What do you think will happen to Religion if Extra Terrestrial Life were discovered?

[The Omnissiunt One]

Superstarr -

That would certainly be interesting. I actually do believe that any civilization advanced enough to make it here would have some kind of spiritual belief. They wouldn't necessarily be benevolent, but I think they would have some awareness. The reason being that I believe that science is the tip of the iceberg, and spirituality is the bulk of the iceberg. I also think that humankind will learn this within our lifetimes.

This seems to me unlikely, as the correlation between scientific progress and religiosity is, if anything, a negative one. With the Enlightenment and its values of rationality, scientific enquiry, etc. came the first real wave of atheism. In Western Europe, most of society is overwhelmingly secular. So, for us to have some kind of spiritual epiphany, the trend of increasing secularism would have to go into reverse, or it would have to strike us in a moment of sudden revelation. Furthermore, whilst I don't wish to denigrate spirituality per se (in its strictest sense, which isn't necessarily religious), transcendent experiences and such have been shown to be products of chemical reactions in the brain. This suggests that the scientific, material nature of our universe is more fundamental than the spiritual dimension, which is just an offshoot of our evolved minds.