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Originally by Stillness
How would you be affected if it were discovered? How do you think it would affect society as a whole?

I just saw "Aliens of the Deep." If you haven't, it deals with deep sea life and the ecosystems around hydrothermal vents. There was much allusion to the teams that were exploring these ecosystems being precursors to teams exploring other planets/satellites in our solar system. There was also a great hope by these scientists that the life that is mainly driven by these vents and not the sun could mean that life is possible beneath the ice on Europa or some other planet that is not necessarily near a star. (One can only guess why they have this hope). They then made the statement that 'this discovery would affect society greatly.' Would it? (I'm mainly speaking of life more on parr with non-human life on our planet as opposed to something like us).

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Originally by Alorael
—Alorael, who thinks life on Europa would change society in that people would go alien-crazy. Research and the media, especially the entertainment media, would explode. Otherwise, life would go on. At least until Jupiter's engineered transformation into another star. That would have some pretty big effects.

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Originally by Stillness I agree with what you said Alo, with this addition: I think that religion would be greatly affected. Maybe in a similar way that I think the teachings of general evolution has affected it. I think it would be the death blow to the faith of a lot of people.

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Originally by Drew
Don't count faith out just yet. After all, if it can weather the discovery that the world is round and that it circles the sun, it surely can weather the discovery of extraterrestrial deep sea creatures under the icy surface of a moon. "Sure, there may be other bastards out there, but we're God's special bastards!" We're already fractured into hundreds of different faiths and sects - why should the introduction of additional life out there stir that up too much?

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Originally by Frozen Feet
I don't think faith and religion will go anywhere untill something very drastic happens to the very nature of human life. If your faith is bothered by the idea of extraterrestrial life, well, it's your problem. Actually, I consider it highly likely that the finding of alien life will spark as many new religions as it will destroy.

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Originally by Stillness
As a Christian I'm certainly not counting faith out. But, religion is not as important to people as it was 200 years ago, especially in western society. And it's still declining. I think such a discovery would speed that trend. I think we'd see a more rapid decline in morals and a general feeling of uneasiness about what else lies beyond our skies.

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Originally by Wary Wanderer
Do you mean to suggest that the decline in the importance of faith would directly bring about a decline in morals? I didn't realize that one had anything to do with the other.

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Originally by Kelandon
I think such a discovery would cause wacky evangelicals to get their knickers in a knot, but I don't think that normal religious people would be affected at all. A clockmaker god could have created the universe to grow life all over the place, and there's no particular reason to believe that we're unique. If you have to believe that life was created, there's no reason to believe that it was only created once.

The discovery of the Americas didn't lead to mass panic and hysteria, so I don't know why this would lead to more uneasiness, and I seriously doubt that many people's morals would be affected (because why? Only a few people's faith would be shaken, and only a few people's faith plays a significant role in their morals).

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Originally by Stillness
Yes there is a link between faith and morals. The decline of both is not coincidence.

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Originally by Drew
There is a correlation between faith and morals, but I would posit that there's not a dependency. What is most important to a moral system is that there is some great authority that dictates what is what, whether that authority be a mythical deity or a man-made government. I prefer the latter, because at least in most cases there's a paper trail.

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Originally by ADoS
[addressing Stillness]
No there isn't.

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Oringinally by Lenar
Though religion defines mores, mores do not demand religion.
Stillness, decline in morality has come due to the destruction of the definition of our society's mores; and the decline will continue until our society either destroys itself or actually defines a stable set of mores.

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Originally by Stillness
I initially meant the traditional definition SoT. Although finding a virus on Europa would be quite interesting. Your question is really why I started the thread though. What would life in outerspace do for you? Why are some scientists so eager to find it?

I said only that there was a link, not dependancy. We naturally have a conscience. It tends to go astray without proper guidance though. People start to set their own standards as it suits them. Hence the decline in morals we see. Increasing disregard for human life, lowering of sexual standards, breakdown of the family unit, lowering of standards of what is considered publically acceptable behavior, etc are all around us. I can see it in just a few decades of being around. I don't know how anyone could not see it. If you start talking about the past century then the difference is glaring.

