Extraterrestrial Life and Censorship

Zygon®, 1997

From antiquity to the present, humans have debated whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. This presentation will survey this debate, examining the roles played in it by science, religion, philosophy, and other areas of human learning. One thesis that will be developed is that whether or not extraterrestrials exist, ideas about them have strongly influenced Western thought.

This paper presents an overview of Christian beliefs concerning the origins of the universe from a young earth creationist worldview. This worldview is explored in relation to the search for extraterrestrial life and origins cosmology, with a focus on what creationists perceive to be the political stakes for Biblical literalism on this subject. The relationship between science fiction, astrobiology and creationism is also explored. I argue that understanding what young earth creationists believe is at stake in debates over extraterrestrial life and origins can help scientist, ethicists, and members of mainline Christian traditions better understand some anti-scientific public reactions to the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) and the space sciences more generally. Creationists views on this subject are explored in detail, including discussions about the possible Biblical basis for a Christian belief in extraterrestrials. These views are explored in relation to the field of astrobiology and the work of bodies like NASA, as well as creationist research done under the guise of creation astronomy in response to both. Materials I look at include creationist science textbooks, popular theological materials and public comments submitted to the ‘Hello from Earth’ project in 2009, which sent thousands of messages received by the public towards Gliese 581d, an exoplanet approximately 20 lights years away in the constellation Libra that is believed by some scientists to be a potential candidate for extraterrestrial life.

2009

"The search for and discovery of extraterrestrial life, especially an independent origin of life, raise interesting philosophical issues (most or all of which can be connected to important practical issues), in at least three interrelated areas: (1) epistemology, (2) value theory (especially ethics), and (3) worldviews. This chapter samples of a variety of views in these areas, touching slightly on some policy and theological connections, both of which are covered more extensively elsewhere in this volume. The first section will explore epistemological areas such as (a) dealing with the limitation of knowing only one kind of biology, (b) challenges of discerning an independent origin of life, and (c) challenges for assessing the biological status of a region or entire planet. The ethical considerations of the second section will explore (a) the role of an independent origin of life vs. interplanetary transport, (b) ethical views ranging from anthropocentric to cosmological, and (c) potential policy implications. The third section will touch briefly on basic worldviews that revolve around (a) randomness and chance (an “accidental” universe), (b) purpose and meaning (a deliberate universe), and (c) a “bootstrapped” universe in which meaning and purpose emerge in the universe through valuing cultural beings (a “cultural cosmos”)."

Theology and Science, 2015

The recent remarks of Pope Francis spark anew an important discussion: Are we alone in the Universe? The article follows traces of the idea of extraterrestrial life throughout philosophy, evaluates the current considerations about the probability of extraterrestrial life and discusses the potential implications for the discovery of such life from a theological point of view. This "thought experiment" covers basic insights on creation, revelation and redemption. God "gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time in which He assured them of his continual presence, giving life to every reality. And thus Creation has been progressing for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until becoming as we know it today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who gives life to all beings." 1 These words have recently been spoken by Pope Francis in the same address where he reiterated the affirmative catholic views on the Big Bang and on evolution, which created much media attention. They open up a surprising perspective on the likeliness of the discovery of extraterrestrial life. It seems so certain that there might be life beyond our planet to be discovered, that even the pope, speaking of "beings of the universe" instead only mentioning human beings, refers to this possibility. Why is this currently the case? And what is the history of this thought? In this article, we will follow traces of this idea throughout philosophy, evaluate the current considerations about the probability of extraterrestrial life and discuss the potential implications for the discovery of such life from a theological point of view.

2005

Desde o início, as ideias acerca da vida extra-terrestre continham significados metafisicos e religiosos. Estudos históricos, como os de Steven Dick e Michael Crowe, mostraram que as referências ao extra-terrestre ajudavam a tornar a astronomia mais atractiva, sendo discutidos exaustivamente. A confiança na existência de vida inteligente algures no universo não é uma descoberta recente, pois em meados do século XIX o filósofo escocês Thomas Dick calculou a população total do nosso sistema solar. Assim, em função das implicações metafisicas e teológicas da vida extra-terrestre, que têm influenciado o conteúdo das teorias astronómicas, podemos perguntar-nos se existe alguma coisa nova a ser dita à luz das nossas actuais especulações.

Astrobiology

According to the 2015 Astrobiology Strategy, a central goal of astrobiology is to provide a definition of life. A similar claim is made in the 2018 CRC Handbook of Astrobiology. Yet despite efforts, there remains no consensus on a definition of life. This essay explores an alternative strategy for searching for extraterrestrial life: Search for potentially biological anomalies (as opposed to life per se) using tentative (vs. defining) criteria. The function of tentative criteria is not, like that of defining criteria, to provide an estimate (via a decision procedure) of the likelihood that an extraterrestrial phenomenon is the product of life. Instead, it is to identify phenomena that resist classification as living or nonliving as worthy of further investigation for novel life. For as the history of science reveals, anomalies are a driving force behind scientific discovery and yet (when encountered) are rarely recognized for what they represent because they violate core theoretical beliefs about the phenomena concerned. While the proposed strategy resembles that of current life-detection missions, insofar as it advocates the use of a variety of lines of evidence (biosignatures), it differs from these approaches in ways that increase the likelihood of noticing truly novel forms of life, as opposed to dismissing them as just another poorly understood abiological phenomenon. Moreover, the strategy under consideration would be just as effective at detecting forms of life closely resembling our own as a definition of life.

2013

In this article we reflect on the motives underlying the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life (SETI) with a view to show that far from turning away from Humanity it is profoundly rooted in human aspirations. We suggest that those motives derive their driving force from the fact that they combine two powerful aspirations of Humanity. On the one hand, there is the transcendental motive that drives history of science, the human enterprise that claims to escape any communitarian closure of horizon and brings our humanity to transcend itself toward the other, which was formerly referred to under the title Universal Reason. On the other hand, there is the anthropological motive by virtue of which the human being tends to project on the other and even in inanimate nature a double of himself. The mixture of both motives is deemed responsible for a remarkable bias in the current understanding of the SETI program. Despite the fact that such a program might well be aimed at any biological formation which could be arbitrarily different from all known forms, it is focused instead on a very special kind of being: beings that possess both the natural property of the type of mentality we identify with: intelligence, and the ideal one of being possible co-subjects for a Science of Nature. 1. Mixed motives for a scientific program One may have legitimate grounds for puzzlement about SETI. SETI is the acronym of a research program to detect optical or radio signals as a communication with intelligent beings inhabiting the planets of stars other than our Sun. That research has been unsuccessful to date despite the progress already made in two areas. On one hand, progress has been made in the astronomical identification of exoplanets located in the habitable zone of their stars. The observatory satellite Kepler dedicated to the hunt for exoplanets has allowed identification of over a thousand candidates for the status of telluric exoplanets awaiting confirmation from telescopic observation on Earth. On the other hand, progress has been made in the detection of trace physicochemical components of life in space (biosignatures). The analysis of the light spectrum of exoplanets orbiting their star (so far only uninhabitable planets more like a hot gaseous Jupiter than like Earth) has made possible the determination of the chemical composition of the atmosphere of a few of those exoplanets, revealing the

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2011

Astronomers are now able to detect planets orbiting stars other than the Sun where life may exist, and living generations could see the signatures of extra-terrestrial life being detected. Should it turn out that we are not alone in the Universe, it will fundamentally affect how humanity understands itself—and we need to be prepared for the consequences. A Discussion Meeting held at the Royal Society in London, 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, on 25–26 January 2010, addressed not only the scientific but also the societal agenda, with presentations covering a large diversity of topics.