Vatican Observatory and sometimes called “the pope’s astronomer,” after an event on science fiction and theology we did at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture.
We ended up talking a lot about aliens. He agreed with me that the Catholic intellectual tradition would have absolutely zero problem with the idea of intelligent life — that is, substances of a rational nature (the classic definition of a “person” in my field) — on other planets.
But when asked in a later, more in-depth interview on these topics if he would be willing to baptize an alien, he said, “Only if she asked.” [Religion News Service]
And, quite seriously, what happens if they whip out a frazzlesnoozle and offer to induct you into their religion?
A polite No, thank you! is assumed.
I was a little perplexed by this remark, though:
I’ve heard lots of folks over the years speculate on what the reality of nonhuman persons on other plants would mean for religious belief — implying that it would be some kind of challenge or problem. But I agree with Ezra Klein, who argued in a recent New York Times column that the challenge is actually more profound for his own secular worldview, which positions humanity as a kind of cosmic accident in an empty cosmos.
If Mr. Klein’s “secular worldview” suggests that humanity is the only intelligent life – or, worse, just life – in the Universe, then it’s not secular.
It’s religious.
Look: A secular, or better yet agnostic, world-view has at its heart an acknowledgement of a lack of knowledge. Based on our limited knowledge of the requirements of life, and the frequency with which those requirements are satisfied in the cosmos, any statement as to whether we’re unique or terribly common in this Universe is, in either case, a statement of faith, not evidence. And faith, when studying reality, should be meticulously minimized, although I doubt it can be entirely omitted. For example, the idea that reality can be understood to any substantial degree is, in itself, a statement of faith.
So, for me, the existence of aliens is a speculative statistical claim, not a claim of certainty, but rather that of hope – because aliens would be cool right up until we’re all running for our lives – and to think that we’re unique in the category of intelligent creatures in the Universe is an unpleasant, even tragic thought. I’d like to think there are aliens, but, until we catch one of these UFOs and open them up and prove they’re occupied by aliens rather than Russians, I also openly acknowledge that it’s merely a hope of mine.
But Klein’s intellectual world-view, if it has not been misstated, is profoundly broken.