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Originally by Drew
If anything, the "decline in morals" exposes the flaw in reliance on religious doctrine as their source. Given that religion depends on belief in a mythological deity in order to inspire fear sufficient to reinforce "moral" behavior, is it surprising that an increasing lack of belief in the Church of Our Fathers would cause those individuals to question what the Church is saying? I think this underscores the importance of the role government/the social contract plays as the basis for morality. The difficulty is that unlike a mythical deity, the government is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. However, the upshot is that it's real.

I have a big problem with arbitrary determinations of what "proper" guidance is. While I agree that having two loving parents around to raise a child is probably ideal, the rest of what you generally refer to as a "lowering of standards" is completely relative to your own religious worldview, which is just as arbitrary as mine until you can prove that the authority you rely on is capital-T True. In the mean time, I think that I will continue to abide by the laws we have more or less legitimately agreed to, and celebrate the U.S.'s continuous march toward true liberty and equality, which I think are perhaps the most important moral values of them all.

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Originally by Stillness
Kel, You asked why I think religion would be affected. It teaches God created life. As I mentioned before general evolution erodes people's faith in general - not everyone's. The scientific community would probably push the same conclusion that Randomizer would about life elsewhere. Many would accept that conclusion.

Drew, on the one hand you say "the "decline in morals" exposes the flaw in reliance on religious doctrine as their source." Then you say "is it surprising that an increasing lack of belief in the Church of Our Fathers would cause those individuals to question what the Church is saying?" How does the first follow from the second.

I'll be the first to say that a lot of what mainstream Christianity does and says is bad - it has been for quite a while. To the extent that it sticks to the Bible it is good though. To the extent that society deviates from that it is bad. You'll accept what it says about the family. But the rest you say is arbitrary. OK, let's take my first statement and see how arbitrary it is. I don't have to prove God you you, because you can tell a tree by the fruit it bears.

Disregard for Human Life: In the past century more blood has been shed in wars than in the 1900 years prior to that. High regard for human life (which Jesus taught) would not allow for war. Is that arbitrary?

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Originally by Archmagus Michael
Granted, but while Jesus may have said this- it didn't stop the Crusades, which (in general), was a Christian (again generalisation) invasion of Arab lands (I'm not condemming or anything like that, I'm just stating objectively). And while more life may have been shed in this last century, this last century has also seen massive increases in both population and military technology- there was probably more deaths in the middle ages than in the stone ages, due to those same reasons.

Going back to the original thread, life may well exist in other forms on other worlds, but (as I think has been mentioned)- why are we looking for it so keenly, why are we broadcasting knowledge about ourselves out there for anyone to find? Sure, we want to knwo if there's life out there, but who's to say that it's friendly life, that it won't just blast us out of existance? (a bit doomsday/ late night movie sounding, but we honestly don't know what's out there).

- Archmagus Micael

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Originally by Drew
The first follows from the second because a decrease in faith in the existence of a mythical being undercuts that being's authority to hold individuals accountable to the morality that religion espouses. I.e., once I knew that Santa Claus didn't exist, it undercut my worries about being naughty or nice.

Although it may not be as absolute an authority (and therefore allow for more "flexibility"), I think that abiding by the morality espoused by what we've decided in forming our government is preferable to abiding by that espoused by what a sizable portion of the population doubts the truth of. Further, it's not as if faiths haven't relaxed their standards over time as well. Remember the prohibition against interracial marriage? Or less seriously, how about the SBC's boycott on Disney? Where are those hard and fast lines of Good Ole Time Religion?

And please don't read any further into my words than what I said - that I agree that it's a good thing for a child to be raised by two loving parents. That does not equal "Drew agrees with everything that the Bible says about parenting." Further, what does the Bible even say about parenting? I know that the Christian tradition certainly has many things to say, and many of them are, among other things, hostile to the notion of women being equal to men. No thank you.

