A critique of SETI and the Religions of the Universe

revjohnmills@yahoo.com

http://home.att.net/~john.a.mills/jmills.htm

In the popular imagination, Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI) is often portrayed as Earth's savior. Science Fiction filmology is replete with examples. ETI as savior is clearly the theme in The Day The Earth Stood Still (195-) when an alien ambassador comes to blockade Earth's space efforts until we ban our nuclear weapons. In the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), ETI transforms David Bowman into the Star Child with the ability to save or destroy the Earth. Even in the recent Independence Day (1996), the aliens are saviors: in their evil intent to destroy the human race, they cause us to band together in common cause. In every case, ETI possesses superior technology and superior intellect. Through both they effect Earth's salvation.

We do not know if there is such a creation as ETI. We have never certifiably encountered an extraterrestrial intelligence. But our explorations of the planets in our Solar System lead us to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life. NASA is planning a number of robotic expeditions to Mars "to follow the water," since where there is water, there is a high probability of life. Further, if we subscribe to the principle of biological determinism that when the conditions for life prevail, so life will prevail and will evolve towards intelligence, then we can anticipate that at sometime we will encounter ETI. Besides the Mars exploration program, there is also the work of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute. In the 1980s, SETI and NASA conducted the High Resolution Microwave Survey, a targeted search for ETI. Dr. Jill Cornell Tarter became project director of the survey in 1989. When Congress cut funding in 1993, Dr. Tarter and her associates sought private funding and she now heads Project Phoenix, a privately funded project of SETI. Though we may dispute UFO encounters, the possibility of ETI is real. In response to this possibility the John Templeton Foundation in November 1998 sponsored a meeting of scientists and theologians. Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life and the Theological Implications, a set of essays by prominent scientists and theologians, edited by Steven Dick, is the result of that meeting. It brings scientific and theological credibility to a topic that needs cogent and honest debate: How will an encounter with ETI affect and be affected by our religious beliefs?

The notion that ETI may be savior is suggested in this set of essays. This notion is particularly prominent in Dr. Tarter's article SETI and the Religions of the Universe. In that article Dr. Tarter makes a case that any alien civilization that is able to contact us must have a single (if any) universal religion, compatible with science and technology. Therefore, contact that is intentional with information on ETI's belief system would result in our mass conversion to their universal religion. She contents they will "act in our best interests" (assuming that their own "longevity/stability" does not require our extinction). She writes, "This is not an appeal for extraterrestrial salvation..." Yet what is sotialogical action if not saving us from our destructiveness and converting us to a "superior" worldview?

This critique suggests that just because ETI is technologically superior does not imply that they are (or are not) religiously "superior". Firstly, Tarter's thesis is more fully described; then I will offer a critique of that thesis. From that dialectic, I will suggest that technology is not (necessarily) the only driver towards a universal religion. Technology, as an expression of the natural world is only one source of beliefs. Another source and driver is the transcendent mediated through mysticism. Given the universality of mystical experience and the observation of bioconvergence, we can expect ETI's religion to also be influenced by mysticism. We are very likely to discover a mutuality of experience. The last half of this article will define and describe mysticism and suggest a vision of unitary, yet diverse mystical experience as common ground for mutual evangelization.

At the very beginning of her article, Tarter gives the goal of her essay, "How might the detection of ETI inform, disrupt, or consolidate religious belief systems (p. 144)?" Any civilization that has survived long enough to have the technology to send us messages (the primary operation of SETI is to listen for such messages) must have overcome religious intolerance and, therefore, no longer be threatened by the concomitant violence. ETI would have a single religion (if any) universal and compatible with science and technology. She describes one possibility as intentional contact where the received message is purposively sent to make contact and includes unambiguous information about ETI's belief system. She states, "The information will change our lives and our world view, and we will not be able to put the genie back in the bottle. We have a history of old religions being abandoned when confronted with the superior technology of terrestrial missionaries (my emphasis). In the face of a demonstrably stable social organization and superior understanding of the nature of the universe, it will be hard for humanity to resist the appeal of this universal religion and its God(s) (p. 147)." Alternatively, the long-lived ET technologists may have ascertained That God does not exist and have replaced religion with "a more scientific world view (p. 147)." Tarter postulates that, as generations of humans mature with the knowledge that ETI exists without the need of religion or God, then our religions will die out.

