Or would they "convert to science"? Of course it depends on the person, but what is the likely outcome? Maybe this has already happened…

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People don't "convert" to science; science doesn't work like faith. Science is constantly proving itself wrong, so there's no way you can have "faith" in science.

If the alien space ship was undeniably not of human origin, religious people would probably realize that they had made a mistake in their interpretation and would accommodate for the new discovery. Another way around this would be to say that they are simply intelligent animals with no souls. Humans are still number one; the aliens are essentially just like the bears and rabbits.

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@67,782

The other option is that they would interpret the aliens to be angels. Or they would think of the aliens as equal to humans, and tell them to convert.

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@67,782

> People don't "convert" to science; science doesn't work like faith. Science is constantly proving itself wrong, so there's no way you can have "faith" in science.

Although there's no formal conversion process like moving from one religion to another, converting to science is possible. It's just a change of thinking. Science is a process. You can have faith that the scientific process produces knowledge which is correct, or perhaps more correct than the knowledge you previously had.

Personally, I would rather have faith in a process which is constantly proving itself wrong, as it is constantly removing all the incorrect crap and honing itself into a better form of finding truth. It sounds much better to me than fairy tale magic bullshit proliferated by organised religion, which would have you believe some book, written in a language which is ambiguously translatable, written in a far different context to the one were are in (changing its meaning drastically), by a handful of guys who merely write their opinions and selectively include the writings of their friends (and not those critical of them), and expect it to be followed forever as if it were a direct command from some giant white dude who owns/runs the world and who gets angry and offended at everything, who created us, a species so inferior and flawed that we must beg for forgiveness each day for being ourselves, etc. Oh, and don't forget that this white dude sent his son, who is also him and a ghost, to be killed in place of the rest of humanity, so that humanity's "sins" are fixed. So, let's see. This dude fucks up the design of humans so badly that they must beg him for forgiveness all the time for doing stuff they were designed to do. They then do this stuff, ask for forgiveness, which he apparently did not provide, so he sends himself, who is also his son and a ghost, to die, to wipe out the flaws that were his fault, so he can use it as a guilt trip in future ("believe in me and love me because I sent my son to die for this shit you did, which was my fault anyway").

What a fucking crock of shit.

Imagine, 2000 years ago, if someone had schizophrenia and heard voices. They might think it's some magical creature called god who says he created them. The schizophrenic, unable to get medication and treatment back then, tells others, and starts preaching what his voices tell him. Imagine if this schizophrenic's name was "Jesus". Hmmm.

Science rocks. I have faith that science will one day convince enough religious idiots that they will no longer control the world via political pandering, and that science will also fix poverty through education, which will prevent religion spreading like the disease it is through the people of third world countries who aren't smart enough to resist it.

</rant>

I need to drink less caffeine, this is trippy.

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@67,801

Damn, that's as good an argument as any I've seen.

There's nothing wrong with God, just the dumbasses who claim to speak for it.

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@67,810

> Damn, that's as good an argument as any I've seen.
>
> There's nothing wrong with God, just the dumbasses who claim to speak for it.

Thanks :-) I agree. God is not a person. God does not need to be called "God". God is just some kind of summation of forces more powerful than us individually, and when we come upon our limitations, we have a tendency to look for help where there is none, so we create an imaginary friend to help us. Uneducated people believe this more easily than educated people.

This force I speak of is not incompatible with science. We can know about this force through science, and it is not something magical and totally beyond our understanding. Every day a scientist learns something new, we know a bit more of this force.

The caffeine high is subsiding… ugh!

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That's unless aliens landed here a while ago, and primitive humans used primitive language to describe what they could barely understand. Maybe the aliens are god… maybe that's why heaven is in the sky (from whence the aliens came), and maybe why one who died came back to life, etc.

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Guys, just don't assume that everybody who believes in God is a fucktard. I am a Deist, and we seperate ourselves from most religions in that we are not totally fucktarded.

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@67,822

> Guys, just don't assume that everybody who believes in God is a fucktard. I am a Deist, and we seperate ourselves from most religions in that we are not totally fucktarded.

I definitely don't think you're all fucktards (love that term, btw)… I think Deists are the most reasonable, from my limited (wikipedia) knowledge of them. My point was regarding organised religions like christianity, and I completely forgot I might be including others like Deists. Sorry!

Wikipedia had something interesting about Deism:

> Deists typically reject most supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and tend to assert that God has a plan for the universe, which he does not alter by intervening in the > affairs of human life nor by suspending the natural laws of the universe. What organized religions see as divine revelation and holy books, most deists see as interpretations > made by other humans, rather than as authoritative sources. Deists believe that God's greatest gift to humanity is not religion, but the ability to reason.

Seems compatible with science, perhaps with the exception that there's a force with some sort of consciousness that it can use to make plans… or perhaps I should understand it that this force some call god has properties about it which mean a particular set of events is likely, which could be construed as a plan.

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All that I have to say is, yes depending on which religion found it. Christians yes, Catholics yes, Satanist no, Pagan religions no. It's easy to see which is which, just look for the religions that try to control people.

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But wouldn't hardcore religious fanatics just say the same crap they allways say?

"god created them for us,so god is still real"
basically something like that.

I'd hope the aliens would figure out there's people,
and socially constructed drones.

And work with the people for several generations to destroy all that the drones follow ^.^

or.. something like that >.>

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