Frankly, once you cut out reliance on the existence of a mythical deity, the Bible is no more authoritative than any other codex. "Do unto others..." is a pretty age-old sentiment, and Christianity certainly doesn't have the monopoly on it. There are cultures extant with moral systems not rooted in faith that seem pretty morally sound to me. The Bible even does much to contradict itself - are we to abide by OT prescriptions, or take Jesus' lessons from the Gospel to heart, or are we instead to abide by what Paul has to say, contradictory though it may be?

Also, "I don't have to prove God you you, because you can tell a tree by the fruit it bears"? That's a pretty bold assertion! I'll spare you the enormous litany of the horrors that faith and Christianity in particular have wrought on the world, because I'm certain you're well aware of many of them.

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Originally by Alorael
On disregard for human life: I think that's untrue. In fact, I think that's remarkably untrue. Human life was cheap in the early 20th century. Human life was literally for sale in America into the mid 19th century. The North and South fought a huge war over, among other things, slavery.

Let's look at the death tolls, too. The American Civil War was an unprecedented bloodpath. The Battle of Shiloh killed more men than all previous American wars combined. WWI's carnage dwarfed its predecessors'. The Holocaust was like nothing before it or since, although the "since" is mostly due to lack of organization and infrastructure.

I'll agree without qualm that wars have claimed more and more lives. I dispute that it's due to any change in morals, though. The difference is mostly in weaponry. You can only kill so many people with swords and spears. Guns make that easier. So do standing armies. Automatic weaponry adds on, and so do bombs. We don't want to kill each other any more now than we did millenia ago. We're just better equipped for it.

—Alorael, who on the contrary thinks that aside from the right-wing reactionaries liberal democracies have made amazing leaps in tolerance of and completely acceptance of very different people. Racism is at least ostensibly censured. Sexism is already dropping dead. Rigid insistence on one right way to live is slowly dwindling. It's a decline in Judeo-Christian morals, but it's a great advance in humanism.

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Originally by Safety
I am a christian and as a christian I will hold my self to the certain rules I believe a Christian should follow. However as a Christian I believe it completely unreasonable to expect non Christians to hold christian values. As Chrisians we should be more concerned about the preaching of our faith then political games.

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Originally by Thuryl
I don't know why you see a decline in morals. As far as I'm concerned, the average citizen of a modern First World country is more moral than the average inhabitant of any other civilisation in human history. For one thing, we don't keep slaves.

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Originally by Stillness
If I say I am a law-abiding citizen and I sell illegal drugs, is my statement true? No. To be a law-abiding citizen one has to do more than claim that he is. He must actually obey the laws of his nation. Christ has laws. To be a Christian means you are actually a disciple of Christ. Simply saying you are does not make it so. This is one thing Jesus was extremely explicit on. A Christian waging war is like a Muslim that doesn’t believe in Allah. Christianity is not responsible for any wars, atrocities, or invasions. It’s impossible for it to be.

God places a high value on women. Their role is vital in the family arrangement. I don’t know what you mean by “hostile to the notion of women being equal to me.” Much is said about fathers, mothers and children, but that is not what I meant when I said you agreed. I was only speaking of the traditional family that you spoke of as ideal. And the Bible does not contradict itself.

You say the golden rule is age old and not originating with Christianity, please list the other source(s) that has that rule. You say that God is flawed as a source for absolute morality because people lack faith in him. That’s like saying water is bad because I don’t drink enough of it.

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Alo, Slavery has been around for quite awhile and is alive and well today. War has also been around for a bit. What happened in the last century was unique though. I agree that technology played a role in the ease of killing. But we had two world wars – absolutely unprecedented! That has nothing to do with technology. It was over world domination. Darwinistic thought, which teaches competition and advantage over others translating into survival and prosperity, heavily influenced the governments that were based off of Marx. These governments killed or allowed to die tens of millions of their own citizens. That certainly has to do with morals. I have read a quote supposedly from Stalin that says, “killing a million people is no different from mowing the lawn.” If he didn’t say it, he certainly lived it. Why should it be any different if grass is our evolutionary cousin?

