BUT COULD ET BELIEVE IN GOD?

April 15th / Friday 2 February 1996
By: The Electronic Telegraph newspaper
Theologians still wonder, writes Jonathan Petre

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If ET is out there, could he be said to have a soul, or at least the capac ity to believe in God? This is the conundrum with which theologians have wrestled for centuries, but which was most recently raised by a Jesuit astronomer at Cambridge.

Father Christopher Moss made the suggestion in a recent article in the Tablet, most of which was devoted to expressing scepticism about the existence of little green men. But, he conceded, if such beings do exist, and if they have an understanding of the laws of physics similar to our own, and an intellect and a moral sense, might they not also be aware of the love of God which, Christians believe, underpins the universe?

His speculations are far from novel. Indeed, the Catholic Church four years ago teamed up with Nasa to spread the gospel to extra-terrestrials. While Nasa's job is to monitor for "alien" communication signals, the Vatican searches for planets displaying conditions of life. Father George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory outside Rome, said that, in the event of a close encounter, the Church would be confronted with the question of whether these extra-terrestrials might be baptised.

"If someone came from the moon, we might grant him the title of man but when it came to baptism there might be great disputes . . . "

"Why not, if we have the pleasure of meeting them?" he asked disarmingly.

But as the early Church fathers recognised, aliens can hardly be said to have experienced something akin to the Adam and Eve story, the root of original sin. Nor are they likely to have encountered a Christ who has redeemed them.

The 17th-century German philosopher Leibniz addressed the issue thus: "If someone came from the moon, we might grant him the title of man but when it came to baptism there might be great disputes . . . But I doubt whether he would ever be acceptable as a priest in the Catholic Church because, until there was some revelation, the consecration would always be suspect."

But, leaving aside baptism, might not aliens possess the intellect and moral sense to have an inkling of the supernatural, the creator? Unless Father Coyne hits the jackpot, we may never know.

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