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The Alien Test

Here's a question I ask my religious friends - and it's one they've never been able to answer.

I'd encourage my fellow heathens on this site to give this a shot and post responses here. I'd be very interested to know if any sort of answer would be forthcoming.

My Alien test is rather simple. This is the scenario as related to a religious person.

1) Lets say humanity is contacted by or contacts an Alien species.

2) Conversing with them, we ask them about their religious views.

Now in response, we could get two possible statements

3) a. We believe in Allah/Yahweh/Hindu Gods, etc etc etc

In which case, am sure, every atheist, agnostic, non-theist and deist will reason that Allah/Yahweh or the Hindu Gods must truly exist and must be the Universal creator(s), since the probability of such a coincidence is nearly zero

However, if they say:

3) b. God? What's a God? We know how the universe came into being... In fact, here's a book which answers ALL your questions. Oh, and we can create life too! Here's how.

You humans are a funny lot! Believing in an invisible universal creator.

(Note to alien high command: First retarded human phenomena noted within minutes of first contact)

In which case will the Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews finally accept there probably is no intelligent creator?

Not likely.

They will close their eyes to the mountain of evidence in front of them and will ignore the fact that there is nothing God can claim is exclusively his domain any more.

Do let me know what you think - and the responses you received when you used this test.

Cheers,

Ashish

Tags: Agnostic, Alien, Allah, Atheist, Believers, Deist, Test, Yahweh

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ashish Shetty on February 22, 2010 at 10:59pm

Lol... ya, there could be another possibility that the rest of the galaxy independently subscribed to one religion and we're the only species which didn't - hence we're abominations and must be wiped out.

But alas, I've restricted this scenario to two hypothetical stances to get a clear cut answer from our god-fearing friends

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Permalink Reply by Ashish Shetty on February 22, 2010 at 11:10pm

3a) Fair enough - but of course am sure if we find aliens worshipping Allah or Yahweh or Vishnu everyone of us will be seriously inclined to attribute a greater probability of existence to that God. Obviously we wouldn't believe what they say blindly without asking them why they believe it.

3b) I have no doubt scientists will create life within our lifetimes - and reading the article you posted just shows how close we are. Once that magnificent milestone is achieved you'll stop hearing that oft repeated line that "only God has the power to create life."

ah - the God of the gaps will have one less gap to fill.

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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on February 23, 2010 at 10:30am

STOP IT, T.A., yer KILLIN' me here! ROFL!!!

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Permalink Reply by Pirate Bard on February 22, 2010 at 11:12pm

What if the aliens are devious enough to glean that an inordinately large percentage of the human population is gullible to such claims, and therefore would claim to believe in the same god as whatever the largest percentage does in order to lull us into a false sense of security to ease their dastardly plans?

After all, we've been sending out enough televangelist signals for an advanced race of space-fairers to figure out the details of humanity's wacky belief systems...

"Do not run! We come in peace! " ~ Mars Attacks

"Do not fear us! We come in the name of The Lord! "

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Permalink Reply by Wiley Coyote on February 23, 2010 at 9:51am

Another possibility... They claim to be god(s).
An advanced alien civilization could have technology that for all intents and purposes, would appear godlike to us primitive humans.

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Permalink Reply by Ashish Shetty on February 23, 2010 at 9:58am

Lol.... as fascinating as the possibilities are - lets restrict them to the two mentioned and try to get an answer from our religious friends... :-)

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Permalink Reply by Tom Thompson on February 23, 2010 at 10:45am

When humanity was young aliens would have been "that civilization on the other side of the impassable mountain range". The fact that those aliens would have had different views about the supernatural would not have phased them in the least. Nor would it phase a modern superstitious person I think.

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Permalink Reply by Ronin on February 23, 2010 at 1:57pm

I use a similar test using aliens and "prophets". For example, the mormons say a angel came to Joe Smith, told him about the lost tribes, god etc, and gave him a book no one else could read,see whatever. Now, John Jones is in the desert and is contacted by aliens and told all sort of wonderful things and they do experiments etc. My question to the believers is how different are the stories if you change the words angel or alien to being.

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Permalink Reply by Ashish Shetty on February 24, 2010 at 4:54am

Lol... exactly T.A. - most theists are impossible to argue with. It's quite irritating when the argument becomes cyclical and they claim it's not.

Perhaps another question to our religious friends should be "What can possibly and decisively prove you are wrong? Proof? Inference? Reasoning?"

If the answer is "Nothing" then, that more than anything else is a sign of a closed mind.

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Permalink Reply by Garrick McElroy on February 24, 2010 at 9:49am

3a) That's ridiculous... That doesn't even make sense >.< Because the alien race has also discovered this god or goddess, that makes it far more likely that it actually exists because it was discovered somewhere else, as well.
3b) No comment...

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Permalink Reply by Anders Nilsson on February 24, 2010 at 7:42am

I wish I could answer the question but I cant get around that the answers are limited to only 2. To try to corner religious people with a illogical question ( dilemma problem) is not fair and is so obvious the question is made up to corner them with a question like that. Then we use the same bad logic that They use to try to convert them. If one has to give an answer then its silly since it is so leading which religious people would see through, thus the question becomes just a remark trying to point out they are stupid. Better hit them in the head with a bat. Same same;) would it be better using logic and sound reasoning with them in this question and instead diskussing what options for an answer are there and then let the discussion flow free LIKE WE DO in this discussion? Why shouldnt religious people have same oportunity to use logic as us? I feel the reoccurring request from the questioner to Only choose from the black and white option gives a feeling that he wants to nail and corner "the damn stupid religious". Just look at the fine and funny example of discussion that emerged here as an example;) free thinking and humour will take the discussion further than dictating a small box if 2 twisted options to choose from. If 2 options are clearly stated as Only options then all the answers that he will get is: A or B which is not eveninteresting or useful for a biased Statistics survey which is exactly non science and borders to the method religeous uses..