Tag Archives: Robert Sawyer

This week a Vatican astronomer postulated about the existance of extra-terrestrial intelligence and what such existance might mean to not only human religion but to alien religion–and cross-pollination between the two. The astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, described three scenarios: “We find an intelligent civilization and there’s no way in creation we can communicate with them because they’re so alien to us; we find the intelligent civilization. We can communicate.” And: “We find a dozen civilizations out there, and a bunch of Jehovah’s witnesses go up and convert them all.” An anonymous person on Slashdot then took Consolmagno’s comments a step further: “As agents of free-will, the aliens are self-aware of good and evil, thus convertible to some terrestrial religion. The question of whether an alien civilization might convert Earth to their religion, or become a religion unto themselves, is left unconsidered [by Consolmagno].” I entreat you to explore what the Vatican’s astronomer did not. (From The Saturday Slant )
 
Extra-terrestrials and religion: what’s your Slant?

I find this particularly interesting, why? Because I was just reading about this a few hours ago. Here we go, back to Robert Sawyer (kind of a Canadian Michael Crichton). He ties a lot of this into his books. In particular a book called Calculating God. Here’s a few pages from the middle of the book and chapter one.

Here is the key part:

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