Topic: Pope Francis: “We are not alone in the Universe.” (Read 6385 times)

On the issue of interspecies war: even if we overcome scarcity of material resources, there will be always scarce goods, that people will want as symbols of social status (yes, most of current consumerism is just about this), like human creations (artistic, new technologies, etc) or high quality services. There always will be Economics, as a science of decisions about scarce goods.
Besides, many wars are about fear, nationalism, pride (for instance, think about the French declaration of war against Prussia in 1870), envy and only secondarily about resources.

Maybe they are Libertarians on a peaceful mission of space exploration, and will will throw them in FEMA camp and torture their naked bodies?  

Francis is risking a trial after his death and ending with his bones removed from his grave and burnt.
Jokes aside, I bet there are a lot of Catholics that are starting to think he is dangerous.

What would be the point there? Just being dicks?

If life exists elsewhere and "some people on Earth" do know, then the question arises, how do they know?

And then it follows that if they can know, it's equally possible for others to know, even others who do not share the same values or principles as the first group of knowers and they'd likely have told someone else...who told someone else.

Knowledge can't exist in a vacuum. If it's a known, then expect it to spread.

Before or even after giving birth? It seems they argue she was a virgen all her life, so if they mean that in phisycal terms, I guess her hymen survived the birth of Jesus.
Poor Joseph, he got her wife impregnated by other and then couldn't touch her ever.
Of course, those are all histories created 100 or 200 years after, to match old profecies. All gospels tell about Jesus brothers and probably he wasn't the oldest.

They won't need to crush us really, Imagine an alien civilization capable of intergalactic or even interstellar space flights they would be so advanced that our intelligence would be scaled in comparison to the same the same as our intelligence is scaled to a worm or even worse a bacteria, I doubt that we would be even worth their time, as there must more interesting stuff in the universe than our puny planet or less than average solar system

Any society able to monitor us should know we're technological laggards in comparison. They've likely gone beyond resource scarcity, so crushing us, I imagine, for most scenarios, is probably trivial (outside, perhaps, any philosophical debates). By the time we find them, we'll probably have moved beyond resource scarcity, too, so outside some type of jellies over their cultural achievements, there's really no reason to be bothering them except to exchange perspectives and advance the art of resource collection and manipulation. I imagine they've found a primary "industry planet" so unimaginably large and dense that they literally hurl planets and moons into the surface of one side to break it apart and keep it on the surface for the automated mining drones.

Or maybe they're struggling with meaningless existence issues still, and have formed some type of goofy gladiator society. I hope they've adopted ridiculous stereotypes to form their Superman Myth around, or maybe they try to mimic our most ridiculous stereotypes and just play with us while they genocide us. You know - like the Black American musclehead stereotype who walks around, MOTHERFUCKING THIS, and MOTHERFUCKING THAT! I'd love that... or they wage wars with ridiculous mechanical monsters like "Flame Belly" or "Laser Dick," where the absurd method of destruction is itself is a form of art for the society. Maybe they'll create drones which are both fun and a fair match, broadcasting the war and permitting us to exist should we manage to come out alive.

Alternately, maybe they're emotional and disappointed to see we are relatively primitive, so they kill us out of spite. ... Err - at any rate, I'd be stunned if they killed us because they thought we could overpower them some time in the future. Would that be something for humanity to be proud of?

We have a far more interesting problem on our own.
How many Jesus were on this planet and how many more will come?

If i told you that there was a species of monkey that would one day be more inteligient and aggresive, and will try to take over the human race. what do you think you would do to that now primitive monkey? same with aliens perhaps extinguish now before we come unhandleable in the distent future.

If there is intelligent life they would view us as nothing but primitive monkeys, let alone take our advice/opinions 

Then we have the question again if every planet has "their" Jesus, the one and only Son of God.

This is a serious discussion and I think it was Teilhard de Chardin who would say yes. He tried to combine theology and rational science and thus worked out that a "Son of God" manifestation would be a necessary evolutionary step in the development of every intelligent species.