Two implications can be drawn from Tarter's essay. Firstly, ETI's technological superiority will convince us to convert (or eventually eliminate religion). Technology will be a mark of evolutionary survival, which could not occur without resolution of cataclysmic conflicts. Hence ETI is superior to us and we will know this by their superior technology and knowledge. Advanced technology and advanced wisdom go hand in hand.

Secondly, humanity will be better off as a result of this mass conversion. We will take a leap in evolution and the world will be a better place. ETI will save the world or at least take a giant leap towards salvation. Tarter is not alone in this hope. Steve J. Dick in his contribution Cosmotheology: Theological Implications of the New Universe writes, "... advanced extraterrestrial intelligence could possess many of the same characteristics now attributed to the supernatural God of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. ... In principle, it could even 'intervene in human history,' the touchstone principle of the Christian faith ... (p. 204)."

These notions are flawed. Fundamentally, superior technology and longevity are not necessarily marks of superior wisdom. Our own recent history demonstrates this very dynamic of alien encounter. The Puritans were aliens to the American Indians. When the Puritans landed in the New World, they came on technologically superior ships with advanced forms of communications (they could write and publish), advanced social organizations (or so they thought), and a "universal religion" (or so they believed). They had survived many cataclysms through European history, including punishing nationalistic wars and bitter religious wars, yet they were not immune to these very same evils. The indigenous people of New England were soon overwhelmed with these "advancements". Mass conversion was attempted (with mixed results) and massacres ensued as the superior "ETI" laid claim to the New Jerusalem. Not all was evil. There were some honest attempts at promoting the natives best interests, but they were few and far between. That the invading Europeans were more technological advanced did not assure that they were less destructive. Indeed, their technology gave them more powerful forms of destructiveness. These advanced "aliens" came from an expansionist culture. They saw the New World as the God-given Promised Land and the American Indians as "Amorites" to be vanquished. Their religious zeal was the vanguard of an onslaught of Europeans seeking relief from many economic, religious, and social pressures. Nor did their superior technology assure that they would be benign. It provided them with the means of conquest, control, and expansion. Further, they were far from a universal religion -- they themselves were products of a recent schism (having broken with the Church of England, which had broken with the Rome).

Our own experience with the "alien encounter" dynamic, therefore, challenges Tarter's assumption that a technological superior civilization is long-lived because it is benign with the possibility that it is a self-centered, destructive, expansionist civilization. Religious intolerance is not the only social dynamic that determines a civilization's extinction or survivability. Other dynamics include economics, politics, and the availability of new frontiers. Could our experience of an ETI encounter be similar? Implicit in Tarter's essay and work is that our encounter is likeliest to be remote via some telecommunication. An actual physical contact is a more remote possibility. Staying within the more conservative possibility of a remote and one-way (given the limits imposed by the speed of light) communication, would we be buffered from a potentially expansionist ETI? Expansionism in this case would not be a process of claiming land, but more ominous one of claiming minds (and hearts). Indeed, if Tarter's belief that any contact with ETI would undermine our religions (and therefore significant aspects of our cultures), then ETI would have the psychological advantage of the Puritans. Thus, if ETI is expansionist as were the Europeans, then they could be just as or more detrimental to us than the Europeans were to the American Indians.

How else might an encounter with ETI "inform, disrupt, or consolidate religious belief systems" to use Tarter's words. Steven Dick in his essay suggests "... considering the divergence of human ideas of God, there is no basis for expecting convergence of theistic ideas by intelligences on other planets throughout the universe. Unless, that is, there is same scientific basis (my emphasis) for it (p. 203)." Dick then goes on to reject a supernatural God for a natural God who is "in the universe rather than outside it ... (p. 102)." But science is not the only possible common ground. A more encompassing vision accounts for convergent mystical experience.

