Why Contact with ETI Would Undermine Religion

The discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) would have great implications for humanity. While we may one day discover ETI which possesses lesser technological development than our own civilization, for the purposes of this essay I will only be discussing ETI that is technologically superior — that is, ETI which has advanced to the point where they (or it) can traverse the distance between stars, or communicate scientific / practical knowledge that is more advanced than ours. (Note: all following uses of “ETI” should be taken to imply “advanced ETI”).

Photo by Thanh Nguyen on Unsplash

Advanced ETI would undermine traditional theistic religious belief in at least two important ways:

1. The discovery of ETI that does not believe what a great percentage of humans believe about theism, an afterlife, etc., would raise questions about the veracity of these religious claims. This is because it is highly plausible that an advanced ET civilization would know more about major philosophical and scientific questions, such as, the origins of the universe (or multiverse), how life arises, how consciousness emerges, and what happens to individuated consciousness when it is extinguished, etc.
2. The discovery of ETI would entail that the holy books of some of the world’s most popular religions failed to mention, or provide an accurate account of other…