The Spiritual Significance of Life on Mars
We all gaze at the stars and wonder if there’s life out there. But scientists from agencies like NASA have begun to look closer to home in our solar system, like Mars, to find evidence of past or current extraterrestrial life.
According to science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, there are only two possibilities: “either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Life on Mars is an exciting, but harrowing possibility. Nobody knows how the world will respond if a discovery is made.
Why?
Because of the spiritual and religious implications of life on other planets.
Human Exceptionalism Guides Morality
It’s a recent, nihilistic development to believe that humanity isn’t special.
When Nietzsche famously declared that “God is Dead” in 1882, this wasn’t an atheist rallying cry, but an announcement of cultural despair. God was dead because we killed him, and we became cultural murderers because of it. In the death of God, we would have to reinvent our society and become gods ourselves.
But a polytheism of atheists is not a society we want to live in.
Many Christians and other believers of traditional faiths think it’s unlikely that life could exist on other planets because humans are special. Other believers see it as part of the natural expression of God’s creativity or a matter of universal fact and this doesn’t take away human exceptionalism.
Either way, the human experience is a spiritual one. And ironically, that “specialness” is what makes humanity subject to a natural order which has inspired civil governance for millennia. Being special doesn’t put us at the top of a hierarchy. We can never reach that height as mere mortals.
There’s right and wrong, and humans don’t get a vote. It’s inherent. And because of this, we have human rights which no other human has the moral authority to overrule. Rights are not a competition.
Life on Mars will rattle this human exceptionalism by destroying not only our special identity, but the concept of morality itself. Human rights and animal rights are not the same thing. So would human and Martian rights be unequal too?
Yes – if we operate on a nihilistic evolution of morality brought upon by the lack of spirituality.
We Live in an Iron Age
In a world where God is dead, it’s easy for humans to ascend the pantheon like the fourth generation of Greek gods. Ironically, the Roman poet Ovid revised upon an earlier Greek idea of the Ages of Man, declaring that the fourth would be the Iron Age. This is where humanity no longer follows the gods and descends into utter depravity.
The Greek and Roman pantheons are built on the patricide of their fathers. I see the same thing happening with the lack of cultural spirituality in the modern world, and I think it will endanger the concept of personhood going forth.
What will the world come to believe when it discovers there is indeed life on other planets? Those who are spiritual will continue to believe that morality transcends humanity, but for those who aren’t spiritual, life loses its exceptionalism.
Although some religious people in America will argue that democracy is Christian, this ignores the fact it was founded upon pagan philosophy: a fact forgotten because the Enlightenment looked towards pagan Rome and Greece from a secular perspective.
Just because atheists have separated spirituality from antiquity doesn’t mean that the world wasn’t enchanted with it and their thoughts pervaded by it.
Human Rights and Spirituality are Linked
The ideal of Greek democracy evolved into a mixed government system to prevent the loss of human rights due to the cycle of failed governments. A monarchy would fall to tyranny, tyranny to aristocracy, aristocracy to oligarchy, and oligarchy to mob rule. From the mob, a monarchy would eventually rise and the cycle would begin again.
What prevented this was a mixed government, likely based on the castes of Indo-European pagan cultures: priests, warriors, and commoners. For society to succeed, the personhood of all would need to be recognized in a democratic mixed government (like the American three-branch system).
It was Greek-Roman spirituality that recognized this through their mythology. The first generation was overthrown when Cronus defeated his father to free his siblings. But Cronus ate his children too, eventually resulting in his son Zeus orchestrating a coup.
This patricidal routine only stopped after Zeus divided power among his generation with a mixed government system. When a child was born who could potentially threaten him, Athena, he made her his favorite child. Good move, Zeus.
And that’s why healthy democrats vote out their leaders instead of killing them.
We can’t forget how spirituality informs our perspective on morality like the way the spiritual origins of democratic government are currently misunderstood. Because that’s what taking spirituality out of a culture does – you deprive that people of their dignity.
Even the deist founders of America believed in natural rights from their creator – and not their government.
The Personhood of Aliens
The concept of “person” is not limited to biological humans. We have begun to question if we’re betraying the rights of other intelligent beings like chimpanzees, dolphins, and pigs. And we don’t even limit it to biological animals. Our stories are rife with plots on when artificial intelligence has gained the right to a soul and thus personhood.
We don’t see humanity as determined by our bodies, but the ghost in the machine: our consciousness which has spiritual origins. Which means any alien can also have their own ghosts.
We have an embedded understanding within our cultures that being human is more like being a person. And if we find life on other planets, whether it’s a single-celled organism, a civilization in ruins, or even a thriving extraterrestrial society… personhood transcends our world and our human concept of government.
That means morality can’t be voted upon by humans but shared among persons – including aliens. Everyone must be represented. The spiritual implications demand it. But the nihilistic ones doesn’t.
We know from experience that hate and fear from those who aren’t like us causes oppression among persons.
So if God is dead, does the life on Mars even matter?
It doesn’t. Not without spirituality, anyway.