If you bring up the topic of space, there is a lot you could talk about. There are the topics astronomy, astrophysics, astrobiology and planetary science. But what about space and religion? Does it even have a place?
Ted Peters who’s been a research scholar with the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at Berkeley and has co-edited the journal Theology and Science is no stranger to the topic of space and religion. In fact, he enjoys it immensely. Peters studies space because, “there is an inherent spiritual thrust in the human soul that asks about either the heavens or what’s beyond the heavens… We’ve always been looking at the heavens for power and majesty and glory. With space, we just get a quantum leap in power, majesty and the connotation of infinity. The sky and space both are inherently religious [and] spiritual…”
One of the topics that Peters likes to tackle is space and Extra Terrestrial Intelligence or ETI. He goes to this topic from many angles. Peters explained, “if we think about intelligent creatures akin to ourselves living in space, those creatures are going to pick up some spiritual valence when we begin to think about them. That’s one of the things I studied: how do fictional images of spacelings have a spiritual dimension?”
With no aliens in sight, at least as of yet, why study ETI? Peters said, “It is important to study ETI because it provides a warrant or justification to research of exoplanets, especially because we pretty well know that there won’t be intelligent life on planets within the solar system. It’s possible that there will be life on planets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way. Beyond the Milky Way, the distances are too big to have any interaction [with us], because of the light year problem. Within the Milky Way, it is conceivable that we could have interaction with intelligent creatures. So, the intelligence question is important because of the assumption, which is a very important assumption, that we may communicate on some occasion.”
Peters has also looked at the people’s opinion of how their religion or belief system would be affected with an alien encounter. “I conducted the ‘Peters ETI Religious Crisis Survey,’ in which we sent questionnaires to people who would self-select their own religious commitment,” he said, “This included conservative Protestants (that would be evangelicals and evangelists) in one category, mainline Protestants in the second category, Roman Catholics and then orthodox Christians, as well as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and then finally the group that self-selected as non-religious. We asked if we were to confirm contact with extra terrestrial intelligent creatures, would this create a crisis for your own belief system.”
“And overwhelmingly,” he continued, “over 90% said, ‘No, there would not be a crisis in my own belief system.’ That applied equally to Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians. Even to Jews. And with Buddhists it was 100% that said this would not create a crisis for their faith. And in the comments—this is what’s really important—regardless of what religious tradition, people would say something like this universe is very big, for those people who believed in God, they thought that God could have made sisters and brothers who are intelligent living on other planets, and in fact many people are looking forward to that [contact]. So, that shows that statistically people who are self identified as religious are either not worried about a crisis of faith or in many cases are looking positively to it.”
Another question Peters asked in this study was “If we can confirm the existence of intelligence creatures in outer space, would other religious traditions face a crisis?” “On this one where people identified as religious, some of them were actually worried about other religious people, not themselves, but other religious people… The startling statistic was that those who declared themselves to be non religious were the ones who argued overwhelmingly that religious people are going to crash and burn,” Peters said, “So the opinion on the part of the non religious, for those who are religious, [was] that religious people are fragile, subject to crisis, in some cases they said that their religion would be destroyed and would collapse. People who self identified as religious see no problem, but the ones identified as non religious who say those religious people are going to have a big problem.”
Peters keeps busy. Currently, he is formulating an argument that all life is intelligent, which, he said, “means that [this would be] even if we were to find microbial life on Mars or on a moon orbiting Saturn. I’d hesitate to call it unintelligent. It might not be as intelligent as human beings, but I think all life is intelligent. My point is that I don’t think it is helpful to distinguish between intelligent and non intelligent life. All life is intelligent. When we’re looking at exoplanets, we certainly would like life to be of the same level intelligence that we have as human beings or perhaps even more intelligent.” You can see him in late April presenting this position at a meeting in Mesa, Arizona called “AbSciCon” or the “Astrobiology Science Conference.” It’s sponsored by NASA and the European Space Agency.
He also has a side interest in UFOs and has written a book, UFOs: God’s Chariots? Peters explained that in the book, he has, “tried to show how the image of what goes in outer space, in [our] culture, is actually a form of secularized spirituality. I think that’s the case for both the UFO phenomenon and also the more serious serious scientists at NASA, and SETI, and METI and places like that.”
It was a pleasure to interview Peters. Talking to him was surely out of this world. You could read his blog at: http://tedstimelytake.com/