Vatican astronomer: Yes, space aliens might exist

"Vatican says aliens could exist" announces the BBC last week (May 13, 2008).

The BEEB is quoting Vatican astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, who opines,

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... intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space. (...)

Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.
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All this is very old news, of course. Fifteen hundred years ago, Augustine wondered whether satyrs or centaurs (human-animal hybrids) would be saved, but then decided to wait to see if there were any first.

Of course, there might be space aliens out there - but then there might not be either. My only concern about speculation along the lines of Fr. Funes's is that -at the end of the day - it is speculation. Neither God nor the universe is bound one way or the other.

My fellow Catholic hack David Warren has been having some fun with these "little green men" chronicles, for example,

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As a certain Perfesser in Funcouver points out, an alien civilization that captured, & then carefully examined & analyzed selections from our TV & radio signals, would be hard-pressed to prove they showed intelligent life.

Against another correspondent, who asks who am I to assert there is no other intelligent life in any of an estimated 100 billion galaxies, I have been reduced to sarcasm:

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To be modest, the argument wasn't mine, it is lifted from a series of fairly well-known cosmological physicists, beginning with Enrico Fermi more than half a century ago, & developed into the Fermi-Hart Paradox in the 1970s. It put the onus of proof emtirely on the side of the people who want to believe in extraterrestrials -- though of course, it wasn't final in the sense that NOBODY can prove a negative, not even me.

Yes, me & Fermi & Hart (& Sokal & Feynman & Barrow & Tipler & every other physicist with some detectable philosophical capacity) have our heads in the clouds, while you people with your feet on the ground continue searching for little green men in their antigravity machines.

Good luck to you: but be careful. A lot of your friends have been abducted by these aliens!

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and (given that David is my favourite lay Catholic expert)

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And did you know? In addition to the little telescope in Rome, the Vatican apparently owns an astronomical observatory in Arizona.

That's where all the aliens keep landing. I think I mentioned it before: Phoenix, UFO-spotting capital of the world. (Perhaps the aliens are trying to convert to Catholicism?)

Just to review: there are no intelligent aliens. If there were, we would have heard from them already. If the evolution of advanced life were common in the universe, in addition to civilizations well behind us, there'd be plenty of civilizations thousands, millions of years ahead; they'd already have spread all over the place; & we wouldn't be drawing blanks every direction we turn the SETI feelers. This is not a religious issue, this is a logic issue.

Can't say whether there are lesser lifeforms anywhere else. Those we can't detect. Just have to wait for it. Suggest if we find any under the ice on Enceladus (one of Saturn's moons with water & likely subterranean heat source), we don't eat them.

Theologically, it's a wash. If God can grow worms, & flatfish to eat them, that skip across pools of molten sulphur, by volcanic vents in the mid-ocean depths, in water with pH lower than Coca-Cola, thick with toxic metals lethal to other fish, & at a temperature to bake fish sticks (over 350F), then why not under the ice on Enceladus?

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Well, readers, what do you think? Are they really Out There ... or is there just no Out There out there?

David also notes that Fr. Funes is an astronomer, not a biologist, and that astronomers have all sorts of interesting ideas about biology, to which no attention should be paid.

Another friend offers this Protestant view from John Byl, a mathematician at Trinity Western University, who is dubious about ET in a manner that only a math professor can be.