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+title: "Pontifical and Promethean man"
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+In traditionalist philosophy, pontifical man is a divine representative (vicegerent of God) who serves as a bridge between heaven and earth. Promethean man, on the other hand, sees himself as an earthly being who has rebelled against God and has no knowledge of his origins or purposes. This concept was notably developed in contemporary language by the Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
+
+== Symbolism ==
+Nasr used the term pontifical in its etymological sense to convey that the human being is the gateway between Heaven and Earth, living on a circle of which he is always conscious and to which he strives to reach in his life. For Nasr, the pontifex (see also the ancient Pontifex Maximus) is the sacred human that connects the physical and spiritual realms, whereas Prometheus is the "profane man," the robber of fire from the dwelling of the gods. Nasr used the Prometheus image differently from Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound and Shelley in Prometheus Unbound. In legends, Prometheus is portrayed as a hero, a demigod, or Titan prepared to endure endless torment to impart light to an ignorant and suffering humanity, even if it means defying the divine authority. In Nasr's perspective, however, the symbolism acquires a new meaning. Prometheus is portrayed as a thief of celestial fire, a rebel against the Divine, and a man who has lost sight of his purpose.
+Gai Eaton, commenting on Nasr's views of humanity, says that Pontifex is a notion that is similar to the khalifat fi l-arḍ or "[divinely-appointed] vicegerent on Earth" and symbolizes the same underlying premise. On the other hand, the Prometheus myth reflects Western man's perception of himself as a "little god", who takes pride in taking that which does not belong to him from heaven, disobeying the divine authority.
+
+== History ==
+According to David Burrell, Nasr regards Promethean man as a product of the thirteenth-century Aristotelianization of Western philosophy, which some attribute to Averroes. For Nasr, the Promethean man, who is a self centered being, emerged during the Renaissance as a reaction against the traditional understanding of pontifical man. This event is said to correspond with the definitive loss of the sacred character of the universe. Nasr argues that the "exteriorization" of Christian philosophy was reinforced in the seventeenth century by the secularization of cosmological science, which was itself a consequence of "naturalization" of Christian conception of man as a satisfied citizen of this world.
+For Nasr, the secularization of science in the seventeenth century mechanized both the notion of the universe and the notion of man, resulting in a world where man was an alien. He argues that the scientism that evolved during this century, along with the seeming success of Newtonian physics, culminated in the establishment of human sciences, which to this day resemble an already obsolete physics. Nasr agrees with Gilbert Durand's notion of "the disfiguration of the image of man in the West" in developing the picture of Promethean humanity. He distinguishes the "proto-Nietzschean construction" of man from the "primordial and plenary nature of man that Islam calls the 'Universal or Perfect Man' (al-Insan al-kamil) and to which the sapiental doctrines of Graeco-Alexandrian antiquity also allude,"—a man "who is the mirror of the divine qualities and names and the prototype of creation".
+
+== Polemics ==
+Traditionalism maintains that the anthropology of modernity is 'Promethean' in nature, which has left the "humanum" alone in a meaningless cosmos. For Traditionalists, this is an illusory depiction of man that deviates from the essence of recurring divine revelations. They argue in favor of "pontifical man", a perspective that sees the human as the link between heaven and earth. Nasr contrasts the notion of the pontifical human with that of the modern man. For him, a "pontifical man" is traditional, spiritual, and religious. Modern humans, on the other hand, are promethean beings, who, according to Nasr, deny the existence of God. A Promethean person is irreligious and materialistic in both his or her beliefs and actions.

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+title: "Pontifical and Promethean man"
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+To characterize modernity’s secularization of the universe, Nasr borrows from Greek mythology. Like Prometheus, man has revolted against the heavens. ...The Promethean model, in contradistinction to what he terms “Pontifical Man” – the understanding that mankind is the lynchpin between the cosmos and the Sacred – is both unethical and sacrilegious. Moreover it is recklessly leading to the current erosion of our environment.
