rincewind Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Yeah which is why I believe gays should have been banned from the priesthood. Still bothers you more that they were gay than that they were pedophiles, huh? :doh: By the way - most pedophiles are just that, pedophiles. They don't necessarily go after young men because they are gay, they go after them because they are young. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WVUforREDSKINS Posted May 15, 2008 Author Share Posted May 15, 2008 If aliens are found then religion all over the world will need a huge overhual. So much of what it teaches will be proven to be absolute doo doo butter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corcaigh Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 It's become fairly clear that a certain segment of the population will gripe about anything the Catholic Church does or announces, unless it's"We think the whole thing's rather silly. You're right! Why have we been wasting our time? Church adjourned forever!" to paraphrase a Monty Python sketch... Or maybe when they speak as officials of the church they should just stick to stuff they can sensibly comment about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techboy Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Or maybe when they speak as officials of the church they should just stick to stuff they can sensibly comment about? I don't find anything out of field in this comment. It is totally sensible to believe that there might be life in other places in the Universe, whether one is a naturalist (it might develop elsewhere as it did here) or a theist (God might have created life elsewhere too). Likewise, it is totally within the purview of the Catholic Church officials to speculate as to any possible theological impact of such a discovery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thiebear Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Vatican: Belief in Aliens = A o.k. Belief in a women leading sermons = hell no. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjah Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Maybe this is just an issue of scope. I mean, if God is anything, he's a project manager, right? What with all the scheduling of Creation by day, and having to do everything himself, including working a Saturday because there weren't any good trustworthy people with a PM certification around to help pull the thing together. Dude probably had a cosmos-sized Gantt chart on his wall. "Day 7: REST and write documentation" "Day 8: Troubleshoot (may push this activity to Phase 2)" So it's only natural that He limited the Bible's scope to Earth. After all, He probably knew that Adam and Eve weren't going to allow their God-given curiosity to lay dormant for long. That meant they were definitely on their way out of Eden, condemned to an awfully busy life filled with warding off disease and drowning witches and wrangling dinosaurs and such. With that in mind, what was He going to do, give them the instruction manuals for ALL of the planets He created? He couldn't even trust them to universally understand evolution or geology, and that was here on Earth. So like these things, aliens got cut from the Bible right off the bat. Not that it mattered much -- if God had given Adam and Eve a whole bunch of books instead of just one, their descendents would have ended up burning most of them anyway. Plus, lots of those other planets didn't get Messiahs, due to the constraints Marketing kept putting on the project plan. (The Holy Spirit keeps a tight purse.) And He didn't want to have to explain why Adam and Eve would be saved, while Deebak and Morthgar and their descendents were condemned irrevocably for the sin of endocytotically absorbing the Forbidden Grobylslast. So it's really just a scope thing. It's not in there because we didn't think to ask for it at the requirements stage. :whoknows: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbooma Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 what about gay aliens????? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corcaigh Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 I don't find anything out of field in this comment. It is totally sensible to believe that there might be life in other places in the Universe, whether one is a naturalist (it might develop elsewhere as it did here) or a theist (God might have created life elsewhere too). Likewise, it is totally within the purview of the Catholic Church officials to speculate as to any possible theological impact of such a discovery. But previous doctrine would suggest that man has a unique place in the Universe. It seems at least incomplete of him to speculate about alien existence unless he addressed this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpillian Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 But previous doctrine would suggest that man has a unique place in the Universe. It seems at least incomplete of him to speculate about alien existence unless he addressed this. I guess you'd have to point me to the doctrine you are referring. Not saying it doesn't exist, I just can't think of any off the top of my head. From my perspective, God created Man in a unique role for Earth, of that I'm fairly certain. However, I can't think of any reason to believe (for certain) that the scope applies to all of God's Creation. It certainly could be, but I don't think there is a definitive reason to believe this. Mjah put it in perhaps a bit of a comic/irreverent manner, but it really might simply be a matter of scope. God, to this point, has not revealed much to us concerning a number of matters of great and eternal importance (where did He come from -- probably an invalid question in the first place that reveals quite a bit about the questioner? what is heaven and hell really all about?) The few times where such revelations take place in the Bible (Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelations, come to mind) it seems like the experience was beyond what we are presently able to comprehend/relate to. Without a doubt, God has to hold quite a bit back that we are presently unable to fathom, and this is always for our own good (i.e., in Genesis 2, forbidding us from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, see how well that turned out). I think scope is a very good way of succintly describing His motivation. And as a result, I think it's very possible that He has created life on other worlds. C.S. Lewis wrote a space trilogy on this very possibility; therein, the Fall was constrained only to the Earth. Great books if anyone is interested (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) Regardless, I don't see anything all that controversial in the Vatican's statement. I don't know if was needed; but I don't feel that they are saying anything contrary to Church doctrine. It's speculative and perhaps meaningless, until and if we start seeing little green men, but I can't think of anything with which it conflicts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjah Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Maybe Jesus doesn't show up here very often because he has so many forms to take on and so many planetfuls of beings to save. Might God have tentacles? Did he drop them when creating us in his image? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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