Abstract
We cannot avoid the connection between SETI and religion, although many SETI advocates wish that we could. Religious belief has been a recurrent factor throughout the long debate about a plurality of worlds inhabited by intelligent beings.
Even in the most primitive ages of every normal intelligent world there existed in some minds the impulse to seek and to praise some universal thing. At first this impulse was confused with the craving for protection by some mighty power. Inevitably the beings theorized that the admired thing must be Power, and that worship was mere propitiation. Thus they came to conceive the almighty tyrant of the universe, with themselves as his favored children. —Olaf Stapledon, 19371
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References
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Dick, editor, Many Worlds, 205. George Basalla addressed this linkage at length in his book Civilized Life in the Universe, published by Oxford University Press in 2006. Unfortunately, I did not see this book until after I sent my manuscript to my publisher.
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For a powerful example, see Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997.
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Michaud, M.A.G. (2007). SETI and Religion. In: Contact with Alien Civilizations. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-68618-9_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-68618-9_20
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