17 February 1997
American Association: Martian life will change God's image, says Vatican
By Roger Highfield and Tom LeonardOUR image of God will have to change if evidence of alien life on Mars is confirmed by scientists, a Vatican astronomer told the world's largest general science meeting yesterday.
The modern concept of an "anthropocentric" God may have to evolve into a broader entity to take account of the insights of any intelligent alien culture, said Dr Christopher Corbally, British vice-director of the Vatican Observatory in Arizona [Why did God choose to incarnate as a human, and not a Zetan or Lyran... why did Jesus come to earth and die a human death if earth and humanity is not the center of God's plan for the universe? - watcher].
"We need a proper sense of God, one derived in the dialogue between religion and science," he said in an address on the implications of Martian life to the American Association's annual meeting in Seattle.
"While Christ is the first and the last word, the alpha and the omega spoken to humanity, it is not necessarily the only word spoken to the entire universe," he said [Okay, if you deny that the Bible is the Word of God, then how can you believe in it at all? You can't just pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true... the Bible is either the divinely inspired and complete Word of God, or it is a fairy tale. One can't be a Christian and yet deny that the Bible is true-- that's where the story of Jesus Christ comes from, duh! Oh yeah, I forgot, Catholicism is just glorified paganism anyways, so it isn't a huge leap to encorporate our space brothers into a Papal paradigm-- after all, more creatures to convert is more money into the Vatican coffers. - watcher] Dr Corbally went on to emphasise the need to "cope with any new phenomenon that science will bring". The discovery that the universe was populated by other intelligent species would not give humanity a sense of insignificance or fear but one of "being an integral part of a cosmic community", he added. "We would discover a church far beyond the confines of the Earth and of any narrow interpretation of the Bible or other scriptures." [Again I am blown away at how a Vatican dude can blaspheme the Word of God so blatently. If one throws out the "narrow" Bible then one is left without a knowledge of Jesus Christ, God incarnate in human, not "alien" flesh. The space brothers won't bring knowledge of a Christian church, and it seems the Vatican is all for something other than Christianity.]
But Dr Corbally, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a member of the American Astronomical Society, claimed that, if humanity was to find it was alone in the universe, "this would not bring hubris and pride but a sense of awe and responsibility".
The Vatican Observatory, which is supported by the Pope, was set up near Rome in the 1930s but since 1981 has conducted most of its stargazing above the Steward Observatory at Tucson, Arizona.
The observatory was established on the orders of Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to counteract accusations that the Church was opposed to scientific learning.[Yeah, right, the Pope-scope isn't looking for aliens, or Nibiru, or the sign of the Great Chastisement, or a messiah on a UFO or anything like that...]
Last August a group of experts stunned the scientific world with evidence that life may have once existed on Mars. Their analysis of a Martian meteorite concluded that microscopic life may have been the source of "apparent" fossils it held.
The excited reaction to the suggestion of extra-terrestrial life had one prime implication, said Dr Corbally. "These reactions point to our need for a right relationship or dialogue between science and religion." Exploration was required to push back the frontiers of theology as well as science, he said. "The same urge to push back the boundaries of knowledge can bring new insights into traditional doctrines and questions. This exploration is what I do daily in my astronomical work. I find my preferred way of doing science is synthetic, starting with observations rather than analytic, starting with theories. So too, given an encounter with intelligent extra-terrestrial life."
The Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches in Britain were sceptical about Dr Corbally's suggestions. A spokesman for the Church of England said: "As Christians, we believe God created the universe and everything in it. Dolphins and porpoises are understood to be intelligent creatures but they haven't changed our perception of God." The only possible sphere in which he could envisage the existence of life changing people's perceptions of God was in art where the Almighty has been represented historically as looking like a man, he added.
A Roman Catholic Church spokesman said the Church had never interpreted the Old Testament as ruling out the possibility of life on other planets. He added: "Our understanding of the message of Christianity has always evolved and developed. That's not to say it has changed but just the way the message is understood and applied.
"We have always believed that God created all things. If he created life elsewhere, then fair enough."
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