Your Faith and Extraterrestrial Life

[Left Coast]

What does your faith have to say about other biological life in the universe?

Does your faith teach we are "alone," so to speak, the only planet in the universe to support life?

Or perhaps it teaches there are many other planets with life?

If we discover life on other planets, would that change your religious view in some way?

 

[Secret Chief]

Zen.

Bugger all, I imagine.

 

[Polymath257]

I personally would be shocked if Earth is the only planet that has life.

Indeed, I suspect that bacterial life is common. But that is just a wild guess.

 

[sun rise]

What does your faith have to say about other biological life in the universe?

In the universe, there are 18,000 planets with human beings. Only the human beings living on this Earth can attain a balance of 50% head and 50% heart. All the other human beings living on other planets in the universe have an imbalance of head and heart; that is, from 75% head and 25% heart to 99% head and 1% heart. In other words, they do not feel or have the same emotional capacity as human beings on Earth do with 50% head and 50% heart. It is said they do not know what “wine and song” are. The population explosion is due to these human beings from other planets reincarnating en masse on Earth to receive the great mass dispensation of love during this Avataric advent, and thus gradually achieve balance of head and heart.

God Speaks page 244.

 

[Left Coast]

In the universe, there are 18,000 planets with human beings. Only the human beings living on this Earth can attain a balance of 50% head and 50% heart. All the other human beings living on other planets in the universe have an imbalance of head and heart; that is, from 75% head and 25% heart to 99% head and 1% heart. In other words, they do not feel or have the same emotional capacity as human beings on Earth do with 50% head and 50% heart. It is said they do not know what “wine and song” are. The population explosion is due to these human beings from other planets reincarnating en masse on Earth to receive the great mass dispensation of love during this Avataric advent, and thus gradually achieve balance of head and heart.

God Speaks page 244.

Wow, that's fascinating and oddly specific. So did these human beings from thousands of different planets all evolve independently into homo sapiens? Or did they start on one planet and get distributed on all those other planets?

 

[MNoBody]

the lack of visitors does imply that any life extraterrestrial is more intelligent than life here
....smart enough to stay clear
the place is possibly quarantined some say....

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

God is frequently called "Lord of the Worlds" in some translations of the Qur'an, and there are repeated ideas throughout that there can easily be creations and worlds that God can make and inhabit or that humans can be replaced by other lifeforms and basically the idea of there being endless realities and worlds and lifeforms, even forms of life and realities which are incomprehensible and nothing like the human experience of things, is seemingly built into the Qur'an and the ideas it promotes, which seem not deeply human-centric except in relation to humanities dominant position upon the Earth for a time. Plus, the angels are basically appearing to be deep-space extra-terrestrials as well, and there is the race of ionized gas lifeforms or in other words plasma-life forms known as jinn also who appear to be advanced in certain ways and deal with transmissions from outer space coming down to Earth and sitting in stations in the upper atmosphere in order to intercept these transmissions and see if they can decrypt them to figure out patterns or make their next moves reporting them to their communities. The Qur'an is basically one of the earliest pieces of literature resembling science fiction in many cases.

 

[The Hammer]

The All-Father is father of All, so no this wouldn't change my views any. In fact I am pretty sure with the amount of worlds out there, that the odds of us being the Only one with Life, has got to be very low.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

What does your faith have to say about other biological life in the universe?

Does your faith teach we are "alone," so to speak, the only planet in the universe to support life?

Or perhaps it teaches there are many other planets with life?

If we discover life on other planets, would that change your religious view in some way?

To me, it is inconceivable that there no other planets with life...there should be (and I think we'll eventually be able to prove) that there are billions just in our galaxy. There should be simple bacteria-like life almost everywhere, where conditions are even remotely 'right.' There should still be lots of worlds with multicellular life, ecosystems, and some of them should have intelligent species.

No: we aren't the only planet or the only intelligent species (not even here on earth). Finding other sentient species from elsewhere would change nothing in my beliefs or practices.

 

[SalixIncendium]

What does your faith have to say about other biological life in the universe?

Nothing at all.

Does your faith teach we are "alone," so to speak, the only planet in the universe to support life?

It does not. But it does teach oneness, so technically, we are "alone" together, even those that may exist on other planets.

Or perhaps it teaches there are many other planets with life?

It acknowledges that many other planets exist and that that some may have conditions conducive to life. It doesn't say that there definitely is life on other planets, but it would be arrogant to think with all the planets just within our observable universe that we are the only planet with life.

If we discover life on other planets, would that change your religious view in some way?

No.