I'm not at all religious but I like this guy. First of all, he comes from the "street": he never wanted any big luxuries, used to travel in public transport in Buenos Aires and he even worked as a bouncer at club before becoming a priest. I always disliked the Catholic Church for their ostentatiousness.

Second, he has started to talk openly about some taboo topics like homosexuality and contraception with quite progressive views

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10688421/Pope-says-Catholic-Church-should-not-dismiss-gay-marriage.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/8148944/The-Pope-drops-Catholic-ban-on-condoms-in-historic-shift.html

I find the second point especially relevant as the decades-long ban on contraceptive methods has highly contributed to spreading AIDS and other diseases in the third world.

Is this just pure PR to try to stop the rapid decline of practicing Catholics in the whole world? Maybe, but still I think it's a very good improvement

On a different topic, I think the existence of aliens shouldn't be at all contrary to any religion. If God created people and many other creatures on the Earth, why couldn't he/she have done the same in other planets? Would't these aliens also become immediately "God's creatures"?

I once heard a conspiracy theory that men once landed on the Moon. Oh wait--there are samples of lunar material and plenty of video footage to prove it. Seriously though, it's nice to see the Catholic church at least take some little shuffling steps towards joining the 21st century.

there's a conspiracy theory for everything though. humans will believe anything and everything they want. i don't think i can get fazed by what people think anymore.

The idea that Jesus was an ET in human form has been around for decades (Yes... it's a pre-internet theory)
One detail I remember being told is that he healed seriously sick people by "laying his hands on them", when actually ET Jesus could have had a small high tech device to inject medicine into the patient.

I've never seen convincing proof, but it is an interesting idea.
Do you actually believe his mother Mary was a virgin?

In a lot of places in the universe one cannot live, because there is no heat (0*k) or way too much heat. Even if there is life, how would they reach us? Light only travel 300.000 km/s and the nearest star is more than one light year away.  They would need really advanced technology, primitive (like us) species would not be able to reach us.

So, Jesus is an alien?

Prominent religions like Islam or Christianity did never say we are alone heck you can find reference to angles and other beings that are far from being related to us or out planet, it's the people that are and were in control who used to mislead people for their own gain

We don't know the exact conditions that create life, but all points out to a pure chemical reaction. Some proteins not far from life were obtained in laboratory. With the proper conditions, we would get life.
With billions of planets with water, I think it's impossible to say that the proper conditions wouldn't ever be reunited after a couple of billions of years on many of them. As physicists say, what isn't impossible most necessarily happen, we just have to wait enough time.

It's highly probable and statistically likely that there's life out there, but I don't think it's certain.

I don't want to say that I don't believe in conspiracies theories, but I'm skeptical about them. Usually, they are created just to show how intelligent his author is, the one that can see the truth where all the rest, ignorant or stupid, can't. Or because the author can't accept that something horrible has a simple explication.
As far as I know, we don't have more than a bunch of theories (string, multidimensional, you name it), without any evidence to support directly them, on what created the big bang.

We may not know, but we don't know if that applies to everybody on Earth.

Meaning, there may be some people on Earth who *do* know but aren't telling us.

It is impossible that we are alone, as an intelligent species, it's something that was determined statistically.

Even assuming that life needs water, we already statistically know that there are billions of planets like Earth, with (liquid) water. Planets that are not too far or too close to their stars. We found a couple of planets like Earth even if we only discovered a few hundred planets yet. We can't say that 1% of all planets have water, but we would have billions of them, even if the rate was 0.001%. Even if specialists don't have yet a rate for the emergence of life on these kind of planets (we only know the case of Earth with life, so we can't extrapolate a rate) they think it's fair to assume that life most be something very common.

