NASA Hires Theologians To Prepare Earthlings For Alien Life

How are government theologians, on contract or on the payroll, not a violation of the Establishment Clause of the US First Amendment?

NASA is looking to the heavens for help with assessing how humans will react if alien life is found on other planets and how the discovery could impact our ideas of gods [sic] and creation.

The agency hired 24 theologians to take part in its program at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University in New Jersey, which NASA gave a $1.1 million grant to in 2014.

CTI is described as building 'bridges of under understanding by convening theologians, scientists, scholars, and policymakers to think together - and inform public thinking - on global concerns.'

So let's back up. Theology is literally the "study of God". As even our Hollywood Episcopalian rector explained back in the day, it isn't the study of whether there's a God, it's the study of the God Who exists, and as a practical matter in the West, it's the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Central to that tradition is a creation in which a unique creature, Man, is fashioned in God's image, equipped with reason, skill, language, and free will to operate in creation toward a mutual destiny with God.

Now, things may very well be otherwise. Buddhists, Mormons, and Scientologists are not much in tune with the Christian creeds, but at least the US First Amendment prevents the government from choosing sides. In modern times, though, governments have sought the convenience of eliminating Judeo-Christian moral traditions that stand in the way of eugenic or redistributionist policies. The governments that wish these things most fervently seem to think that materialist, anti-religious, or at least anti-Judeo-Christian, views are most tolerant of such policies.

One of the chief obstacles to more widespread anti-Judeo-Christian materialism as relates to the observable universe has been Fermi's Paradox, which according to Wikipedia says

The Fermi paradox is the conflict between the lack of clear, obvious evidence for extraterrestrial life and various high estimates for their existence.

As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi's name is associated with the paradox because of a casual conversation in the summer of 1950 with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York and Emil Konopinski. While walking to lunch, the men discussed recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The conversation moved on to other topics, until during lunch Fermi blurted out, "But where is everybody?" (although the exact quote is uncertain).

In fact, the whole history of Mars probes so far may be characterized as a great vindication of Fermi, with successive expeditions, ranging from photo overflights to rovers digging beneath the soil, proving fruitless in detecting even the tiniest fossil evidence of ancient life, despite the confident predictions of the neo-Darwinian model that, given the presence of water, organic elements, and enough time for the process to occur, life must certainly have emerged from the primordial ooze there as it did on earth.

The names of the NASA Mars rovers to date suggest progressive stages of frustration with this project: Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance. Might the next ones move on to Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance? I've come increasingly to believe that the whole space exploration effort, especially following the passing of Wernher von Braun, who did come to see a transcendent purpose in it, has been an epic boondoggle of an attempt to refute the Judeo-Christian picture of creation, with Man created uniquely in God's image. Get rid of that, and everything is permitted.

It's been an immense expenditure of national and world treasure to find even a single microscopic piece of material evidence to contradict it, and so far, it's failed. But no matter, we'll find it yet, if not under Martian sands, then most certainly in the ammonia oceans under the ice of Jupiter's moons. Whenever it happens, with keen foresight, the government will have a team of theologians on the payroll to prepare us earthlings for the event. The only one mentioned so far by name is The Revd Dr Andrew Davison MA DPhil (Oxford) MA PhD, an Anglican. I'm sure he'll do just fine, with those degrees and all, and Anglicans are certainly at the forefront of permitting everything.

The ray of hope is that Musk and Bezos are replacing the feckless government objectives with an efficiency borne of crass commercialism, which I find reassuring.