Religiosity Before The Eyes of Cosmic Era

For a couple of centuries humankind used to be wondering what might lay beyond the skies. It was mysteries to them for what stars and moon truly were and what might hide behind them. On July 14, 2015, though, humanity has successfully reached the nearest distance ever to Pluto using New Horizons spacecraft. It’s no longer a secret that stars are burning plasma and moon is satellite. To make it easier, Google has been created to find such common knowledge.

Using Hubble Telescope launched since 1990 to observe the characteristic of our Universe, and using Kepler spacecraft launched since 2003 to find extrasolar habitable planet in Milky Way, we’ve developed more understanding about the world where we live than our ancestors.

Consequently, there are social and belief systems that are supposed to be changed as we keep discovering new things. Like how Earth used to be believed as round in shape and as the centre of Universe, or like how lightning and thunder used to be perceived as a curse from God because of His wrath upon human’s sins. Galileo was imprisoned for the heliocentric theory he supported, but thankfully it didn’t happen to Benjamin Franklyn after proving and explaining that he could create electricity and “tame” lightning.

Although today there are still people who insist that Earth is the centre of Universe (e.g. Ahmad Sabiq bin Abdul Lathif and his followers), which sounds ridiculous, but majority ends up to keep on living based on proven truth. I suppose when smart people eventually prove their hypothesis through science discovery and acknowledged research, most people have tendency not to be left behind and hence follow the smart notions.

That being said, we must now anticipate the possibility of the Earth-like planets exists, as how NASA has been searching for (and has found some possible planets) using Kepler space telescope. Nevertheless, for tens of years many experts may have argued if we, the earthlings, need to colonize other habitable planets for the sake of food-and-human proportion. Having new habitable planets to live can be a good solution for overpopulation issue.

However, it means that we may have to encounter a new plausible issue: intelligent extraterrestrial life may exist in those habitable planets.

Unlike in sci-fi movies, I think the problem is not on those possible-existing intellectual and civilized aliens, but human beings. How do you think we will decide to socialize and cooperate with such a novel entity? How will humankind see and interpret the new “race” and new belief systems practiced within the alien community?

Imagine if they have different skin colours from us humans. Even now many people still discriminate fellow human beings based on the spectrum of melanin and ethnicity, having new fellow intellectual beings must be hard for those kind people.

The harder one lies down in the issue of religion. We see how even today either blatantly or subtly people conflict each other because of religious belief. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and even Buddhists, they all have histories (and ongoing stories) about religious conflicts (or even wars). Nonetheless, some religions even teach the worshippers to compete to get new “souls to be harvested in the God’s farm” that totally aggravates the conflicts.

Next question will be: “What if those aliens already have their own faith which is totally different from any of religions we have on Earth? From the teaching to the ceremonial liturgy.”

Will we introduce them the terms Kafir and Lost Lamb just like we have on Earth? Will we evangelize by scarifying them about hell and promising them about heaven? Will we force them to accept our own concept of God and Demon? Or even worse, will Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) give statement to them about whether things there are Halal or Haram and then ask for Sharia law in many sectors to be established there?

There are times when my parents tell me to limit my circle from having friends coming from different religious beliefs. Perhaps later they will prohibit me to mingle with alien beings whose religious belief is alien. Exactly just like other people, this all is because of indoctrinated bigotry that has been rooted in our society.

I once asked a friend of mine who was having a rotation in Department of Psychiatry in her clinical years of medical school, “What is the difference between faith and delusion?”, which turns out to be an unresolved question.

It is easy to determine the difference between schizophrenia and delusion. Both believe in things that don’t sensibly exist which is against the observable reality perceived by society, but the condition of schizophrenia jeopardizes one’s daily life because it affects one’s function of social behaviour, meanwhile one who suffers delusion can still live normally because the condition only plays in one’s mind without influencing daily social behaviour.

However, it’s difficult to decide whether faith is a delusion because we have been divinely taught to believe without observing by senses, and that will make us fortunate and blessed (according to the teaching). In irony and contrary to the fortune and blessing, retrospectively speaking, faith has also caused a function disorder of social behaviour which can be seen from how many people have suffered and died because of faith, and this makes it sound like more of schizophrenia instead of delusion.

Seeing how human beings have been acting since the old times, I doubt if we should keep continuing on our space exploration. Even though Kepler-452b is 1,400 light years in distance from our solar system, our history in science has proven that we can always outsmart anything that hinders us from answering our curiosity. We already have the Physics equation to warp the time and space, who knows several years from now we can create the engine to make it happen so that we can pay a visit to Kepler-452b, or other Keplers. Should it happen, poor you intelligent alien beings.

In other hand, there is a pseudoscientific hypothesis that has proposed that many of religions we have on Earth originally came from extraterrestrial beings. They came to our ancient age, showed and taught people about technology which in return people thought as miracle and thus revered them as divine beings. If we happen to meet the aliens to clarify it as true, it may cause chaotic disputes amongst believers.

If religion wants to keep existing and beneficially being relevant in the upcoming cosmic era, maybe it must learn from science. The teaching in science is always dynamics. It accepts “new truth” found to better explain our existence and the Universe we live in. It opens itself to assorted possibilities and even to different theories — although backlash each other — to holistically understand life; it’s even opened to the possible truth in religion. Science doesn’t judge anyone or anything, and people are always free whether to believe in it or not despite any proven scientific truth.

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