Would Finding Alien Life Change Religious Philosophies?
The discovery of extraterrestrial beings — be they slimy microbes or little green men — would dramatically change the way we humans view our place in the universe. But would it shatter religion? Well, that depends on what you believe.
In his book "Religions and Extraterrestrial Life" (Springer 2014), David Weintraub, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University, takes a close look at how different faiths would handle the revelation that we're not alone. Some of his findings might surprise you.
Public polls have shown that a large share of the population believes aliens are out there. In one survey released last year by the company Survata, 37 percent of the 5,886 Americans who were polled said they believed in the existence of extraterrestrial life, while 21 percent said they didn't believe and 42 percent were unsure. Responses varied by religion: 55 percent of atheists said they believed in extraterrestrials, as did 44 percent of Muslims, 37 percent of Jews, 36 percent of Hindus and 32 percent of Christians.
The notion of extraterrestrial life was for the most part irrelevant to religions that began thousands of years ago.
"Ideas about extraterrestrial life — if they're part of the sacred writings — they're buried a little bit deeper," Weintraub told Live Science. "They're not obvious. They're layered below the top. In Jewish scripture, there's pretty much nothing there. You really have to over-interpret to find anything that you can marginally say might have anything to do with extraterrestrial life."
Full article:
https://www.livescience.com/48208-religion-extraterrestrial-life.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
So you can answer my questions, then.
Thanks! 
There is nothing but anecdotal evidence for leprechauns, etc. There are, however, things that exist on the Earth which no scientist has ever been able to explain. Give a good explanation for these, and the hypothesis of ET visitation grows weaker. No one's done that yet.
Sagan was probably the most outspoken opponent of Immanuel Velikovsky's hypothesis of Venus. In his TV series Cosmos (Episode 4), he lays out in detail his arguments against him. But at the end of that segment, he says that the problem with Velikovsky is not that he was wrong. The problem was that scientists dismissed him out of hand, without even looking at the evidence.
I look at evidence. And I'm not afraid to question the current paradigm.
As you say, YMMV.
But my admittedly small knowledge of leprechauns leads me to believe that--should they exist--they probably couldn't have done these things. The facts don't fit. No theory equals false hypothesis. On to other possibilities.
And just to save time, let's say they weren't done by Bigfoot, elves or the Loch Ness monster, either.
a pejorative term from the 1950's meant to disparage those who encountered things they couldn't explain, in an effort to mockingly discredit them. No alternative explanation offered by those mockers, either.
In fact, in 20 years of studying the history of UFOs, I've never seen a single case where an ET is described as green.
Should they exist, I don't think they would be that color. Just for the record, of course.
I've never claimed it definitely happened. I said I'm keeping my mind open and studying the evidence.
Sagan didn't think there was a "face" on Mars. But he wanted the Viking spacecraft to fly over it, just to make sure.
Nothing wrong with exploring possibilities. It's how great scientific discoveries are made.
Did I mention I was a huge fan of Sagan?
I don't buy into it--and I don't promote it. Which fool have I quoted to you?
The outrageous stuff can be fun, because I like to see how people think. And there are some real goodies out there. LOL I had to confront one once a a party held by MUFON. Fortunately, the host was able to talk him down. He had really thrown me for a loop with his fanaticism.
I suppose you think I'm that way, too, but I'm not.
My initial reply to the OP was meant to disagree with the flat-out statement that there are no references to ETs in the Bible. The ancient Hebrews had no concept of alien life as we think of it, so they couched their encounters in terms they could understand. How do we know for a fact that what they called an "angel" was not actually an extraterrestrial? The writers made a point of distinguishing the being from a human. Of course, they might have just made the whole thing up. But they're not the only ones who described stuff like that; these stories are worldwide. What do they mean? I don't know, which is why I don't simply brush them off as so much flotsam on the stream of history.
Edison tried 10,000 times to create the lightbulb. Guess it's a good thing he kept pursuing that needle, eh? LOL
Meanwhile, I'm not complaining. I'm carrying on a conversation. If you don't want to talk, that's fine. I enjoy the subject, but I'll leave you alone if you don't.
Caveat: I would appreciate it if you would quit inferring that I'm a religionist. I'm a science-trained atheist, I don't hold fanatical beliefs, and I'm open to any line of argument you'd like to pursue.
Even leprechauns.
Buddha taught a belief in the supernatural was irrelevant. The current Dalai Lama is an avid fan of science.
Mahayanists? Okay, I'll grant you them. But not the Theravedists.
And no, I'm not a Buddhist.
But I'm a student of consciousness, and I've done a lot of investigation into the subject.
The University of Virginia has an annex devoted to the study of consciousness. One of the things they investigate is reincarnation. They currently have 2000 documented cases, collected over 50 years, that might be evidence of it--or at least, of some form of consciousness persisting after death. This is not in their Religion Department; it's part of their medical curriculum.
Medical science is also changing its definition of when death actually occurs, since neuronal activity in test animals can be restored long after brain death.
None of this means that reincarnation is a real thing, but it does show that there may be something going on. I don't believe in the religious versions of reincarnation myself (I'm a science-trained atheist), but I find some of these examples to be intriguing.
Quantum mechanics suggests that subatomic particles may have some form of consciousness. This is what caused Einstein to reject the theory out of hand; he never accepted it. Yet today we are building quantum computers. QM is established science. We still don't know what it might mean that "particles are conscious," but the experimental results are thought-provoking. If--and that's still a big if--it turns out that this is the case, it would be only a short step to positing a continuance of consciousness after physical death. This would fit in with the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, which is a little bit different than the Hindu version.
There are documented cases of people who have received organ transplants, and who afterward take on aspects of the donor's personality. Might this be a form of reincarnation?
My attitude about all this is: The universe created me. If it can do it once, it can do it again. That doesn't mean I'll be who I am now, or even that I'll reappear on Earth. (In fact, I highly doubt it.) To take Carl Sagan out of context, if I can only exist on Earth, then the universe is a real waste of space.
As to your other point, Buddhists believe in the doctrine of Anatman, which means "no soul." So your assertion is incorrect.
