Page Content (OCR)
257 to the anthropocentric universe that existed when many of the world’s major religions were born.” If our religions and theirs are incompatible, do we have choices other than adopting their beliefs or rejecting them completely? The common ground may lie not in the intellectual heights of theology, but in the practi- cal world of ethics, the way intelligent beings in one society treat their counterparts in another. Cosmism The most relevant precursor of a secular religion of the universe may be Russian Cosmism. That humanistic faith, which thrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and has been periodically rediscovered, emphasized the cosmic role of humans and other sentient beings. These highest concentrations of intelligence bore a great moral responsibility to encourage the further peaceful development of con- sciousness in the universe. Here one finds an early form of theories that foresee life and intelli- gence emerging as cosmic forces. Tsiolkovskii, the exemplar of Cosmism, thought that humans, as a form of higher intelligence, had a special role in introducing design and purpose into the chaotic workings of nature. He presumed that ethical principles were built into the physical laws of a universe full of intelligent beings who traveled among the stars.*° What if our remote descendants do achieve qualities or powers that we now consider God-like? The ideas that give purpose to a universe becoming aware of itself might come from beings like them, not from a detached and invisible Creator. Our own history tells us that alien religions may be actively resisted by those committed to existing faiths. Contact could provoke many humans to fall back on their religions, which have been one of the two central ele- ments of any culture or civilization (the other is languages). The function of a belief system for a social group is to maintain its power and status in a society, observed anthropologist Richard Robbins. How a group interprets new information depends on whether it will enhance or diminish their status. When there is a strong system of belief with social support, it is likely to be defended vigorously, beyond the dictates of logic."! Bainbridge found that communication with extraterrestrial intelligence is opposed implicitly by another modern social movement of great force: evangelical Protestantism. Fundamentalist Christians tend to reject the idea of aliens, perhaps because the existence of extraterrestrial life and Religion and Politics Religion and Politics