 

[Regiomontanus]

What does your faith have to say about other biological life in the universe?

Does your faith teach we are "alone," so to speak, the only planet in the universe to support life?

Or perhaps it teaches there are many other planets with life?

If we discover life on other planets, would that change your religious view in some way?

That Creation was intended only for humans seems silly to me and I know of no theological or scriptural argument to support such a view.

 

[MonkeyFire]

Life, space, and time are all infinite.

 

[Trailblazer]

What does your faith have to say about other biological life in the universe?

Does your faith teach we are "alone," so to speak, the only planet in the universe to support life?

Or perhaps it teaches there are many other planets with life?

Baha’u’llah wrote that there are “worlds of God” aside from this world. I have no idea whether He was talking about material worlds or spiritual worlds, or perhaps both.

“As to thy question concerning the worlds of God. Know thou of a truth that the worlds of God are countless in their number, and infinite in their range. None can reckon or comprehend them except God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.” Gleanings, pp. 151-152

“Verily I say, the creation of God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures. In each of these worlds He hath ordained things which none can search except Himself, the All-Searching, the All-Wise. Do thou meditate on that which We have revealed unto thee, that thou mayest discover the purpose of God, thy Lord, and the Lord of all worlds. In these words the mysteries of Divine Wisdom have been treasured.” Gleanings, pp. 152-153

Baha’u’llah also wrote the following. This quote is at the end of a longer Tablet:

“The learned men, that have fixed at several thousand years the life of this earth, have failed, throughout the long period of their observation, to consider either the number or the age of the other planets. Consider, moreover, the manifold divergencies that have resulted from the theories propounded by these men. Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute.” Gleanings, pp. 162-163

In order to explain what Baha’u’llah meant, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith and appointed interpreter of His Writings, wrote the following:

"Regarding the passage on p. 163 of the 'Gleanings'; the creatures which Bahá’u’lláh states to be found in every planet cannot be considered to be necessarily similar or different from human beings on this earth. Bahá’u’lláh does not specifically state whether such creatures are like or unlike us. He simply refers to the fact that there are creatures in every planet. It remains for science to discover one day the exact nature of these creatures.” Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance p. 478

 

[danieldemol]

The population explosion is due to these human beings from other planets reincarnating en masse on Earth

Could have fooled me, i thought it was just due to to many humans reproducing and leading longer lives lol

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

What does your faith have to say about other biological life in the universe?

Does your faith teach we are "alone," so to speak, the only planet in the universe to support life?

Or perhaps it teaches there are many other planets with life?

If we discover life on other planets, would that change your religious view in some way?

What the heck does "faith" have to do with whether or not there's life on the literally hundreds and hundreds of billions of other planets in the universe? Who the heck cares what somebody -- in the TOTAL ABSENCE of any evidence of any kind -- thinks about any topic?

 

[danieldemol]

To answer the OP I don't have any belief about whether there is or is not life on other planets, so it won't effect me either way, although the universe seems large enough that from my uneducated perspective I would say it is likely there is at least simple life elsewhere in the universe somewhere.

 

[Left Coast]

What the heck does "faith" have to do with whether or not there's life on the literally hundreds and hundreds of billions of other planets in the universe? Who the heck cares what somebody -- in the TOTAL ABSENCE of any evidence of any kind -- thinks about any topic?

If you're uninterested...um, don't comment on the thread?

 

[blü 2]

What does your faith have to say about other biological life in the universe?

Does your faith teach we are "alone," so to speak, the only planet in the universe to support life?

Or perhaps it teaches there are many other planets with life?

If we discover life on other planets, would that change your religious view in some way?

I agree with @Polymath257.

But I think the odds against intelligent life are vastly more forbidding, and if they exist, or have existed, or will exist, the odds of us humans becoming aware of them are equivalently vaster.

(It would however be very educational if I'm wrong here ─ maybe I'll read tomorrow's news and see we've developed a usable warp drive ...)

 

[Left Coast]

I agree with @Polymath257.

But I think the odds against intelligent life are vastly more forbidding, and if they exist, or have existed, or will exist, the odds of us humans becoming aware of them are equivalently vaster.

(It would however be very educational if I'm wrong here ─ maybe I'll read tomorrow's news and see we've developed a usable warp drive ...)

No no, blu, that won't happen till 2063!

 

[Quintessence]

It's simply irrelevant for an Earth-based religion. My focus is on developing relationships with that which I can experience and know directly. I see no benefit to orienting my way of life around speculation of things I will never directly know or experience. The only use such ideas have is for creative storytelling or as an academic curiosity.