+According to Liu Shu-hsien, Nasr sees Promethean man as a creature of this world who has revolted against Heaven. He "feels at home on earth" and perceives life as a large "marketplace" where he is free to explore and choose whatever he wants. He is submerged in transience and impermanence, having lost his sense of the sacred, and has become a slave of his nafs or lower self, which he considers as liberty. According to this understanding, Promethean man stands against the sacred tradition. Pontifical man, on the contrary, connects the terrestrial and celestial realms. For Nasr, such a man never forgets that he is God's viceroy (khalifat Allah), who exists in a world that he recognizes as having an origin and a center, whose "primordial purity and wholeness he seeks to emulate, recapture and transmit".  Pontifical man recognizes his divine responsibilities as a mediator between heaven and earth, as well as "his entelechy as lying beyond the terrestrial domain over which he is allowed to rule provided he remains aware of the transient nature of his own journey on earth", whereas Promethean man rejects this function and declares independence from the divine.
+For Nasr, man's pontifical essence transcends him if he remains true to himself. Man cannot go against his inner essence unless he pays the price of separation from all he is and everything he wishes to be. With his roots in transcendental reality, man has an insatiable desire to be reborn in the spiritual realm with its limitless possibilities, free of the constraints of contingency and finiteness that encircle him. Being human, as Nasr argues, includes a desire to be more than just a human. Hence he has a spiritual longing for the Absolute and the Perennial. A pontifical man is destined to know the absolute and to live in accordance with the will of the Heaven. The Promethean man, on the other hand, is a weak and forgetful individual who succumbs to the spell of the secular and material world. He separates himself from the cosmic and immutable archetypes and becomes completely terrestrial. He loses his actual path in the world by accepting the changing aspects of things as the sole aspects of reality. Such a man thinks he can "live on a circle without a center",  while trying "to misappropriate the role of the Divinity for himself". He represents a shift from the viewpoint of man being created in the image of God to God being created in the image of man. Oblivious to his origin and purpose, Promethean man has caused havoc on the world over the course of five centuries, disrupting the natural order, and has lost sight of what it actually means to be a human, because he only seeks to achieve perfection by reforming his earthly finite existence.
+In contrast, pontifical man is aware that, exactly because he is human, everything he does and thinks has both grandeur and peril. He knows that his activities have an impact on his existence that extends beyond the constrained spatiotemporal settings in which they take place. He understands "that somehow the bark which is to take him to the shore beyond after that fleeting journey" is made of what he achieves and how he lives while in the human realm. Pontifical man is both the mirror of the center on the periphery and the echo of the Origin in subsequent cycles of time and generations of human history. According to the traditional perspective, this center is eternally existent inside man himself. Because Eternity is mirrored in the present now, "Pontifical man" has access to the eternal while being outwardly in the province of becoming. He fulfills his full human potential since he possesses a true intellect.

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+title: "Pontifical and Promethean man"
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+
+== Epistemological perspective ==
+According to Mehdi Aminrazavi, the Promethean and Pontifical man symbolize two distinct "modes of being", each with its own method of cognition. Promethean man, according to Nasr, is the outcome of pure informative or discursive knowledge, whereas pontifical man is the reflection of transformative or realized knowledge. The Promethean man rejects tradition in favor of pure "rational thought." The Pontifical man, on the other hand, relies on esoteric method which is bound by religious law, and which the Promethean man seeks to deconstruct and annihilate. For Pontifical man, only realized knowledge of Reality can alleviate man's unrest and inner disquiet and restore the tranquility and calm that can only be attained by devotion to one's own Divine nature.
+Modern science, according to Nasr, has embraced the "Promethean perspective of man," which sees man as "the measure of all things" in comparison to the Pontifical man, who lives in a theocentric universe.  Modernism rejects such theocentric views of reality, removing God from the center of existence and substituting God with man. Instead, it focuses on the individual and individualism, as well as human reason and the senses. Its epistemology, Nasr argues, is mostly based on rationalism or empiricism, and it evaluates everything using human values as the ultimate standard. Traditional science, on the other hand, incorporates metaphysical principles and is theocentric, or God-centered.
