The search for alien life
BE CAREFUL what you search for. It is Hubble, Kepler, SALT, MeerKAT, etc, all manner of telescope pointing up, looking, listening, sensing for (alien) life out there. Even the Roman Catholic Church has its own observatory. As a church, what do you expect to find out there? Is it a matter of we cannot be alone out here!
Maths guru G Ellis once cautioned: “Alien life out there may not be Catholic at all.”
And by extension may not be a member of any church or faith as we know it. May not have heard of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Muhammad, Abraham or….
There is a high probability that “they” out there would not have read any of the “holy” books we hold dear and sometimes use in order to fight each other.
“They” out there may not ever have voted for the ANC either. May not know that the ANC has found a cure for “poverty” by having “have-not poverty” replaced by debt poverty. Forewarned as we are about looking for (alien) life out there, at the back of our minds we hope “they” too will have some notion of God we could share.
Perhaps an all-encompassing God, ie Source?
And yet, would “they” know how far removed we all are from a Neale Walsch’s idea of Tomorrow’s God (today): A notion of God that has no need believing in, nor being served? A tomorrow’s God (today) without any human characteristics projected onto it?
A God that never stopped revealing itself (her/ him-self ) as and through “the other”. As this I as we. A God that is creative life, ceaseless in its manifestation? A God that judges not, condemns not, punishes not, never instils fear, never angers? A God that is only unconditional love?
Role reversal: Somewhere out there a galaxy far, far away something, perhaps someone, looks through a telescope at our Milky Way galaxy calling it T9000ZZ and wonders: Is there Alien life out there? What do they look like? Do they look like us, do they believe like us, perhaps believing like me?