The issue is intelligent life.
We already know why we are intelligent: because of changing climate situations. Our brain almost didn't grow from about 7.5 millions years to about 2.5 millions years. Because it was a period of relative stability on climate conditions. When the climate started to have abrupt changes from drought to plenty of rain, that was a challenge and only the smartest that could adapt survived.
See Matt Grove. Change and variability in Plio-Pleistocene climates: modelling the hominin response. Journal of Archaeological Science, 2011; 38 (11): 3038 DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2011.07.002 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110921115910.htm (great article)

So, we need planets with water and changing climate conditions, even if not so radical that will extinguish all complex life.

And, yes, the universe is looking like very bizarre and mysterious. So much we don't know.

No, there exist a lot more possibilities, which are even MOAR TERRIFYING!!!

Do we live in a simulation, as mentioned upthread? MOAR TERRIFYING!!!

Simulations inside simulations, as in inception? MOAR TERRIFYING!!!

Some of which simulate a whole universe, some only one planet wondering about the Fermi Paradox? MOAR TERRIFYING!!!

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."? MOAR TERRIFYING!!!

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

By the way, if this pope said something like this 400 years ago, he would be burnt alive as Giordano Bruno was, for saying much less (that the stars were other suns and that there were other worlds around them).

These are wonderful news for NASA. Maybe now the Vatican, with its deep pockets, starts making some contributions to NASA's budget. No problem if there isn't holy water on Mars or Alpha Centauri; in due time, NASA will ship some.
The Vatican probably is thinking that they have to go save our alien brothers from hell. Of course, with all the priests, will also go all the "entrepreneurs" (like Pizarro and Cortez), to help spread the word.

great person's great and beautiful words.

i wonder how this seismic shift in the vatican's message has changed their politics? sounds too complicated for me to understand though.

They believe the Universe in its entirety is an intelligent being, also called Intelligent Infinity, The Source, or "God".

There has to be something the beleive in, in order to not have chaos, a civilization will always have a god, the Myans did and every other.  Even the native Americans had the spiritual gods

I have read theories that the typical Grey Aliens are not aliens, but rather ourselves in the future, time-traveling back. In their evolution they (we) have lost all ability to experience and express emotions, hence they look and act like robots, and they collect and mess with our DNA to find that thing again that makes us apparently "human".

I think the solution to that which the Catholic church has proposed is that the ETs are already "saved" and don't need Christ to appear for them.

But from what I have read about ETs is that although they are spiritual they do not have any religions like we do. Religions are apparently a unique thing from Earth.

oh wow this is a very good point you just made, Christ should have appeared or another being that represented the christian religion, but what happens if they dont have a religion?  What if they dont look exactly alike?

Im starting to think this pope no more then he is saying.  Maybe the governments found something and they wanted to warn them so religious people wont panic and believe god was just fake.  Cause you know how much harm to this world if the faith dissapears.

Whoa, friend. You're nearing blasphemy. Just like the "head" of all religions, Jesus appeared to all people, but every single one of them rejected His teachings, as well as God. Only a handful of Jews realized Him. Every single pre-European Native had God appear to them in some way, but they all rejected Him and eventually forgot about the whole affair. That's why every single "Jesus-separated" nation had no followers, and why the same's true of Islam, Hinduism, etc. You may be tempted to believe every religion's bullshit just because no isolated nation adopted the religious beliefs of any other nation, but fuck you, that's clearly wrong because Jesus.

It's speculated that in one of the Lost Books, God tried to convert single-celled organisms. It was only out of constant frustration that he decided to make the entirely unique, unable-to-be-genetically-traced humans.

Then the next question would be if Jesus as the one and only Son of God only appeared on Earth, and if so, why, or if he appears on all planets.  

In the latter case, the aliens would already be baptized anyway of course.  

"We are not alone in the Universe" Is basically the definition of every theistic belief system, it would be news if he'd believe otherwise! He is the frickn Pope, after all!

I don't know if Vatican accepts bitcoin ,but i saw on the news that  Father Adaly Rosado Jr. from the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Goshen, NY decided to put a virtual currencies donation button on the parish’s website. Since Pope Francis consider alien our brothers ,he should embrace bitcoin with open arms too.

Does the Vatican accept Bitcoin?

