[meteorite-list] Pope Benedict XVI's Astronomer: the Catholic Church Welcomes Aliens

[dorifry]

You'll notice Brother Guy's hair suspiciously covers the top of his ears. 
What is he hiding? Is he possibly a secret Vulcan, like this guy?:

http://i1183.photobucket.com/albums/x466/joshuatree3333/obama.jpg


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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/8009299/Pope-Benedict-XVIs-astronomer-the-Catholic-Church-welcomes-aliens.html



Pope Benedict XVI's Astronomer: the Catholic Church Welcomes Aliens:


Highly evolved extra terrestrial lifeforms may be living in space and would 
be welcomed into the church - "no matter how many tentacles", one of the 
Pope's astronomers has said.

Brother Guy Consolmagno is curator of the Pope's meteorite collection Photo: 
AP Photo/Plinio Lepri

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

4:16PM BST 17 Sep 2010

41 Comments

The senior Vatican scientist, Brother Guy Consolmagno, said that he would be 
delighted if we encountered intelligent aliens and would be happy to baptise 
them.

His pronouncement opens up the possibility of space missionaries heading out 
to the stars to convert aliens to Christianity.

Speaking on the eve of addressing the British Science Festival, Dr 
Consolmangno said he had no problem with science and religion co-existing 
together.

But he dismissed Creationism and claimed that the revival of "intelligent 
design" - the controversial theory that only God can explain gaps in the 
theory of evolution - was "bad theology".

Dr Consolmango is one of a team of 12 astronomers working for the Vatican, 
said the Catholic Church had been supporting and funding science for 
centuries.

He said he was "comfortable" with the idea of alien life and asked if he 
would baptise an alien, he replied "Only if they asked".

"I'd be delighted if we found life elsewhere and delighted if we found 
intelligent life elsewhere," he said.

"But the odds of us finding it, of it being intelligent and us being able to 
communicate with it - when you add them up it's probably not a practical 
question.

"God is bigger than just humanity. God is also the god of angels."

He said the characteristics synonymous with having a soul - intelligence, 
free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions may not be unique 
to humans.

"Any entity - no matter how many tentacles it has has a soul,' he said.

However machines were unlikely to be smart or human-enough to have souls.

Dr Consolmango, 57, the curator of the Pope's meteorite collection, is a 
trained astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican's observatory.

He worked as a scientist in California for 15 years before turning to the 
church.

He said "intelligent design" had been "hijacked" by religious 
fundamentalists.

"The word has been hijacked by a narrow group of Creationist fundamentalists 
in America to mean something it did not originally mean at all.

"It's another form of the God of the gaps," he said.

'It's bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of 
thunder and lightning.'

The phrase 'Intelligent Design' was centuries old and described the idea 
that God could be discovered in the laws of space and time and the existence 
of human reason..

The Vatican was 'very aware' of what was going on in the world of science, 
he added.

The Pontifical Academy of Science, of which Stephen Hawking is a member, 
kept the senior cardinals and the Pope up-to-date with the latest scientific 
developments, he said.

The discovery of aliens would raise huge theological problems for the Roman 
Catholic church that would make the debate over women priests, clerical 
abstinence and contraception pale into insignificance.

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Phil Whitmer

Joshua Tree Earth & Space Museum