I’m not saying morals alone are to blame, but there is a link. Racism, sexism, and intolerance are still alive and well too. That’s why a lot of folks have love/hate feelings towards the U.S. This country is supposed to be so concerned with human rights yet it tortures, bullies and abuses all over the world. I see no great advance in humanism whatsoever. I see a lot of violence everywhere. There are a bunch of broken families because of low opinion of marriage and lax morals regarding sexuality. AIDS is running rampant all over the world for the same reasons. Millions are dying, starving, and poor while the rich get richer and billions are spent on weapons and war.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/09/23_16691.shtml

“Forced labor occurs in at least 90 cities across the United States… Slavery is a problem the public thinks we solved long ago, but, in fact, it's alive and well.”

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Oh yeah, Jesus was an alien, sort of "You are from the realms below; I am from the realms above. You are from this world; I am not from this world." That's why I can picture a vastly different scheme for "life."

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Originally by Kelandon
Wow. For a religious person, you are remarkably ignorant of religion and ethics. Confucius articulated the Golden Rule at least half a millenium before Jesus ever did.

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Christianity is not responsible for any wars, atrocities, or invasions. It’s impossible for it to be.
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Well, if you define Christians as only those who agree with you and act on it, then sure, but pretty much no one will agree with that definition.

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What happened in the last century was unique though. I agree that technology played a role in the ease of killing. But we had two world wars – absolutely unprecedented! That has nothing to do with technology.
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Um, you're so extremely wrong that it's hard to believe that you can think this. The Peloponnesian War was a war that consumed the entire known world, but the known world was pretty small at that point, because they didn't have enough communications technology to find out about, say, the Americas.

Large-scale war between many nations had occurred previously in history (the Napoleonic Wars, the Thirty Years War, etc.). The Thirty Years War was almost as international as WWI. WWI and WWII were different because of the technology available, but I don't think that there is anything else that makes them unique.

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Darwinistic thought, which teaches competition and advantage over others translating into survival and prosperity, heavily influenced the governments that were based off of Marx.
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Wtf? You mean, governments that were based off of capitalism. Social Darwinists most frequently justified allowing competition to weed out the unfit, which is a capitalist, not a communist, system. By the way, Social Darwinism is not an inevitable consequence of biological Darwinism. It's a corruption of a scientific principle, not the next logical step.

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Racism, sexism, and intolerance are still alive and well too. That’s why a lot of folks have love/hate feelings towards the U.S. This country is supposed to be so concerned with human rights yet it tortures, bullies and abuses all over the world.
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Yes, but it no longer has a legally-mandated racial caste system, nor does it deny women the right to vote (much less to work), and no longer has sodomy laws. Whatever you may say about the morality of the "good old days," you have to admit that we've made progress on the fronts that you've named.

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Originally by Randomizer
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Wikipedia reference page to the Golden Rule

There are several texts that predate Jesus on the Golden Rule. Besides morality is about actually following what you preach.

That's why Republican family values is a joke. During the period up to the Clinton impeachment, Newt Gingrich told his mistress to give him oral sex so,"I can swear that I never slept with you." This is when he was cheating on his second wife, who was his mistress when he cheated on his first wife.

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Originally by Stillness
It just so happens that I am learning Chinese and studying the culture. I am aware of Confucius which is why I know that he did not articulate the Golden Rule as Jesus did. What he said sounds similar, but is different. Look closer. Jesus requires positive actions of doing good to others. Confucius is a negative version of what Jesus said.

Christianity is not based on me, but on Christ. That is the common measuring line. He was very clear that many would claim to follow him and use his name to perform powerful works but would in actuality be lawless. He was also clear that his disciples should not fight. I can quote the relevant scriptures if you think I’m making stuff up.

