If "First Contact" occurred, what would that do to mainstream religions on earth?

I agree...It's probably cause a massive spilt... Some people would declare them devils and go running for the hills, others would declare them gods, others would...
The funny thing to me is that people worry about the "chaos" caused by disclosure, but fail to note that the world's in utter turmoil right now.
Non-disclosure, in my opinion, has nothing to do with a benign government looking to protect the fragile psyche of it's citizens, but continuance of power, pure and simple.
As has been noted elsewhere, Pope Palpatine recently came out and admitted their existence.

Please understand I write as a Christian and I necessarily have a Christian world view, so what I have to say will be from my perspective as a Christian.

I say this because everywhere on this board when I mention my faith I am assaulted with "prove the bible is true" demands. But that is not the purpose of this thread, so I hope I am safe here speaking as a Christian, from my understanding of the Bible, on how contact might affect Christians.

The evangelical church has long maintained that UFO's, abduction experiences, seeing ET's, etc., are experiences of the demonic realm. This may be at least partially true, however, there is far too much evidence that this is a real physical/extraterrestrial phenomenon to paint all UFO/ET reports with such a broad brush.

Because of this I have never bought the reasoning behind Christian denial of the existence of ET life.

The Bible is written about humans, human history, and the future end times of the earth. God used human hands to write it down. The Bible doesn't talk about extraterrestrials because it's not about them, it's not for them, and it's not BY them. The assumption that ET's don't exist because the bible doesn't mention them is like assuming koalas don't exist because they aren't mentioned in the chinchilla manual.

... I rather like that last bit, if I do say so myself.

I believe that Jesus died for the sins of humanity, not aliens, and if aliens need salvation God can be their savior too. How He does this on their planet is not our concern. There are many orders of created beings and salvation is not the same for all for them. The angels had a choice a long time ago and they are locked in to the once-and-for-all-time decisions they made long ago. Other orders of beings, corporeal or incorporeal, may have different means of salvation. I have no problem at all with this. How God saves Pleiadians or Reticulans is entirely up to Him.

In spite of my personal perspectives, I have to say that since the evangelical church has been so disastrously wrong on this subject, the average Christian is going to be completely blindsided and derailed from their belief system. I think it will cause a great falling away. Contact might cause some people to draw closer to God, seeking answers and security, however I believe this will be a minority.

As for me, I say there is room for both God and extraterrestrial life in the universe.

[edit on 28-10-2008 by OuttaHere]

[edit on 28-10-2008 by OuttaHere]