Baptising An Alien
It’s sort of Catholicism meets the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Guy Consolmagno, curator of the Pope’s meteorite collection (eh?) and a trained astronomer and planetary scientist, says in the Guardian that he would be ‘delighted’ if intelligent life was found among the stars.
‘But the odds of us finding it, of it being intelligent and us being able to communicate with it – when you add them up it’s probably not a practical question.’
Consolmagno says that the traditional definition of a soul was to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions. ‘Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.’
So would he baptise an alien? ‘Only if they asked.’
Not sure what to make of any of that. Going to head over to the LoneStarParson‘s place, a man famously convinced that Nancy Pelosi is an alien, and seek spiritual guidance.
Any Alien that is capable of reaching us and communicating with us will be technically highly advanced and religion they would see as a very backward concept.
Hmm. Crucifiying an eight tentacled entity may cause some problems.
Unless you double up of course.
He’s assuming that their belief systems would be even remotely similar to ours, and that they would even understand the question. Hence my bemusement.
The chances of the rest of the cosmos being like the Original Series Star Trek…with Roman temples everywhere and hosts of women finding William Shatner attractive isn’t really a theological position I expected to find the Pope’s astronomer taking up, really.
You’d have to think about burning at the stake instead. No point in wasting good squid.
I heard this joke from a Frenchman today and I thought they did not have a sense of humour well not one an Anglo Saxon would understand. However they apparently do because I was amused by this one. Roughly translated; “The competition between two conflicting religions is like two children fighting over who has the best imaginary friend.”
‘Only if they asked.’
It won’t be asking if it’s Chthulu. =-O
“They say foul beings of Old Times still lurk In dark forgotten corners of the world, And Gates still gape to loose, on certain nights, Shapes pent in Hell.”
So no they wouldn’t ask. Too busy screaming and running away.
That only really works if you factor in those children having guns and bombs. Large ones.