ASTROTHEOLOGY: ON EXOPLANETS,CHRISTIAN CONCERNS,AND HUMAN HOPES

Are there planets beyond our solar system? What may appear quite plausible now had only been a hypothesis until about twenty years ago. The search for exoplanets is driven by the interest in the “habitable” ones among them. Could such planets one day in the far future provide resources or even shelter for humankind? Will we find one day a habitable planet that is even inhabited? These kinds of imaginative speculations drive public interest in the subject. Imagining alien intelligent life in the universe is not at all new. When Ted Peters called for establishing the field of “astrotheology,” he was certainly thinking less of historical precedents than of something analogous to the emerging field of astrobiology. Will astrotheology result in the decentering of humanity in cosmic dimensions? One could also conclude that we are alone, at least for all practical purposes.     

ASTROBIOLOGY AND ASTROCHRISTOLOGY

Astrochristology, as a subfield within the more comprehensive astrotheology, speculates on the implications of what astrobiology and related space sciences learn about our future space neighbors. Confirmation of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations living on exoplanets will force Christian theologians to decide on two issues. The first issue deals with the question: should Christians expect many incarnations, one for each inhabited exoplanet; or will the single incarnation in terrestrial history suffice? The second issue deals with the question: why is there an incarnation in the first place? Does the divine presence in the historical Jesus mark a divine attempt to fix a broken creation or does it mark a divine self‐communication that would occur with or without creation's fall into sin and death? Sorting these issues out is one task for astrochristology. My own position is to affirm both a single incarnation on Earth valid for cosmic redemption from the brokenness of creation in its present state.     

ASTROTHEOLOGY: A CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSAL

As we envision constructive undertakings in the field of religion and science for the next decade, the emerging agenda of astrotheology is opening up a new theater for enquiry. Astrotheology provides a critical theological response to the field of astrobiology while critically assessing exciting new research on life in our solar system and the discovery of exoplanets. This article proposes four tasks for the astrotheologian: deliberate on (1) the scope of creation: is God's creation Earth‐centric or does it include the entire cosmos? (2) the question whether a single divine incarnation on Earth suffices for the cosmos or whether multiple incarnations—one for each inhabited planet—is required; (3) whether astrobiologists and other space scientists are sticking to their science or smuggling in ideology; and (4) readying terrestrial life for contact with extraterrestrial life by enumerating issues to be taken up by astroethics.     

New Worlds,New Civilizations? From Science Fiction to Science Fact

ABSTRACT

Although long predicted on theoretical grounds, prior to the 1990s there was no observational evidence of worlds orbiting distant stars; however, the development of new technologies has enabled the discovery of thousands of these exoplanets. The diversity of these worlds exceeds scientific expectations and rivals foreshadowing by the most creative science fiction writers. Extrapolations based on statistical arguments and our understanding of how planetary systems form suggest exoplanets may outnumber the roughly 10 million quadrillion stars in the observable Universe. There are compelling reasons to expect conditions conducive to life on many of these worlds, but the existence of extraterrestrial life remains an open question. Although galaxy-spanning civilizations envisioned in science fiction remain unlikely, future contact with extraterrestrial species is not implausible, and in any case, the likelihood of having a human presence on Mars within the next few decades lends urgency to global, cross-cultural religious and ethical discussions.     

Evolution and human choices

The postmodern world seems to have conclusively lost faith in the heady promises of human emancipation through rational understanding that have pervaded the Western world since the time of the Enlightenment. As the end of the millennium approaches and the evidence of man‐made environmental degradation accumulates nihilism and malaise color the future. This article argues that a clear understanding of both evolutionary forces and human consciousness permits to formulate a guardedly optimistic alternative view. It is advanced that the very sense of despair current circumstances have created may trigger a move toward a new form of psycho‐functional adaptation, simultaneously constituting a first instance of “conscious evolution” and fulfilling the progressive promise intrinsic in the full use of our rational faculties.     

Systems evolution,structures of long‐waves,and systems management

By classifying the evolution of systems into inter‐level evolution and intra‐level evolution and dividing the intra‐level evolution into four stages which are interrelated but quite different from each other, we discuss structures of several typical systems long‐waves, and strategies of systems management.     

Dynamic Visual Acuity

Forty subjects took part in a one-handed catching task in which the period for which the mechanically projected tennis ball was illuminated in flight was varied systematically. Additionally, they were tested for (a) static visual acuity and (b) dynamic visual acuity, in which angular velocity was varied. As expected, both viewing period in the catching task and angular velocity in the acuity task were significant variables in performance. Correlation and principal-components analyses confirmed the findings of a previous experiment in that the correlated static visual acuity tasks were unrelated to both dynamic visual acuity (even when angular velocity was only 75°/sec) and catching performance. Further, dynamic acuity and catching were related under the majority of the combinations, and most frequently at the highest angular velocity, a fact which suggested that the dynamic element in both tasks is the common factor.     

World ethics: Its foundation

Although there are enormous differences between humans, it is also the case that they are fundamentally alike in certain ways. As a prelude to universal ethics, this paper enumerates many commonalities among humans.     

Emergence,Drop-Back And Reductionism in Living Systems Theory

Millers Living Systems Theory (LST) is known to be very comprehensive. It comprises eight nested hierarchical levels. It also includes twenty critical subsystems. While Millers approach has been analyzed and applied in great detail, some problematic features remain, requiring further explication. One of these is the relationship between reduction and emergence in LST. There are at least four relevant possibilities. One is that LST exhibits neither clear reductionism nor emergence, but is essentially neutral in this regard. Another is that the apparent comprehensiveness of LST is illusory, as the approach remains vulnerable to reduction that could ultimately reduce it to a shadow of its present self. The charge of reductionism has been made by critics leading Miller to defend this theory vehemently as nonreductionist in nature. A third possibility is that LST is not reductionist, but is in fact an emergent theory. Miller makes this claim quite strongly. A fourth possibility, and in some ways the most analytically problematic, is that LST exhibits evidence of both reductionism and emergence simultaneously. Some critics might see this fourth situation as evidence of a troubling paradox or anomaly that must be resolved before further progress can be made in the explication and application of LST. The purpose of the paper is to remove this apparent anomaly. The paper removes this anomaly by differentiating between new-variable emergence and transformational emergence. No concrete evidence is found to contradict Milers claim of emergence in LST, and thus no true anomaly exists.