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Vatican OK with Aliens

Not the illegal kind, though at last check the pope’s good with those, too.* The big-eyed Roswell variety. Vatican big says ”brother extraterrestials” are God’s creatures, too. Reuters:   

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican’s chief astronomer says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of intelligent life on other planets that is perhaps even more evolved than humans.

“In my opinion this possibility (of life on other planets) exists,” said Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, a 45-year-old Jesuit priest who is head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict.

“How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere,” he told the Vatican newspaper in an interview in its Tuesday-Wednesday edition, explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.

Asked if he was referring to beings similar to humans or even more evolved than humans, he said: “Certainly, in a universe this big you can’t exclude this hypothesis.”

But, in the interview headlined “The extraterrestrial is my brother,” he said he saw no conflict between belief in such beings and faith in God.

“Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can’t put limits on God’s creative freedom,” he said.

“Why can’t we speak of a ‘brother extraterrestrial’? It would still be part of creation,” he said.

OK, if you say so.

This could get interesting. The above artistic treatment is from this discussion board exploring whether Jesus was an alien.

*As long as they are Catholic aliens flooding into the United States. The Church is a little more hinky about Muslim aliens flooding into Europe.

Topics: Pope, UFOs

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:03 pm on Tuesday, May 13, 2008

2 Responses to “Vatican OK with Aliens”

1. TheBigHenry Says:
   May 14th, 2008 at 10:29 am

   Did the Vatican get a heads-up from NASA about today’s (1pm) BIG announcement?

2. RebeccaH Says:
   May 14th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

   Interesting. I wonder what fundie Muslims would think about extraterrestrials, since they seem to think all human beings are born Muslim, and some just go astray. Would another planet be part of the Ummah, the way Earth apparently is?

   But I forget myself. If extraterrestrials aren’t mentioned in the Koran, then it’s obvious they don’t exist.

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