Intelligent life elsewhere?
November 11, 2009, 12:17 pm
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
There are reports today that the Vatican has just held a symposium on the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the implications for the Church. In 1952 Fr. Francis J. Connell, C.Ss.R, was already giving thought to the question and gave a lecture that was accurately summed up in Time magazine. Teilhard de Chardin, on reading this account, bemoaned the low state of theology in the U.S. Let’s hope that things have improved since.
This is exactly what should be on the front cover of the next commonweal magazine to draw in young readers.
In a report in the local paper the story was accompanied by a photograph of a Monsignor standing next to a poster for a show at the Vatican entitled “Galilei Divin Uomo”. Overcompensation? Or just Italian exuberance?
I do love the idea that Adam and Eve night have embarked on space travel as immortals–no space suits needed, I suppose–if only they had not listened to that sly snake.
I think CW will of course need to continue to engage the 21st century from a deeply Catholic perspective – not an easy job(and at anniversary 85, could the issue of the outreach have been raised by a certain aging weariness?)
I first heard about ETIL in the 60′s but many poopooed the notion then.
Here in high science Atomic city, a number of folks for years now regularly attend UFO conferences (with great seriousness.) I also just got an e-mail inviting thoughts from some of my fellow Catholics here (many of them highly qualified scientists -unlike myself -) about the very story.
Still, I think:
The more we understand our vast expanding universe, the more likely it is that there is exreaterrestrial life and intelligent life.
What strikes me as problematic is that if there are UFOs and that we were/are observed, that would presuppose a superior intelligence and makes me wonder how we’d tell them we have the truth about it all.
Given the scientists’ interest in extra-terrestrial life, they will probably have to consider this extremely fundamental question: how can you tell a human being when you find one? (Remember the episode of Star Trek in which some possibly human creatures looked at first sight like boulders?)
If they do ask this question and make headway with it, it could help with the stem-cell debate, where it is claimed by some that beings (stem cells)which neither look like nor operate like people are in fact rational animals. No, I’m not going to talk about abortion. I just want to point out that a highly rekevant question in cosmobiology (or whatever it’s called) is also an extremely relevant question in another field.
Don’t be surprised if life in a different planet/solar system was started by Adam and Steve.
The Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to behold.
I read an interesting past article by Jesuit brother Guy Consolmagno, who works for the Vatican Observatory – Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?
Joseph Gannon: Not to be picky or anything, but, at least as scripture tells it, it was not the sly snake that denied A & E immortality; rather, it was God placing a flaming sword and a cherubim at the entrance to the Garden designed to keep A & E from sneaking back into the Garden and eating from the tree of life and living forever. Perhaps such trees grow on other planets and we will once again have a chance.
Still, it does make one wonder if perhaps the sword and the cherubim have become lax in their duties after so many years, providing us with a new opportunity here on earth.
This is an interesting topic – some possibilities regarding God and other life on other planets:
1 – It could be that beings on another planet never experienced The Fall, in which case the good Lord would not have needed to send Jesus. A wonderful thought in my opinion.
2 – It could also be that; beings on another planet did experience The Fall, that in turn God sent Jesus, and that they accepted Him as Saviour and Not crucified Him. Wonder how that would have worked?
I wonder what else could be different.
I do love the idea that Adam and Eve night have embarked on space travel as immortals–no space suits needed, I suppose–if only they had not listened to that sly snake.
Joseph,
Less than no space suits. :)
But wasn’t the serpent basically telling the truth?
First we have . . .
And then we have . . .
God is confirming that what the serpent told them about the knowledge of good and evil was true.
And wasn’t God, in earlier making his prohibition, not altogether honest . . .
That’s the translation from the NAB, but the RSV says,
And the translation from the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) is
The NAB translation leaves open the possibility that Adam and Eve are setting in motion a course of events which will lead to their eventual death through the loss of a chance at immortality. But the other translations basically say that if Adam and Eve eat the fruit, it will kill them on the spot. But in fact they don’t die from eating the fruit, which confirms that the serpent was telling them the truth when he said they would not die.
It could also be that; beings on another planet did experience The Fall, that in turn God sent Jesus, and that they accepted Him as Saviour and Not crucified Him. Wonder how that would have worked?
Ken,
It would have worked out well for the Jews of the planet, especially because the planet would never have Christians.
But seriously, my understanding of the Catholic belief is that once there was a Fall, the sacrificial death of Jesus was necessary no matter how well he was accepted during his earthly ministry. He is the savior not because he came and delivered a message. He is the savior because he came, suffered, and died.
Daaaavid! Isn’t it obvious that God meant that Adam and Eve would surely die SPIRITUALLY!? Forget for the moment that it is not at all clear what that would mean, but at least we can say it and therefore stop worrying about such textual incongruities.
cosmobiology (or whatever it’s called
I think it’s called exobiology.
That aside, how would one even recognize sentient life? Do you think we would even share a conceptual world with such creatures? I believe that’s why Wittgenstein said, “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” In any event, I’d be careful about trying to cram the Universe into Catholic dogma.
I think it’s called exobiology.
Stephen Jay Gould once referred to exobiology as “that other great subject without a subject matter.”
Per Antonio “In any event, I’d be careful about trying to cram the Universe into Catholic dogma.”
—————————————
Oh relax and live a little Antonio. This is just a fun, specualtive discussion, and so we need not be so “careful”. I think the good Lord would forgive some lighthearted speculation.
In any case, in God’s universe, there is room enough for all.
