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254 regrets. Communication with extraterrestrials might reveal that we share some religious concepts such as a Supreme Being or the deliberate creation of the universe. On the other hand, terrestrial concepts of God and theology are only a subset of the possible. Alien religions cannot possibly agree with all of the religions on Earth.”° If extraterrestrials tell us about their reli- gions, there may be far more differences than similarities. The more anthropocentric our religions are, the more they may be chal- lenged by contact. All of our world’s major religions are revealed, com- mented astronomer and Jesuit scholar George Coyne; they claim to have received from elsewhere the content of their beliefs. The principal diffi- culty with revealed religions is that they are by necessity anthropocentric. God’s revelation is to us.”” Dick contended that human faiths will adjust to an expanded view of religion because the alternative is extinction. That will be most wrenching for monotheistic religions that see man in the image of God, a one-to-one relationship with a single Godhead. Jill Tarter predicted that those terres- trial religions that claim the most favored relationship between humans and God will either adapt or, if they cling to their “chosen” status, will define the extraterrestrials as the newest infidels.” Some believe that Christianity may be particularly vulnerable because of the unique position of Jesus Christ as God incarnate. Musso saw this differently: What made the Earth a special place was the redemption offered by Jesus. Christianity is Christocentric, not anthropocentric. The theologically difficult point is not the existence of extraterrestrial intelli- gences, but the right place of such beings in the history of salvation. Acknowledging that Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion, Musso thought it would be the one at highest risk of extinction as a result of contact. Yet, he saw no objective reason why contact should cause a conflict with Christianity. The most common position within the Christian world is to wait and see.” Harvard Theology Dean Krister Stendahl studied the way the Christian church has lived with changed views, from a Near Eastern view to the Ptolemaic view to the Copernican view. He found that the resistance to change came not from the theologians, but from society as a whole. Great religious leaders take for granted the worldview of their time, usually on a very popular level. Christianity, observed philosopher Lamb, has survived Copernicanism, Darwinian theory, and Marxism.* Anthropologist Michael Ashkenazi addressed Christian, Jewish, and Moslem responses to contact in a seminal 1991 paper entitled “Not the Mixed Emotions The Impact on Human Religions A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many —Arthur C. Clarke, 19517