I didn’t say that there weren’t large scale wars. I said there weren’t world wars. That was absolutely unprecedented. Technology played a great role in the wars, it always has. It didn’t make them world wars though. The Americas were discovered centuries before 1914, yet there were no world wars. If you don’t think there is anything else unique about them then check the civilian casualties.

Darwinistic thought influenced Marx and governments that were based off of his teachings. I meant exactly what I said.

It doesn’t matter if something is legally mandated if it still goes on. Or maybe you think the government doesn’t know about forced labor. No caste system?

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00-01.htm

“Blacks comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison…Thirteen percent of the black adult male population has lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws.”

Do you think blacks are genetically more prone to criminal activity? If not, what do you think the problem is? I do think that some progress has been made in certain areas, but the full picture shows regress. I’m not blaming lack of religion for the whole thing. Some religion is bad. Every time I hear about female genital mutilation I want to vomit.

JS, I’ll find the book I got the information from and quote from it later.

EDIT: The book I have quotes from Worldwatch Institute as follows:

"Three times as many people fell victim to war in [the 20th] century as in all the wars from the first century AD to 1899."

I found their website and this article entitled Kosovo and Beyond: Peacemaking in a Post-Cold War World at http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1650 that seems to be what it quoted from. It gives 110 million as the number killed which would imply about 35 million for the 1900 years before. I looked over the article, but it doesn't seem to say how they came up with that number.

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Originally by Wary Wanderer
Originally written by Stillness:

It just so happens that I am learning Chinese and studying the culture. I am aware of Confucius which is why I know that he did not articulate the Golden Rule as Jesus did. What he said sounds similar, but is different. Look closer. Jesus requires positive actions of doing good to others. Confucius is a negative version of what Jesus said.

Regardless of the discussion of negative and positive injunctions, the Torah's repeated statement that one should love one's neighbor as oneself used the positive framework before Christ lived.

He was also clear that his disciples should not fight. I can quote the relevant scriptures if you think I’m making stuff up.

And what, in Catholocism, of papal infallibility? When Pope Urban II started the first crusade, calling for all Christians to wage war against the Turks (and even promising automatic remission of sins as a perk), is this not for Catholics the statement of direct Divine Will to wage war? And what of Pope Sixtus VI's support of the Inquisition?

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Originally written by Yama:

Well, it no longer enforces sodomy laws. It's amazing how many are still on the books, though.

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I didn’t say that there weren’t large scale wars. I said there weren’t world wars.

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It doesn’t matter if something is legally mandated if it still goes on. Or maybe you think the government doesn’t know about forced labor. No caste system? ... “Blacks comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison…Thirteen percent of the black adult male population has lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws.”

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Originally written by Drew:

By that rationale, pretty much no one would be Christian. But that hasn't prevented heinous actions being carried out in Christ's name with the full sanction of those dictating what the scriptures really mean.

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In asserting that a woman's role is vital in the family arrangement, you are marginalizing them. It's like saying "I put a high value on my car.

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That doesn't mean that he necessarily have a "traditional family," with mom barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, obeying her husband like a good wife should per 2 Corinthians.

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As for the second point, it's flawed, because unlike water, you can't prove to me or anyone else - whatever they may choose to believe - that God is vital for life…anything coming from that source lacks credibility with me.

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Originally written by Kelandon:

Define "world war."

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If I can sum up your point as follows:
As humanity strays further from the teachings of Christ, we become more apt to murder,rape, and commit acts of gross atrocity. To wit, we engage in acts of mass war which decimate the population at an unprecedented rate.

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Originally written by Stillness:

I don’t want to focus on the world wars alone though, because my point was that the conflicts of the past century mark this period as unique. That can be seen from the fact that three times as many died as in the past 19 centuries. But if you want to focus on the world wars then look at the link to wikipedia and compare the lesser of the two to any other war you’d like by comparing the map that shows how much of the world was involved and the chart that has the numbers and see why any historical reference you can think of will say that WWI was unprecedented in scale and thus bears the title World War 1.

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