h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I personally think religion has nothing to do with space exploration or finding aliens. In its true essence it does not mingle with much of our work either. Religions are more or less guidelines which mostly stretch man towards building up a better social structure.

So the question about what happens if we find aliens does not pose any interferance with aliens at all and viceversa. Most probably they have there own set of rules and regulations, living styles etc which you can call their religions. No matter how advance a race gets it still follows some forms of rules to servive.

In response to anyones lack of belief in God. I was raised in a COE family and followed my faith undoubtlingly untill i reached my teens when I began to question the exsistence of god. I believe that there is a god but every religion i.e. is just s different intepretaion of him or her. Every singe major world religion recognises that Jesus Christ exsisted in One form or another spar Hinduisim. surely this proves that a superior force exsists be it aliens or god as a spirit. I beleive that we are not alone and we merely have to open our eyes to space and sciences new discoveries

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First of all, you're ignoring Buddhism.

And do Jews recognize Jesus "Christ" as real?

It sounds like really Christians, naturally, beleive that Jesus exists and one other religion that was partly inspired by knowlege of Christianity does as well. Wow. That's really amazing proof of a superior force. Two religions agree on the existance of one person.

I agree with you, David. I am a Christian (the born-again variety) and have written and read science fiction since before I ever was a Christian...
I have never had any doubt that God has made beings other than human on worlds elsewhere, though we may never meet them (though we could do so, of course).

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I take it you mean Islam, Daneel?

yes

Historians tend to agree that Jesus existed, but that doesn't really prove the existence of God, or indeed any other higher power. What I believe about Jesus is neither confirmed nor denied by the historical fact of his existence.

Historians: he was a man. Christians: he was the son of God. Islam: he was a prophet. Presumably, one of these is right, and I happen to believe the 'son of God' option.

Not that any of this has anything to do with the question of alien life...

David

"Presumably, one of these is right, and I happen to believe the 'son of God' option."

Of course there's the "never really lived" option, which makes sence if one considers the lack of historical evidence outside the Bible for his existance.

http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist.html

http://www.atheists.org/christianity/jesuslife.html

Any evidence that historians tend to assume that Jesus existed?

The main non-Biblical evidence is from the Jewish (by race and faith, and not a follower of Christ) historian Josephus, I believe. I'm not 100 per cent sure of the details, as I'm not a historian myself, sorry.

David

As is probably obvious, I posted the above and *then* went to look at the links provided.

I know little about the following organisation, but this page is an interesting argument from the other side of the question:

http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/jesusexisthub.html

Unfortunately, the writer gets a bit demented in the last paragraph , but other than that it seems quite sensible. I shall enquire of my historian colleagues (I work in a library and we have people from lots of different disciplines), as they have told me before that they believe Jesus existed, even though they are not Christians and do not believe he is the son of God. I shall have to ask them why they believe he existed.

David

I'd be interested to hear what they say.

I'd like to pint out here that Polytheism is an inchoerant picture of God. If there were a pantheon of gods, then none of these Gods would be ultimate, as a god is an ultimate being. However, if there WAS one ultimate being in this pantheon, then that ultimate being would be God and the other 'gods' would not be 'gods' at all.

You cant have a pantheon of Gods. Therefore, not all religions can be right in their own way. Either one monotheistic religion is right, or they are all wrong.

I'm so glad you posted (even though I don't quite understand your point), as now I know which thread this was.

My two historian colleagues both said that they considered that there was enough evidence to suggest that Jesus existed as a person (whatever the truth of who that person was might be).

Apparently very little survives from that period in absolute primary source-type fashion, as most of the historical texts would have been copied several times over (as with the gospel texts) before we get the earliest extant copies of them. However, neither of them specialise in the history of that era (we have a medieval specialist and someone whose MA topic was propaganda).

So no real enlightenment either way, really.

David

I tend to find the evidence that Jesus really existed persuasive, and also to think that denying that is rather missing the ultimate point!

Nevertheless, it's interesting to examine the evidence (on both sides).

The ultimate point for the argument in Jesus existing is to emphasize his position as Messiah. It is inconsistant to believe he existed and was a good man because he claimed to be the Son of God. You can't reject that but still consider him a good man.