;-)
Antonio –
Yes, I think the late Wittgenstein was thinking about a similar question. But I think the early Wittgenstein (the one I like best) thought quite differently. Wittgenstein of the Tractatus thought that all of our knowledge of the external world was just pictures of the world whose *structures* were like the things out there, but whose pictorial *elements* differ. For instance, I might know the actual rectangular shape of a thing, its structure, but its redness, an element of the picture, would be non-objective. So knowledge and the world are isomorphic. (Without some similarity of thought and thing you couldn’t call it knowledge.)
About establishing that there are intelligent beings out there: Consider this neat conjecture some scientist thought up years ago. If there is intelligent life out there in the cosmos, and if it is trying to make contact with us, how could we know it? First we have to assume that another intelligent creature would know something about the nature of intelligent communication. After all, if it is abasically similar to us, it is rational and wants to communicate. (Granted, the last part is a big assumption, but a reasonable on.) We both understand that there has to be some commonality for there to be language — a medium accessible to both of us. Radio waves would be a good medium, being all over the cosmos. We’d also have to assume that the language of the radio waves includes some sort of pattern, even though we don’t know what the pattern means — random waves would not communicate.
But what sort of pattern would be an intelligent pattern? (Here’s where things get clever.) Well, if we’re talking about an intelligence that has the technology to send patterns of radio waves into the cosmos, then it’s highly probably that the intelligence has a fine grasp of mathematics — including knowledge of pi — a pesky number that can’t’ be fully expressed in digits. So how could we use it to establish contact? We could send a message back with radio waves in the physical pattern of the first six digits of pi: 3.1415 . The other intellligence picks up our pattern, a pattern he/she *already knows*, a pattern the intelligence would recognice immediately. Knowing it to be incomplete. and knowing that *we* know it, the intelligence sends back the *next* six digits: 92653. Voila’! Communication of an intellectual concept – and we conclude that there is another intelligence out there. Neat.
Problem: this assumes that the intelligence has two hands and ten fingers and is therefore extremely familiar with pi expressed in a decimal system. That might not be true. Still, what fun!
Are there any physical characteristics which all rational-physical beings must have? Moving parts would seem to me to be a sine qua non. But beyond that, what is necessary for the body of a rational creature? Some sort of sensors to receive sensory data. But would those intelligences need sensory “organs” of some sort? I mean parts with cells. And so on.
And those exobiologists (thanks for the word) will need to consider whether there are any elements or other physical units which are conditions of the pos
Must there be male and female bodies? If not, that would seem to mess up the theology of only male priests. Hmmm.
OK. I’ll stop now.
See how bad I am in math? Can’t tell the difference between 5 and 6.
Also, should be:
And those exobiologists (thanks for the word) will need to consider whether there are any elements or other physical units which are conditions of the possibility of a rational body. For instance, is carbon necessary?
Just to put things in perspective:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pale_Blue_Dot_(uitsnede).png
Also the SF novel “High Crusade”, by Poul Anderson has fun exploring the idea of an alien invasion at the time of the Crusades.
As to communicating number or quantity, you’d obviously use a binary (two-value) numbering system. In any event, SETI work is ongoing,
Check out:
http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=1366
Want to participate in the hunt? Go to:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
They have a program that lets you donate your spare CPU cycles for use in crunching the numbers from sky survey data.
[K]nowledge and the world are isomorphic. (Without some similarity of thought and thing you couldn’t call it knowledge.)
But isn’t that “world” is a product of our particularly human cognitive faculties? And aren’t those faculites, in turn, a product of earth’s specific evolutionary environment? If so, what guarantee do we have that an alien’s “world” would be isomorphic to ours? I believe that’s what the later Wittgenstein was getting at.
Should the Vatican be spending its intellectual resources on such idle speculation?
Here is a more profitable issue for their think tanks: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1112/1224258653778.html
Antonio –
If we are right in assuming that the aliens live in the same world (or different aspects of it), and if the scientists’ discoveries here are products of an evolutionary process of things made of at least similar materials as the materials found in other regions and aspects of the cosmos (and we have scientific reason to think that they are, including the possible appearance of the radio waves from the aliens), it seems reasonable to me to assume that there is at least some similarity between our knowledge and theirs. Further, if there is *no* similarity, then there is no knowledge. In fact, I’d say if there is no similarity at all, then we live in alternative worlds.
Analogously, we could say that angels live in entirely different worlds — totally spiritual ones. That they might communicate with us is itself a fascinating idea. How would they do it except miraculously? (Aquinas thought the communicated with each other without any medium — got into each others’ minds, so to speak, directly.)
But, true, the aliens’ knowledge could be very different from ours depending on their material make=up and perceptual organs. For instance, I wonder if they’d perceive different colors. (Must go read Wittgenstein on color. He might say something about this.
Would the Vatican’s new field of study be called Exotheology?
Seriously and hopefully not to trivialize the matter further, I believe ideas about angelic and divine communications are simply metaphors for a process that is fundamentally and literally unknowable. We have no choice but to think of these entities and processes in anthropomorphic terms.
I don’t think one can consider such processes to be miraculous, since by definition they lie outside the domain of the physical world in which miracles are definable.
Yes, the existence of angels is purely a matter of speculation, except if one believes in the Bible. However, Aristotle speculated that purely spiritual substances might exist. He called them “separated substances”, being separate from the material world. Aquinas identified them with the angels of the Bible.
I’m not expressing doubt about their existence but suggesting that the way we speak and think of them is necessarily metaphorical.
Agreed :-)