How would you explain religion to an alien?

Originally posted by SuperiorEd
In any sport, you can only win with teamwork. The losers are the always the ones who can't work together. This is how you beat the adversary.

As much as I hate to go off topic in my own thread, this stuck out to me as something that needed a rebuttal


Team gets together, works together...builds a great tower (babel)

...

shall I go on?

God stacks the deck..the bible shows teamwork = against the lord. Why? bah, thats a discussion for a different thead.

I would first shout the Bible loudly at him, if he doesn't listen then I start throwing holy water and attempting to drive the evil spirit out of him.

Originally posted by Cuppy
I would first shout the Bible loudly at him, if he doesn't listen then I start throwing holy water and attempting to drive the evil spirit out of him.

yea and he would call you a lunatic and blow your arse off. after that the aliens would think of us all as primitive lunatic species believing in nonsense and wipe us out so that they can harvest all the resources on this planet for themselves. it would not matter much since here people believe in stuff like ''god'' and waste resources killing each other.

Is that really necessary to aliens then?

Why bother to explain something they have already been through themselves in the past. Almost every race out there has had a developing stage. In order to develop the mind must explain events, occurances and happening for which it does not yet have the necessary knowledge to do so. Religion; the believe in a higher deity, is merely a conduit of a developing and creative mind to explain things that can't be explained at a certain point. Therefor all aliens species will have had a religious period in their lives. Some might actually still be living in it.

Though one might question the true motives for an advanced species to actually still believe in deities. Common occurances can be devided in two pathways;

1) A species has advanced much and has reinforced its believe in shapeless higher powers based upon theistic scientific knowledge.
2) A race has tought itself to believe they serve a higher deity while surpressing the instinctive urge for selfrightiousness at the expense of other species.

One is noble but can lead sometimes to impassive behaviour, the other is a straight out menace to everything living.


Returning upon the question with the before mentioned knowledge;
I guess it would depend upon what species i would meet. Considering earth has been visited by approximatly three species from which two are familiar to me I can say the following;
1) The primary species responsable for the four retrovirus sequence separating Homo Sapiens from Homo Erectus is pretty much apathic to religion. These guys believe death to be final and generally view live as a burden best spend for the lulz. (so to speak)
2) the second species are an observer and judgemental species. They have decided not to decide about deity from a scientific standpoint. Being somewhat strict dogmetic and having a strong heirarchy they tend to be in the believe that their own decisions might sometimes be wrong but are often the best outcome based upon the information available. If that information was wrong or incomplete and thus resulting in bad decisions then they readjust. I guess their believes are simular; stagnetic afterlife believe that can only be judged true for the moment it was judged as so.
Well; if I'm right I shouldn't be the only person on earth knowing about that race and their way of working. I guess it also means I can afford to give a rat's ass about their matters here. i am not a babysitter after all.

Unfortunatly analysis about the third race is rather incomplete but first data is not promising. I am under the first impression they are old god worshippers and that generally means oppression. Maybe reptillian, they tend to cling to their old empire stuff from when they were still powerful. Well eons passed since then but they still are a mean bunch. But then again; I'm speculating.

Long story short; There would be little to explain about what religion is but rather what our religion is.

This might have already been said, but for me actually, the bigger question is how would you explain aliens to religious people?

Originally posted by TiberianPurifier
yea and he would call you a lunatic and blow your arse off. after that the aliens would think of us all as primitive lunatic species believing in nonsense and wipe us out so that they can harvest all the resources on this planet for themselves. it would not matter much since here people believe in stuff like ''god'' and waste resources killing each other.

Why would aliens not believe in a god? They would want to explain the reasons for everything also.

And could you think a of reasonable scenario in which aliens don't kill each other also?

reply to post by SaturnFX


I'm sure it's already been said in this thread, but aliens may have a more understanding of spirituality than we do. If this were the case I'd see the conversation going something like this.. "No no, sorry to interrupt but I have a lot I need to teach you, instead."

Stupid question, stupid thread op.
IF aliens came to earth from somewhere light years away using technology we can't even fathom yet, do you really think with their advanced technology AND knowledge that they would need US to explain religion to them??? FFS!!!