Personally I experience a deep contradiciton in what I, Myself, have read in Jesus sayings (or what we think he said) and in christianity in general. I DON'T think he was the son of god. I DON't believe that he could walk on water or turn water into wine, but i DO believe he was a smart man that said a lot of, for his time, clever things. And when I think of Jesus only as a Philosopher, and all what he, in my opinion, stood for, I see a vary vague similarity between my image of his teachings and christianity today. Of course there is the eternal message of love and understanding also in the christian church, but we only need to look some years back in our history to see how Jesus own sayings and teachings are being raped over and over again.
And why was the ghospel of Thomas removed in the medieval times? There's some of his most clever words, in my opinion.
A religion can Never be just a divine force's will over humans. Even If Jesus WAS the son of God, which of course he wasn't, he's sayings and teachings would, even so, soon become an object for human interpration and theory making.
And that's just the way religion works when you try to apply it to a whole society. As soon as you do that it immediatly needs its own structures and rules that apply to the whole mass, and that can control these in a way that the society can function in. I don't nessecarily mean in an evil or controling way, it's just the way it has to be if you apply ONE religion to a ALL people.
And ask yourself... is it really religion anymore then?

I think this would apply to religion anywhere, on earth or on any other planet. If humans, of course, aren't really extraordinary dumb and haven't noticed a very specific and unchangeble law of morals, order and fullfillment that in that case would have to be right in front of our noses, as well as in front of any other planets inhabitant's nose.

I'm sorry, would I be able to clarify a few things, just so I can get it clear in my mind what you are saying?

You think that Jesus was a smart man who said a lot of clever things, but had some momentary lapses in the whole son of God thing. However, Christians who profess to follow Jesus wilfully misinterpret and ignore what he says in order to bring authority to what they themselves want?

Your problem here seems to be with organised religion and not the spirituality that underlies it. A similar opinion to yours was propounded by Durkheim who said that religion was simply a construct created by man to form and develop societies. There are many sociological perspectives that see religion as a repressive force.

However, if you simplify the image to this then surely when that society becomes corrupt and revolution comes, the people would surely see religion as hand in glove with such repression. Indeed, this is what Marx thought when he saw the repression of the masses by the aristocracy of the United Kingdom. However, the distingtion that is often overlooked when observing religion in this way is that humankind seem to have an inherant leaning toward individual spirituality which is completely seperate from organised religion. To merely see religion as a surpressive force is to ignore this religionless christianity. Have I addressed your points or were there some things I have missed?

Yes, that kind of was my point...

I would love to see more people, explore that individual spirituality, instead of what seems to be the case with a lot of "religious" people; just kind of choosing a religion and then live accordingly, believe accordingly, and just following all the rules that come with it.
I don't believe that religion in it self is a bad thing, i believe that it can be a very good thing, just depending on what sence of the word we're talking about.
And yes, I know there is a huge contradiction in saying that Jesus said smart things, but the whole "son of God"- thing was crap.
I just think that besides all the miracles, besides all the strange occurences around his birth and death and besides everything in the ghospels that only tend to pin-point on his divinity; the words of the MAN aren't always that bad. If you read them with an open mind and fresh eyes, of course. 'cause history and our christian society have influenced us in how we interpret them to that point that we think we know what it's all about before we read his words, and have a preconceived idea about their meanings, sometimes even without having ever read them.
And no, I don't think that religion is simply a construct created by man to form and develop societies. I think religion (or spirituality, tends to be a better word in these cases) is a basic need within humans. I mean the first religions didn't pop up like fully developed means of controlling societys in the dawn of man.
I'm just saing that when you try to apply a religion to a large mass, you always need to draw out strict guidelines and rules to teach people what this religion is all about, and then it's not really religion anymore, or to be more accurate; religion is just what it is. But can it really fulfill the individuals spiritual needs? I have a hard time believing so... but then that's just me...

Well, institutionalisation of spirituality is what religion is all about. The problem with mankind is that they generally revert to the easierst path and not necessarily the best path. The institutionalisation of the church was a good thing when it came about. I think it was probably necessary in the light of Nero's persecution of the christians. When the church became established, the Roman Empire was a fantastic tool to help spread the word of the gospels.

I would agree with you that religion in itself can by no means give us what we need spiritually. This has aided the 'low-church' christianity movements in the past 30 years which are attempting to make the church more secularly relevant. A great inspiration for this was Detrich Bonhoeffer, who coined the phrase of 'Religionless Christianity'. He argued that now man was spiritually mature and that we no longer needed the structures and dogmas of the traditional church to fulfill our spirituality. In many ways I agree with him.