Various religious leaders explained what more than two dozen major religions believe in when it comes to the potential existence of extraterrestrial life.
David Weintraub, an astronomy professor at Vanderbilt University, has a new book that investigates what most of the world's major religions believe about aliens.
With the scientific advancements astronomers have made regarding exoplanets, those who are religious may wonder the possibility of life out there in space. Up until now, there have only been about half a dozen books questioning alien life, but they were concentrated on Christianity.
Religions and Extraterrestrial Life explores what theologians and religious leaders who practice Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as other evangelical and fundamentalist Christian communities have to say about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.
"Very few among us have spent much time thinking hard about what actual knowledge about extraterrestrial life, whether viruses or single-celled creatures or bipeds piloting intergalactic spaceships, might mean for our personal beliefs [and] our relationships with the divine," Weintraub writes.
A public opinion poll found that about one-fifth to one-third of Americans believe that aliens exist. Astronomers have detected more than 1,000 planets that orbit other stars, and at that rate, more than a million exoplanets could be discovered by 2045. Even if there is a small chance alien life could exist beyond our universe, it still could be possible.
The beliefs of different religious affiliations varies. Buddhists commonly accept the possibility of extraterrestrial live. They believe in cosmology that consists of thousands of inhabited worlds. Some Hindu leaders reported to believe that humans could be reincarnated as aliens.
55 percent of Atheists believe that alien life exists, compared to only 32 percent of Christians. More than one-third of people of the Eastern Orthodox Church believe in alien life, compared to 37 percent of Roman Catholics, 37 percent of Methodists and 35 percent of Lutherans.
Roman Catholics were found to think about the possibility of life the most among Christian religions. They debate whether or not aliens would suffer from original sin and need to be saved by Christ.
44 percent of Muslims believe in extraterrestrials, followed by 37 percent of Jews and 36 percent of Hindus.
Jewish scriptures include very little on the topic; however, one Jewish anthropologist stated that if "the existence of other life forms, newly discovered scientific realities or pan-human behavioral changes" the relationship between Jews and God would not be affected.
The book found that Mormonism and Seventh-day Adventism are the only two religions that fully embrace the idea.
