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Does Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life Threaten Religion and Philosophy?

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14746700802396213

1474-6719

Jacques Arnould,

Historical Astronomy and Related Studies

Abstract The present article tries to answer this question: Does extraterrestrial intelligent life threaten religion and philosophy? It analyzes the place occupied by imagination in the awareness of the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent life, as the apprehension of UFO phenomena. In addition, it introduces the question of the influence the imagined alien might have on our ideas about ourselves as earthbound human beings. Finally, it shows that the Christian tradition, far from the hesitations and the scientific debates in connection with the extraterrestrial question, has always shown interest in this question in an open way. Key words: Extraterrestrial lifeUFOPhilosophyTheology Notes 1 Yves Sillard (ed.), Phénomènes aérospatiaux non identifiés. Un défi à la science (Paris: Editions du Cherche Midi, 2007). 2 Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750–1900 (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999); Steven J. Dick, Plurality of Worlds: The Origin of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Steven J. Dick, Life on Other Worlds: The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 3 Dick, Life on Other Worlds, 187. 4 Pierre Lecomte du Noüy, Human Destiny (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947). 5 Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971). 6 St. Augustine, Confessions, Book XI, Ch. 14. 7 Francis Kaplan, Le paradoxe de la vie (Paris: Editions de la Découverte, 1995), 249–250. 8 Carl C. Jung, Ein moderner Mythus (Zürich: Rasher Verlag, 1961); Jean-Bruno Renard, Les extraterrestres: Une nouvelle croyance religieuse? (Paris: Cerf, 1988); Wiktor Stoczkowski, Des hommes, des dieux et des extraterrestres: Ethnologie d'une croyance moderne (Paris: Flammarion, 1999). 9 Ted Peters, UFOs—God's Chariots?: Flying Saucers in Politics, Science, and Religion (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1977). 10 Renard, Les extraterrestres, 94, 96, 99. 11 Stoczkowski, Des hommes, des dieux et des extraterrestres, 314–315. 12 Ibid., 66–67. 13 De Docta ignorantia, II, 12. 14 Ibid., I, 4. 15 Ibid., II, 12. 16 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "Une suite au problème des origines humaines. La multiplicité des mondes habités (5 June 1953)," in Œuvres (Paris: Seuil, 1969), 277–278.