Why do religious people refuse to believe in extraterrestrial life?

I don’t know why A religious person would refuse. My Mother who is a devout Christian says ‘we don’t know’ but also thinks it’s likely. I don’t believe a single world of the personal reports. No, I’ve never sighted one and I’m quite sure that all the reports have reasonable explanations But sure, somewhere in the universe it’s possible…maybe it’s probable. One religion, Scientology, practically worships E.T.s.

I’m not sure why religious people wouldn’t believe in ET life. It’s not like it invalidates God or anything. They believe that god made the universe and everything in it. ET beings are just beings that they themselves haven’t discovered yet but that doesn’t mean that god didn’t create them.

I don’t think the premise of your question is true. It was even explored by the Vatican . Lots of faiths are open minded about it.

I’m not understanding why anyone would ‘believe in’ extraterrestrial life.

I expect it’s a highly likely probability that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life, and in fact I would be astonished if we don’t find evidence of that at some point in the future. But there’s no proof of it yet, so “believing in it” at this point would be as foolish as denying the possibility of it.

I thought Scientoligist believe in extraterrestials? I could be wrong. I don’t think most religions are against the idea of believing in aliens, but it might be some sort of slight against Scientologists, or even Mormons who believe you go soewhere in the universe after you die, not sure their exact belief.

What exactly is “research on alien life”? As far as I know there is no such thing.

My guess is it interferes with the cozy simplified picture of a divine universe.. And cause aliens that have been advancing for 500 million years is just plain scary sounding.

@FutureMemory see astrobiology.

Well, that’s not exactly true. The Catholic Church has actually come out and admitted that we indeed may “not alone in the universe”. link:http://www.universetoday.com/44713/vatican-holds-conference-on-extraterrestrial-life/

They have built a huge telescope for the purpose of searching/communicating with ETs in the desert of the US. There are also people who have written books claiming that many of the visitations by the Virgin Mary are actually visitations from ETs (this of course, would be considered heretical in the Church).

There are a number of “born-again” Christians who also believe in ET’s…notably researcher Stan Deyo (www.standeyo.com) and Steve Quayle.

And of course, the Bible has references to possible spaceships (Ezekiel’s wheel) for one.

I normally don’t like to answer such a broad generality as that, but a friend and I did see a large white circular orb the size of a house (UFO) and we both could not help but conclude, that there was no way it was made on this planet. This object was light years ahead of any Earth technology. We are both “religious” people by the way. We did not see alien’s, but someone other than humans had to have the advanced technology to come up with what we both saw. I guess, seeing is believing.

@hiphiphopflipflapflop Clearly UFO sightings and abductions are worlds away from the study of astrobiology.

There have been theories that belief in God may be due to alien sightings. People saw this great, all-powerful alien and thought it must be a deity.
Watch the show Ancient Aliens.

Huh? Where did you get this idea? They know God created other people.

@FutureMemory You said you didn’t know if it existed, without saying it had to be connected with such. So I threw you the link.

They don’t necessarily. Chuck Missler, for one, believes (or believed at one point) that aliens are Nephilim. C. S. Lewis wrote the Silent Planet series.
I personally think that, since there is no mention of extraterrestrial life (barring God, Satan, and their respective underlings) in the Bible, there either isn’t, or they’re not relevant enough to merit comment.
What I don’t buy is the supposition that, since there is life on Earth, it might have evolved elsewhere.

How do you know that all religious people, people of all religions (who are apt to differ in a million other respects), agree on this one item of (non)belief?

As, @Jeruba points out, “religious people” like any and all ”(insert adjective here) people” cannot be spoken of as though they are all of one mind, as though they all believe one thing, all believe the same thing. I don’t think the question as written is valid or can be answered if you are going to assume that all “religious people” believe or don’t believe the same thing and that, even if they did, that they all believed or didn’t believe one thing or another all for the same reason or reasons.

I think many religious people hold out hope that sapient alien life does exist and that we’ll make contact with them. I believe this might arise from a desire to evangelize them. If this does come to pass, they may be disappointed though. ;)

It is a trait of many religious people to fear anything that they think challenges any tenets, beliefs or pillars of their religion. They are subconsciously afraid of losing faith.

But that only describes a portion of religious people. Another huge portion does not even address the issue, sticking only to their Bible or book.

There are some notable examples of UFO openness within the religious community.

Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan has spoken of UFOs and aliens as real, many times. And then there’s the Catholic Church, which allows a diversity of opinion on this issue. Monsignor Corrado Balducci was a personal friend of the Pope, and was allowed to research and lecture on extra terrestrials, having concluded they are real, and in our physical presence. Other priests still alive are allowed to do similar research.

@Jeruba, I never said all religious people. What I meant to say was many religious people. I have discussed the ET subject with people I know are religious and most deny the idea.
@FutureMemory, I have attendant UFO group meetings with presentations an testimonials of people. I have read books on this subject, and Internet websites.

@Amazebyu, you said “religious people.” You labeled all such people as a single class, without exception or qualifier, and then made an assertion about them. You might have meant to say “many,” but you didn’t.

I take issue because I heartily object to any statement that lumps people together as a group (in this case, probably the majority of people on the planet) and then makes a global statement about them with respect to something other than what makes them a group. If you’re going to make loose, careless statements, you should be prepared to have people object to them.

@Jeruba sorry that you’re taking this a little too personal. I have no intention to offend anybody. I have nothing else to say to you.

@Amazebyu @Jeruba is right. While you may have meant to say “many religious people,” you didn’t and the only option anyone has is to respond to what you actually did say, not what you meant to say. We have no way of knowing what you might have meant to say.

Words have meaning. When you construct a sentence it means what is means, not what you might of meant for it to mean and the way your question was phrased and constructed there was really no way to interpret it other than as a sweeping generalization about “religious people.” @Jeruba is right to call you on it. You chose your words, constructed your sentence and you want to clarify it fine, clarify it. Say, oops, or sorry what I meant was but you can’t argue that you didn’t say what you said. There is no problem in making mistake, in wording something not quite right.

And @Jeruba is not “taking it personally.” Her issue is entirely with your language, the way you constructed and wrote your question, not with with you. You may have meant something else, but you said what you said. Sorry, but it matters, if you want to communicate clearly and precisely, that is.

Let’s break your question down to see if that is what you are really asking.

Why do religious people refuse to believe in extraterrestrial life?
(Why) do {religious people} (refuse) to (believe) in {extraterrestrial life}?

Why – query
religious people – subject
extraterrestrial life – subject
refuse – verb, action
believe – verb, action

Refuse – Indicate or show that one is not willing to do something, decline
Believe – To have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so

Simplest answer? Because they do not have confidence in the existence of extraterrestrial life, religious people refuse to subscribe to that belief.

The use of the substitute phrase “many religious people” also doe snot speak for the leadership/authority of a religious group.

If you were to say “Catholics believe…” with out citing a specific reference to a Vatican or U.S. Bishops’ statement, you would not be citing the views of the Church.

If it’s just people you know that you characterize as religious, it is just hearsay.

Maybe you would like to read this.
I know and have muslim friends and they all believe in aliens. They base their belief on some aayahs from the Quran (see above link).

“Some scientists have proposed sleep paralysis as an explanation for alien abductions and ghostly encounters. A study by Susan Blackmore and Marcus Cox of the University of the West of England supports the suggestion that reports of alien abductions are related to sleep paralysis rather than to temporal lobe lability.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

And it might interest you that the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

posits that simple extraterrestrial life is highly likely in most galaxies (and there are at least 100 billion of them). It also posits that complex life or even intelligent life is quite rare. Maybe only one in a million galaxies might have it.

Some religious people might refuse to believe in extraterrestrial life, but many religious people believe in extraterrestrial life, especially the existence of simple life. Just have a look at this list to get a feeling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interstellar_and_circumstellar_molecules#Ten_or_more_atoms_.2815.29

believing in ET life would not exactly shake the believe in the supremacy of Gods. there should be no confusion regarding this. it will enlighten us with the knowledge of ‘who are our Gods?’ dat should not be a problem, we will still continue believing in them as we did previously, obviously because of the most distinct fact that they stronger, sharper, smarter, advanced, older, and most importantly good to us, they taught us, guided us, build us the way, we are today, why would we then stop worshipping them? Its ridiculous to think that common man is so dumb to stop worshipping God once we know where he came from, how he came, why he came, why he left, etc etc. what the Gods taught us should utilised to learn more and more about every possible thing, be it the Gods themselves, and not wasted upon blind
beliefs of our non scientific ancestors, and this is not showing disrespectfulness to the Gods in anyway. .