…with the James Web Telescope looking for sources of artificial light to identify potential intelligent life, and the news this week of Perseverance searching for microbial life on Mars it feels like we are getting closer to a major discovery. But what - if anything - would it mean for the religions on Earth if life is proven to exist out there?
Won’t happen. Well some fringe group might launch someone. In the right direction, but they won’t arrive.
However the universe is large and the speed of light very slow: we will never be able to send humans to another alien. In fact the speed of light is so slow, odds are we will never even get to the point where both civilizations are aware of each other - either we know they existed but they are extinct before we discover it, or they discover us long after we go extinct (of course we won’t know that).
Realistically there are only a few stars with in range of where we can establish contact. The farther out we get the less useful contact will be just because by the time we get a response we are likely to have figured it out. If we asked an alien 1 light year away (there are no stars that close to earth) about fusion they can tell us what we are doing wrong and jump start us. However by 20 light years out odds are we will know what we did wrong before their response can reach us so we are limited to sending the latest movies back and forth (open question - we will enjoy each others entertainment), and by 100 light years it is just culture interest. Even if they are very long lived, they may be interested in us, but we won’t be able to sustain enough interest in them to answer questions - not to mention their questions will be obsolete (an alien 100 light years out would have just had questions about human life in 1823 reach back to us - we don’t really know)