+For Nasr, man is greater than what science has discovered about him, and he is neither angel nor animal in the ultimate sense. His intellect, psyche, and spirit have bestowed upon him qualities and characteristics that far exceed the greatest aspirations of the scientific community. According to Sulayman S. Nyang, Nasr sees man as a "pontifical being", yearning for a meeting with the source of his life and existence. He refuses to "enclose" man within the biological framework of Darwinian theory. He claims that the source of man is not the atoms from which he is formed. Man is rather a metaphysical and transcendental entity whose existence is beyond human comprehension, despite the fact that signs of his presence and existence can be found everywhere.
+
+== See also ==
+Nasr's ideas:
+Desacralization of knowledge
+Resacralization of knowledge
+Resacralization of nature
+Scientia sacra
+Playing God (ethics)
+Parson-naturalist
+Fitra
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== References ==
+
+== Sources ==
+Aminrazavi, Mehdi (2000). "Philosophia Perennis and Scientia Sacra in a Postmodern World". In Hahn, Lewis Edwin; Auxier, Randall E.; Stone Jr., Lucian W. (eds.). The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Open Court. ISBN 978-0812694147.
+Burrel, David (2000). "Islamic Philosophical Theology". In Hahn, Lewis Edwin; Auxier, Randall E.; Stone Jr., Lucian W. (eds.). The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Open Court. ISBN 978-0812694147.
+Eaton, Gai (1983). "Knowledge and the Sacred: Reflections on Seyyed Hossein Nasr's Gifford Lectures". Studies in Comparative Religion. 15 (3–4). Archived from the original on 2020-10-26. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
+Fatemi, S.M. (2021). The Psychology of Inner Peace: Discovering Heartfulness. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-48950-8.
+Monastra, Giovanni (2000). "Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Religion, Nature, and Science". In Hahn, Lewis Edwin; Auxier, Randall E.; Stone Jr., Lucian W. (eds.). The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Open Court. ISBN 978-0812694147.
+Hashemi, M. (2017). Theism and Atheism in a Post-Secular Age. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-54948-4.
+Heer, Nicholas (1993). "Book Reviews: Knowledge and the Sacred". Philosophy East and West. 43 (1): 144–150. doi:10.2307/1399476. JSTOR 1399476.
+Howard, D. (2011). Being Human in Islam: The Impact of the Evolutionary Worldview. Culture and Civilization in the Middle East. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-82027-4.
+Koltas, Nurullah (2014). "The Making of the City of Virtues-a Traditional Perspective on Restoring Values among People". Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 152. Elsevier BV: 253–257. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.189. ISSN 1877-0428.
+López-Baralt, Luce (2000). "Knowledge of the Sacred: The Mystical Poetry of Seyyed Hossein Nasr". In Hahn, Lewis Edwin; Auxier, Randall E.; Stone Jr., Lucian W. (eds.). The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Open Court. ISBN 978-0812694147.
+Lumbard, Joseph E.B. (2013). "Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Tradition and Modernity". In Marshall, D. (ed.). Tradition and Modernity: Christian and Muslim Perspectives. Georgetown University Press. ISBN 978-1-58901-982-9.
+McLelland, J.C. (1989). Prometheus Rebound: The Irony of Atheism. Editions SR. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN 978-0-88920-696-0.
+Moten, Abdul Rashid (2013). "Islam and Civilisational Renewal : The Case for Sacred Science". Islam and Civilisational Renewal. 4 (4). TechKnowledge General Trading LLC: 562–578. doi:10.12816/0034788. ISSN 1394-0937.
+Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1989). "Man, Pontifical and Promethean". Knowledge and the Sacred. State University of New York. ISBN 978-0791401774.
+Ogunnaike, Oludamini (2016). "From Heathen to Sub-Human: A Genealogy of the Influence of the Decline of Religion on the Rise of Modern Racism". Open Theology. 2 (1). Walter de Gruyter GmbH. doi:10.1515/opth-2016-0059. ISSN 2300-6579. S2CID 13877934.