Mysticism is experiential and, thus, hard to describe. It is fundamentally an unmediated encounter with the Divine. In a transcendent state, a person immediately, directly touches the will and mind of God. Mystics of all faiths (and prior to interfaith or intercultural exchanges) report these experiences in similar terms. There is a sense of wholeness with all of creation, where everything and everyone is interconnected and interdependent, touched by and interpenetrated by all other things. The experience of creation is not as either-or, but and-both; it is both empty and full, one and diverse. The mystical experience emphasizes the wonder, amazement, and surprise of God and creation. Just as God is ineffable and can never be entirely known, so it is with God's image, the creation. It is open-ended, ever new. A mystic is panentheistic, finding God in everything. God is still the Utterly Other but is in, around, and through everything. Mysticism cherishes nothingness for the creation is full of emptiness and emptiness soaks up creation. Yet the creation is a plethora, always birthing new images. Its interconnectedness is endless.

Mystical experience is revelatory and universal. It is a common ground among all faiths. But would ETI experience this? Arthur Peacock (in his essay, Humanity's Place in Cosmic Evolution) describes bioconvergence, "whereby in independent lines and places similar solutions are found to the same kind of environmental challenges (p. 105)." He reports one example of the sabre-toothed tiger of the Northern Hemisphere that is a close relation of the tiger and panther, and the very similar sabre-toothed "cat" in South American that is a marsupial, related to kangaroos and opossums. Both creatures developed the "sabre-tooth" to meet similar environmental challenges.

Peacock also describes the strange relation humans have with their environment, "We alone in the biological world ... go through our biological lives with that sense of incomplete fulfillment evidenced by the contemporary quests of self-realization and personal growth (p. 101)." Theologians such as St Augustine have seen this restlessness as a yearning towards God. Peacocke suggests that our "natural" environment is God's environment. Mystics find an antidote to this dis-ease in their experience. Now, if we assume our mysticism is an attempt at healing this mis-fit and that ETI also experiences this mis-fit, we can assume that ETI has also partaken of the mystical experience. Can not then another common ground with ETI be the mystical?

If we are open-hearted and open-minded and if ETI is open-hearted and open-minded (unlike the invading Europeans of the 17^th century), an encounter with ETI can expand the wholeness of our vision of God's creation. We cannot be guaranteed that either ETI or ourselves would be open to entering a dialogue. But if we recognize that both of us are children of the same stardust, then the ubiquity of diversity would be enriched for both ETI and us. Ironically, after 300 hundred years, some proponents of the religion brought to North America by the Puritans have, belatedly, engaged in such a dialogue and are seeking understanding of American Indian spirituality to inform their Christian belief.

Tarter's vision of a mass conversion to ETI's universal religion (which is probably just one among other ETI religions) would be replaced with a mutual evangelization of shared revelation and experience. Our beliefs would contribute to theirs as theirs to ours. Our beliefs would evolve. An integrative vision could result. This encounter would probably not bring all Earthly religions into one fold. But the encounter may be stunning enough to ignite a vigorous effort of agreeing to disagree and a program of understanding.

The Rev. John A. Mills is an ordained pastor in United Church of Christ. Rev. Mills is currently pastor of First Congregational Church (UCC) in Closter, N.J. and is also a senior solutions architect at Telcordia Technologies. Rev. Mills graduated from Drew University Theological School with a Masters of Divinity degree, Summa Cum Laude, and from Rutgers University with a Masters of Science degree. He has published various technical articles in the field of software engineering. Rev. Mills is also an expert in the relationship of science and Christianity, particularly with regard to mathematics and cosmology. He is a founding organizer of the currently forming New Jersey Roundtable on Religion and Science and has taught a variety of classes on the subject of Religion and Science to lay audiences in an effort to raise up this very important topic to the general public. He also has a written a number of commentaries on religious issues in local newspapers and is interested in mysticism which he expresses in both lyrical and epic poetry, see http://home.att.net/~john.a.mills.