The Vatican does have a long history of eerily hinting at extraterrestrial life. It does make one wonder what they know that we don't

why do i still believe that if they finally visit us, we'll get wiped out?

-que incoming space crusaders...

This pope has more game than most of his predecessors
Respect from a non catholic

http://www.smh.com.au/world/pope-says-baptism-for-all--even-martians-20140513-zraqo.html#ixzz31X6KkNKa

I don't have much of an opinion of this pope yet but I do like this comment.  It seems bold and I can respect that but nothing to major.  I hope to see more profound comments from him and even more actions in the future.

To be Honest Francis is a much better pope than Benedict was

What if we are all one?
Well...
For starters, sports betting would get very confusing?
Are both teams part of the same one? 

What if jesus, god and aliens are one?

What if we are all one?

What if Jesus was an alien with advanced medicines to "heal people" by simply touching them?
If so, why did he give all the credit to "God his father"?

Was all good until the last sentence. Also, whilst life elsewhere is statistically very probable, I don't think for certain you can say that we're definitely not alone.  And wouldn't alien life just kinda discredit the bible even more?

Surprising news indeed.
How does he know this?
Has ET been phoning the Pope?




This is from 2009, I missed it back then:

Aliens are gods.

We certainly do not want to encourage... The Deniers!!!!!!

It would be unwise for a religion in the modern day to dismiss aliens and evolution, since they will be alienating scientists and science believers (pun intended)

That Pope is good.

They have a lot of money on the line.    10% of the income from their followers!  Better for them to change than to die.

Like I said, all round religious bullshit.

Yeah.. Him too I presume?

really shows how much the church is advancing further and not only caring about it's own interests..

I'm not blinking until I see him support gay marriage, contraceptives and call out the all round religious bullshit for what it is, seems like a nice enough guy, but unfortunately for someone in his position that's all he seems to me really, I think the papacy picked him purely for PR and to distract them from the bad image Catholics have been getting lately of being child molesters.

Still at least he's better than Emperor Palpatine, sorry I meant Pope 'Benedict'.

The Pope is the Pope. He will not change the Catholic Doctrine because some people feel it is old fashion. This is an illusion some in the Media have. The Church has been talking about how to respond for the discovery of Life on another planet for a while now. The part that was amazing is for a Pope to be direct about it, especially today, a big day for Christians, instead of on a TV set, with some journalists, randomly talking about a bunch of stuff.

The one thing that all of us should be able to respect is open-mindedness.

This is the best attribute of the new Pope, and something that makes him different from his predecessors.

I couldn't find any other source.

It is well known that the Vatican has been interested for some time in extraterrestial life though, at least since 2008:

"Vatican prepares for extraterrestrial disclosure"
"... A major driving force behind the [astrobiology] conference was the Director of the Vatican Observatory, the Jesuit priest Father Jose Gabriel Funes. In May 2008, Funes gave an interview to the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper saying that the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials posed no problems to Catholic theology. ..."
http://www.examiner.com/article/vatican-prepares-for-extraterrestrial-disclosure

"Alien life is possible: Vatican"
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-13/alien-life-is-possible-vatican/1141566

The Vatican runs multiple observatories throughout the world.

Maybe they have discovered something, like the spectral analysis of light from an exoplanet showing free oxygen, which would indicate life, or something like that.

There is going to be a worldwide telecast of Pope Franis on April 27th for the canonization of two popes. Maybe he will use that event to disclose the discovery of ET life to the world?

Is there any record of this?  I don't see anything here...

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2014/index.html

Is this the first pope that accept that there is aliens?

That. Is. Amazing.

That Pope rocks!

My Humble Opinion

Rome – In his homily, held this morning in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis with great ease and amazement among the faithful present reveals: “Dear brothers, I wanted to tell all of you that we are not alone in the universe. Science has already made ​​so much progress and will most likely soon will know our new brothers and sisters with whom we will exchange a sign of peace. On that day there will be wonder and remember that God is one and watching over us all. ”

http://i-uv.com/pope-francis-we-are-not-alone/