(July 16, 2010 at 1:44 pm)paintpooper Wrote: I'm hoping for the discovery of life within my lifetime, the smallest microbe will do.

Already a reality. They discovered microbes on Mars some time ago.

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As for the OP, they'd waste no time sending missionaries to the new world to convert their kind and save their souls, at gunpoint if need be.

(July 16, 2010 at 1:47 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(July 16, 2010 at 1:44 pm)paintpooper Wrote: I'm hoping for the discovery of life within my lifetime, the smallest microbe will do.

Already a reality. They discovered microbes on Mars some time ago.

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The jury is still out on that one

What I mean is, how would atheists get on with religious extra terrestrials? Would they try to educate them, or would the extra terrestrials be in a position to educate all of us? If they had the means to get here, I'd say the latter.

(July 16, 2010 at 1:54 pm)Godhead Wrote: What I mean is, how would atheists get on with religious extra terrestrials? Would they try to educate them, or would the extra terrestrials be in a position to educate all of us? If they had the means to get here, I'd say the latter.

Personally, I would ask them to go home. We already have religious nuts here. If they don't have anything new to add, then they should leave.

@Godhead: Unless they worship something that their ignorant ancestors made up. You know... like most Terrans do...

(July 16, 2010 at 1:54 pm)Godhead Wrote: What I mean is, how would atheists get on with religious extra terrestrials? Would they try to educate them, or would the extra terrestrials be in a position to educate all of us? If they had the means to get here, I'd say the latter.

If they were religious (highly doubtful) they wouldn't have technologies superior to ours. Here's why.

If like you say that God created everything within 6 days, they would have gone through the same time frame that we did, and if they were religious, you'll notice that they should be around the same technologies as we have today because of heavy over-exaggerated beliefs for about 1000+ years that didn't allow new knowledge on the natural world. If they were religious, they wouldn't be past our technologies in fact, they should be similar. But if they were able to find us via space travel, you'll see that it wasn't the case and would completely contradict the idea of God making everything within a couple days, because they wouldn't have such advanced technology if God made everything within that time frame. That means that they existed long before humans ever thought of technology.

And there would be a problem teaching them any religion, because the Christians would want to teach them Christianity, the Buddists would want to teach them Buddhism, the Hindus would want to teach them Hinduism, the Islamics would want to teach them of Islam it would literally be a fight of which religions should they learn about, in fact, the ET's may think we are a weird civilization for making all of these unreasonable things up. The only thing we can talk about to them is Science because science is religiously neutral so that things would be even and friendly.

EDIT: Some things I wanted to add.

Halo. Time for me to go back to the simulation so I will be ready for the Covenant.

Superstarr :

I never said that god created everything in 6 days. I'm not a christian. I don't think you understood the question, you seem to be centering most of what you're saying on religions here on earth, mainly christianity. What I was saying was, if extra terrestrials came here, and if they happened to be religious (it goes without saying that their religion would not be identical to christianity, to say the least), how would atheists get on with them? Being an atheist doesn't equal being a scientist. But those atheists who do know something about science, would they try to educate these religious ETs about science, or would it be a case of the ETs educating all of us about science? Surely they'd know much more than any scientist here, whether atheist or not.

It would either adapt and change, or die out; theistic beliefs would start incorporating the discovery of life on other worlds into the faith-based system, whilst asserting it was common knowledge to their doctrine, they'd add yet another layer to their cake of dishonesty and deception by claiming scientists have only just managed to figure out another wonder of their impossible-to-know god's creative bullshit they knew all along.

(July 16, 2010 at 1:13 pm)superstarr Wrote: Religious people can't just say "I don't care what you think, God made everything" because you will look stupid.

The realisation their beliefs are moronically incompatible with reality, logic or reason never stopped them before.

My question in all of this... why would it matter if they were RELIGIOUS? I mean frankly, there are more important matters at hand than if the space travelers are religious. Could they breath oxygen? Would they understand our languages? How did they get here? Where are they from?

And to answer Godhead's question, if they were at all religious in some way, how do you know that their religion is remotely similar to ours?

Superstarr: Though I agree with you, I have to say, you're a little off. How do you know that the space travelers would be just like us? I mean, how do you know that new technologies would have been scorned, and all that religious stuff happened, etc? How do you know that their timeline and our timeline would look almost exactly alike? I don't think they would. They would be another species, in another galaxy... It's highly doubtful that their history would be similar to ours. Even if they were religious, they could be more advanced than us. Maybe on their planet they didn't have a bunch of other different religions, just one. Maybe they were able to achieve a utopia (even if it's a religious utopia) much faster than us, and therefore advanced in technologies much quicker.