Time Immortal

John C. Wright speaks very slowly to an atheist who thinks that the Vatican’s recent annoumcement — that belief in the existence of aliens is not at variance with Christian faith — is merely a cover for some deeper conspiracy to save faith in the event that Earth is contacted by an extraterrestrial intelligence.

Not that the belief in non-human sapient beings is really a problem for Christians anyhow. As I noted previously, Christians already accept that two sapient, non-human species of creature already exist: angels and demons. Adding a third to the list doesn’t really change anything.

But some who follow the ways of atheism seem to have deluded themselves into thinking that the discovery that aliens do exist, should it ever happen, would change everything, and would strip away, once and for all, the human tendency to express religious belief. The assumption — an old assumption, mind you — is that the aliens would necessarily be secular beings who would laugh at the primitive “tribal god mentality” of humanity and then lead us away from Religion into a new, golden age of secular enlightenment.

Gene Roddenberry, and others before him, did a great disservice to the thought processes and categories of many, many people.

One final wry observation: Mr. [Tom Flynn] takes the time to quote with approval one Jill Tarter. She says this:

“If we get a message (from a superior culture) and it’s secular in nature, I think that says that they have no organized religion — that they’ve outgrown it.”

This type of casual arrogance is typical of the Brights.

Speaking as someone who outgrew his own atheism, and as someone who lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the adolescent belief-system called Communism collapsed under its own logical absurdities, and as someone who saw the flourishing of religion in Poland, as that nation grew, developed and evolved out of the backward barbarism of the primitive Communist thinking and into the civilized and ecumenical thinking characterized by Christianity, I have the most sincere doubts, nay, I meet with gales of laughter, the idea that signals from the Morlocks of Outer Space will show that evolution and progress always points in the direction of increasing spiritual ignorance.

The Morlocks, for those of you who do not catch the reference, in the romance of H. G. Wells, are the cannibal troglodytes of A.D. 802701. The vile beasties have the honor of being evolved from the descendants of modern man, the peak of progress. The are the posthumans; the supermen. Nietzsche and Marx and every other believer that human evolution necessarily means progress rather than regress or retardation, is well advised to read Darwin and to contemplate the hungry Morlock.

By no coincidence, I wrote an article for the Catholic Herald of the United Kingdom, prompted by my own thoughts and speculations about Father Jose Gabriel Funes comment (speculations no more grounded than reality than Mr. Flynn’s, I suspect; but then again, I am a science fiction writer, so I am allowed).

If we receive a message from aliens that is secular in nature, that doesn’t tell us that much about their religious viewpoints, if they have any. It may mean that they are secular, or it may mean that they are hesitant about approaching us on a religious level. “Hi there,” is a secular message, in that it is a simple greeting which makes no specific mention of any metaphysical concept…but it is nevertheless used by the religious and irreligious alike.

Besides, it is equally possible that the first alien we meet might step out of his spacecraft and say: “We have come to bring him homage, the great Illuvatar, whose star we observed at its rising over two thousand of your years ago. Tell us of how you welcomed him, and of his teachings to you!”

I believe it was Mark Shea who noted that in the event that we are greeted thusly, we would do well to hope that the alien weapons are not sufficiently powerful as to scour all life off the surface of the Earth.

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…at the end of the day, he was a Communist thug, a dictator, a murderer…and a censor who was, like all Communist strongmen, terrified of allowing “the people” to have open access to the rest of the world.

“…students and others in Cuba have taken to passing around media on memory sticks, as this is the only way they can get around state-controlled media. Also driving this phenomenon is the fact that there are so few places to get on the internet. In Old Havana there is only one Internet cafe; getting online there for an hour costs 1/3 of the average Cuban’s monthly wages. Local entrepreneurs get the memory sticks from European friends, since they are scarce to find in Cuba through normal channels, and expensive.”

It’s always amazing to see how resourceful people will be in their efforts to circumvent censorship and repression. I think the Canadian blogosphere might take a few notes, in case the vision of Richard Warman ever becomes a reality.

“Fidel Castro, the leader of the island nation of Cuba has declined the possibility of keeping his seat as President, after the February 24th National Assembly election. “I neither will aspire to nor will I accept ? I repeat — I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief,” Castro wrote almost 19 months after a severe illness caused him to hand power temporarily to his brother Raul.”

Well, that’s a step in the right direction for Cuba, although I doubt it will get the people thereof out from under the yoke of a strongman ruler.