The Vatican believes in aliens with souls and is willing to convert them to Christianity.
The Pope's Astronomer, Doctor Guy Consolmagno, said today that it is most likely that aliens exist and that they would most certainly have souls.
In a speech at the British Science Festival the self-professed science-fiction fan, planetary scientist and Jesuit brother said he was perfectly comfortable with the idea of intelligent life on other planets, but said that our chances of encountering it and being able to communicate with it are probably very slim.
Consolmagno said that “God is bigger than just humanity”, is also “the god of angels,” and that “any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.” However, he was quick to highlight his adoption of the medieval definition of a soul, which is “to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions.”
While we assume Consolmagno was joking about the multitude of tentacles, the Church has posited stranger things before, such as some magician coming back from the dead, turning a few loaves and fishes into thousands, and changing water into wine.
We are not sure if Cthulhu or Xenu are among these tentacled aliens with souls of which Consolmagno speaks, but they're probably flattered that the Church is thinking of them.
We wondered if the Vatican would see these aliens as being a product of creationism or intelligent design, but Consolmagno dismissed the idea, labelling both creationism and intelligent design as “bad theology.”
However, the discovery of aliens would raise huge theological difficulties for the Catholic Church, which is already struggling to deal with the theological implications relating to the human race.
Consolmagno is a big advocate of both science and religion, which he said can and should work alongside each other. In 2006 he was quoted as saying: “Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism.”
He said that the Vatican is very aware of what is going on in modern science, mainly through the Pontifical Academy of Science, which includes Stephen Hawking among its members.
Consolmagno said that he would be willing to baptise an alien and convert it to Christianity, but only if they asked.
He said that the Catholic Church's treatment of Galileo over his observation that the Earth revolved around the Sun was “spectacularly wrong,” echoing the words of Pope John Paul II in 1992, when he said the Church's accusations of heresy were a bad call.
The 57-year-old Consolmagno is one of 12 astronomers working for the Vatican and is the curator of a meteorite collection that the Pope has, which is something we didn't know the Pontiff had any interest in.
It is not clear if the Vatican believes these meteors were sent to Earth when God was in his younger, more vengeful days of the Old Testament or if the Church is saving them up for the End of Days in case supplies of fire and brimstone run low.
Sometimes I think any other form of life would be more intelligent than this one.
http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-et-phones-pope.html
Nonetheless, I think believing in aliens is a potential breach of the genesis book where it's said that god created men in his likeness. That'd put us in unfair advantage against our alien "brothers". Don't you think?
As such, should the immaterial exists, only it can confer recognition, is it not? People think that recognition is because of the guesswork capability/power of intellect-cum-emotion - because, “I can ‘fink and feel, there’s nuffing that I can’t breach”, sort of stupidity-cum-dumbness. When you’d gambled successfully, all that means is that you’ll be gambling unsucessfully the next time round, is it not? Gambling, under perfect conditions, means no real progress at the end of it all. Under imperfect conditions, you’d better be the bookie or you’ll be losing left, right, and centre, with any gains being for the moment, and gambling winners are those who leave the table whilst the goihng is good.
Should you hold the “rights” to, say, a Golden Fleece, only you can confer recognition/the-reality to “others” - through revealing your Golden Fleece to others. The same goes for Divinity. It is not subject to popularity, belief, desire, or that biggy, intellect-cum-emotion, oka the stupidity-cum-dumbness within thoughts. The crux of the matter is not so much if Divinity exists but rather, “Who am I”? Do you have the means/capacity-cum-capability to connect. Without the means to measure and gauge, you’ll have nothing real - you won’t even know your left from your right.
As such, reality, the means to gauge-cum-measure/connect, depends entirely on Divinity, and Divnity exists. To become a full/fuller human being, we have to transcend the 5 fundamental senses of relativity onto the absoluteness of the 6th and higher senses, oka “Spirituality”, and you won’t have the foggiest what that means unless and until you’d attained those senses [of absoluteness] - a seemingly Catch-22. It is a change of state, with full lucidity and cognizance and realisation, and not some hazy mumbo-jumbo, ritualistic, wrinkly, archaic enactment of some belief system for the attainment of Fame, Fortune & Immortality, oka one’s vested selves/interests. As such, should you be “there”, only you’ll know those who are not [yet] “there”, and those who claim to be there. Those tricks of re-presentation are for the gamblers, oka the naive, the unintiated, and the addicted.
For “completeness”, there are no aliens, sciento-cryptos, lizards, UFOs, “Popes”, “Immams”, “Brahmins”, “Priests, Monks & Nuns”, and its myriad of hypocrisy and wishfuls. There are only the blinded leading the soon-to-be-blind. And before anyone jumps over the cliff or unleash his hidden nuclear holocaust, Divinity is reflected within each and every true human being, waiting to be switched on when the moment/timing [and not the time] is “appropriate”. Thereafter, one will not only be able to really communicate with Divinity, oka gauge and measure, one is actually partially divine with all the omniscience, omnipotency, and omnipresence that such a state confers. All, other than those who looked human but are not and you won’t be surprised that they are the ….. yes, eets true !!! How else would one realised Reality other than to be/become real? The duty of the first is to wait for the last and not to maintain the last for its own sake/vested-interest, is it not? Why so? Because the first is merely the last, the beginning being the ending, and zero being infinity. Still but, butting …? Without the concept of zero, how will anyone realise bigge numbers for “banking”/infinitising ?
As such, the most complex is also the simplest. You want electricity, just turn on the switch, correct? You want connectivity with Infinity, you need to realised your finiteness/limits/limitations first and one’s limits, in the absence of absoluteness, oka being relative, is to have humility. Only those who are absolute, needs no humility and calling youself a “Pope”, say, in the mist of gilded thrones, dumbed-down choir practice attendees, “fabulous wealth”, supreme power [especially over the tag-alongs called, CEO, CFO, PM, Presidents, Royalty, etc], is to claim Divinity - especially over Divinity Him/Her Self, is it not? Truly there is nothing more blind than being deliberately blind, oka the naïve, the unitiated, and the addicted, whilst remembering that without these worshippers, saviours would not have existed. Divinity is especially not about saving, Divinity is about Divinity and little else.