What impact would the discovery of extraterrestrials have on religion?

If any tentacled monster arrives on my doorstep holding a copy of its holy book it can expect short shrift from me.

The ETs likely couldn’t live in Earth’s atmosphere, and it likely couldn’t community a known language spoken on Earth’s, so I guess we’ll never know.

If or when extraterrestrials choose to show up here and establish communication, that question will surely pop up right after the money maker: “how did you get here, and show me the tricks.” Right behind that one will come “have you been saved?” And I will tell you personally, if the answer came back “yes, Jesus visited us in the distant past and died for our sins”, it would be the most profound event in the history of both our worlds, more significant than the arrival of the aliens themselves. It would certainly scare the shit out of me.

Here are the possibilities:
1. There was no Jesus
2. Jesus visited the other planet
3. God had another child, with an alien
4. God saw no reason to save the aliens

For me, only the first possibility is credible

It would change nothing as everybody has already made up their mind and they’re sticking to it

Minimal, if any. Science hasn’t done much to thwart religion, so what chance would the discovery of aliens have?

You know there would be at least some churches chomping at the bit to knock on their spaceship door and ask “Have you heard the good news?”

They would either be seen as demons to exterminate, or infidels in need of conversion.

I did a quick Web search and found this. Go down to the section labeled ET and Salvation. The various areas of Christianity have thought about extraterrestrials.

For Catholics it all boils down to original sin. If the ancestors of aliens did not do the equivalent of eating from the Tree of Life then they are not in need of redemption.

Evangelicals are convinced that the Bible says there are no extraterrestrials.

Other Protestant groups have varying opinions.

Robert A. Heinlein explored this very question in the 1961 science fiction novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”.

Excellent read.

It’s mind boggling the number of myths mankind has concocted explaining the universe and themselves. And despite our relentless unraveling of the way things actually work, the mythmaking advances regardless of any and all contrary evidence. Aliens will only guarantee new myths to augment the staggering portfolio.

I have never seen anything in the Bible that excludes the possibility of other planets let alone whether any have life. From what I can tell, the Bible which exists on Earth pertains to only Earth inhabitants.
If there was a Jesus, and if he were God’s son, I see no reason why he couldn’t visit other worlds.
I have issues with the Bible saying God created man because he was lonely. If that is so, where is interaction?

I would more easily believe that if there was a god, it would set up a variety of worlds, to compare and see how things go.

I think that religion is not single minded. It can’t be referenced all globbed together.
Within a single church there would be multiple thoughts regarding other world beings.

Well, the Middle Eastern people didn’t know about planets or solar systems or other galaxies when the Bible was written, so of course there’s no mention of it.
The closest they came to “aliens” was meeting people from other culltures.

Exactly. The Bible was written by humans. Those humans were not informed by any god of other worlds. So, if there is a god, knowing about each other was meant to happen only if we reached out and discovered each other.

In the present it had already occurred.
See Book of Gensis & Book Of Enoch section:
“Marc Dem reinterprets the Book of Genesis by writing that humanity started on another planet and that the God of the Bible is an extraterrestrial.[56]”
Link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_astronauts

LOLL!

Same thing that they always do when science proves religion wrong. “Oh, we did not really mean it that way”

I noticed a trend in the late 80s when science became impossible to ignore. Fundamentalists then started making attempts to use some pseudo science to “proove” creation.

Don’t the Mormons think we go to other planets when we die? I really don’t know much about that religion except the I have some very nice Mormon friends.

I think Christian’s, since you mention them in particular in the opening post, would try to convert them like everyone else if they behaved and looked very human or close to human. Or, they would try to kill them.

If God created the universe (that sounds very Jewish, but I assume Christians say things like that too) then the aliens are God’s children too.

They’d just make up some new bullshit and call it the truth.

Fifth Element illustrates how things might go.
It stands to reason that people of biblical times might need things oversimplified in order to accept rules and expectations from someone they have never seen, and technology their minds were incapable of comprehending.