Posts Tagged ‘religion’
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Ten trends in global religion
Vancouver Sun (blog) Europe, Japan and other East Asian countries, such as China, also have high proportions of atheists. But the respected Pew Forum maintains 5.8 billion of the world's 6.9 billion people … according to David Chidester's book, Wild Religion. Top … |
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10 trends in global religion
Vancouver Sun Europe, Japan and other East Asian countries, such as China, also have high proportions of atheists. But the respected Pew Forum maintains 5.8 billion of the world's 6.9 billion people continue to … Top government figures in South Africa are … |
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Douglas Todd: Trends in global religion
Vancouver Sun Europe, Japan and other East Asian countries, such as China, also have high proportions of atheists. But the respected Pew Forum maintains 5.8 billion of the world's 6.9 billion people continue to … Top government figures in South Africa are … |
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There’s a wonderful Passover seder scene from Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors” in which the pious patriarch is being challenged by less devout members of his family. “Sol’s kind of faith,” says one, “is a gift. It’s like an ear for music or the talent to draw. He believes, and you can use logic on him all day long and he still believes.” “And if all your faith is wrong, Sol …” begins another, to which Sol interjects, “Then I’ll… Read More »
UFO updates
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UFOS and losing (or gaining) religion
Philadelphia Center City Weekly Press What is a UFO? In The New York Times bestseller, UFOs by Leslie Kean, many government officials and pilots go on the record with reports of sightings, but say that the sightings are not necessarily alien spaceships. "The false but widespread assumption … |
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UFO Religion Seeks Topless Women for Missouri Rally
Riverfront Times (blog) Such is the mantra of GoTopless.org, an offshoot of a religious movement tied to UFOs that is bringing its fight for bare breasts to mid-Missouri later this month. "When a woman takes her top off in public, there's a chemical reaction in her brain that … |
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What will the impact be on religion when extraterrestrial life is discovered? It is a common assumption that such a discovery will be detrimental to core beliefs of religions around the world. You might be surprised to hear, however, that some experts believe the religious impact will be minor.
(Credit: SETI Institute)
A panel discussion on this topic took place on Sunday, June 24 at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute’s SETIcon II conference in Santa Clara, California. This panel, titled “Would Discovering ET Destroy Earth’s Religions?,” concluded that the resulting impact on religion from an alien discovery is “probably not going to be as severe as we might initially think.” That is according to panelist Doug Vakoch, the director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute.
Mike Wall of Space.com points out that “the Bible, Koran and other sacred texts of the world’s major religions stress God’s special concern for humanity and for Earth,” so discovering ET “might seem threatening, by implying that we and our planet aren’t all that special.” But as SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak mentioned during the panel, “We haven’t been the center of the universe for a while now — four centuries.”
Ancient astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei countered the established belief that the sun and everything else in the universe revolved around Earth. Such crazy talk was viewed as blasphemy by the world’s largest Christian church–the Catholic Church. The present-day Vatican, however, is much more open to science and the possibilities of life elsewhere in the universe. In a 2009 interview with Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Father José Gabriel Funes, the director of the Vatican observatory, stated, “As a multiplicity of creature exist on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God. This does not contrast with our faith because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God.”
Ted Peters
In addition to this latest panel discussion on the topic of the extraterrestrial impact on religion, an “ETI Crisis Survey” was conducted in 2008 by Dr. Ted Peters, professor of systematic theology at both Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley California, to test the belief that, “upon confirmation of contact between Earth and an extraterrestrial civilization of intelligent beings, the long established religious traditions of earth would confront a crisis of belief and perhaps even collapse.” More than one-thousand people from varying religions participated in the study, and results showed that only a small percentage of the participants felt their personal beliefs would be affected by the confirmation of extraterrestrial life.
What are your thoughts? Would the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrials have any affect on your religious beliefs? Share your opinion with us on the Open Minds Facebook page.








