Will We Find Signs Of Intelligent Life In Religion Media Coverage?

Last updated on: October 17, 2014 at 7:43 am by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

Will We Find Signs Of Intelligent Life In Religion Media Coverage? 2014-10-17T07:43:55+01:00 Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

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The search for intelligent life in religion media coverage continues, and even though we’ve always come empty thus far, we should not lose hope. Maybe. If we find it, surely this will shake the world’s major religions to their core.

This is a question of which all religious people are well aware, and one of which they’re probably tired, but this example (h/t Alan Jacobs) is astonishing both for the content and venue. This is an interview in (a) the Scientific American (which isn’t a religion paper, but which you would think/hope would have a higher level of reverence for fact-checking than your average newspaper); (b) by a guy who wrote a book on religion; (c) who clearly never learned anything about religion.

David Weintraub, an astronomer at Vanderbilt, wrote a book assessing how the world’s major religions would deal with the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Now, this is an interesting question–one that several Catholic theologians have tackled. Maybe Weintraub has interesting insights to offer!

But there is reason to doubt it, since it is pretty clear that he has never bothered to learn anything about it. Howlers include the idea that the Eastern Orthodox Church is “a branch of Catholicism”, that Quakerism is an other religion than Christianity, and that Catholicism teaches de fide that there was a literal Garden of Eden with a literal Adam and Eve.

It’s worth pausing to reflect on the fact that it’s possible for someone to get a book published by a major publisher on something they clearly don’t understand and haven’t bothered to try to understand, and have interviews published on it where they say basic howlers in prestigious, science-y outlets.

Does this happen on topics other than religion? I can’t think of any right now.

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