Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Felix]

EOAS, The picture you painted requires the upgrade in intelligence/empathy I mentioned. Without it, I see only the prospect of mutually assured destruction. And once a race has made that evolutionary leap, one can't be sure they won't regress back to a less sane mindset, i.e., great power may always have the potential to corrupt those who possess it. Moral good/evil may be a ubiquitous challenge.

[Jonathan A Bain]

I find this story fascinating:

A Christian missionary visits an isolated tribe who have lived, almost completely independently from the outside world, for possibly thousands of years. Most visitors to their island are met with arrows. This missionary was no exception, but he was determined to bring to them what he clearly thought was an essential message about Jesus, even if it meant his own death. And it did. They shot him dead.

I wonder if there's a chance that a future alien signal detected by SETI, or an actual alien visit, might be motivated by the desire to spread their own version of "the good news" in a similar way, and I wonder if we'll shoot them with arrows.

Well, thats my theory on Jesus in a nutshell.