+Rehman, Ahmed Abdul; Hashimi, Prof. Dr. Mohyuddin (2021-06-30). "Islamization of Knowledge and Modern Sciences: The Discourse of Seyyed Hussein Nasr". Majallah-yi Talim O Tahqiq. 3 (2): 163–171. ISSN 2618-1363.
+Saltzman, Judy D. (2000). "The Concept of Spiritual Knowledge in the Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr". In Hahn, Lewis Edwin; Auxier, Randall E.; Stone Jr., Lucian W. (eds.). The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Open Court. ISBN 978-0812694147.
+Sayem, Md. Abu (2019). "The Eco-Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr". Islamic Studies. 58 (2): 271–295. ISSN 2710-5326.
+Shu-hsien, Liu (2000). "Reflections on Tradition and Modernity: A Response to Seyyed Hossein Nasr from Neo-Confucian Perspective". In Hahn, Lewis Edwin; Auxier, Randall E.; Stone Jr., Lucian W. (eds.). The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Open Court. ISBN 978-0812694147.
+Siddiqui, M. (2015). Hospitality and Islam: Welcoming in God's Name. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-21186-3.
+Stepaniants, M.T. (1994). Sufi Wisdom. SUNY series in Islam (in Maltese). State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-1796-6.
+Stone, Lucian W. Jr. (2005). "Nasr, Seyyed Hossein". In Shook, John R. (ed.). The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers. Thoemmes Continuum. ISBN 978-1843710370.
+Umar, Muhammad Suheyl (2011). "Return of the "Native"". In Baudot, B.S.; Havel, V. (eds.). Candles in the Dark: A New Spirit for a Plural World. EBL-Schweitzer. University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0-295-80076-9.

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+title: "Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact"
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+
+The cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact is the corpus of changes to terrestrial science, technology, religion, politics, and ecosystems resulting from contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. This concept is closely related to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which attempts to locate intelligent life as opposed to analyzing the implications of contact with that life.
+The potential changes from extraterrestrial contact could vary greatly in magnitude and type, based on the extraterrestrial civilization's level of technological advancement, degree of benevolence or malevolence, and level of mutual comprehension between itself and humanity. The medium through which humanity is contacted, be it electromagnetic radiation, direct physical interaction, extraterrestrial artifact, or otherwise, may also influence the results of contact. Incorporating these factors, various systems have been created to assess the implications of extraterrestrial contact.
+The implications of extraterrestrial contact, particularly with a technologically superior civilization, have often been likened to the meeting of two vastly different human cultures on Earth, a historical precedent being the Columbian Exchange. Such meetings have generally led to the destruction of the civilization receiving contact (as opposed to the "contactor", which initiates contact), and therefore destruction of human civilization is a possible outcome. Extraterrestrial contact is also analogous to the numerous encounters between non-human native and invasive species occupying the same ecological niche. However, the absence of verified public contact to date means tragic consequences are still largely speculative.
+
+== Background ==
+
+=== Search for extraterrestrial intelligence ===
+
+To detect extraterrestrial civilizations with radio telescopes, one must identify an artificial, coherent signal against a background of various natural phenomena that also produce radio waves. Telescopes capable of this include the Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek, California and the new Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope in China and formerly the now demolished Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Various programs to detect extraterrestrial intelligence have had government funding in the past. Project Cyclops was commissioned by NASA in the 1970s to investigate the most effective way to search for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial sources, but the report's recommendations were set aside in favor of the much more modest approach of Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (METI), the sending of messages that intelligent extraterrestrial beings might intercept. NASA then drastically reduced funding for SETI programs, which have since turned to private donations to continue their search.
+With the discovery in the late 20th and early 21st centuries of numerous extrasolar planets, some of which may be habitable, governments have once more become interested in funding new programs. In 2006 the European Space Agency launched COROT, the first spacecraft dedicated to the search for exoplanets, and in 2009 NASA launched the Kepler space observatory for the same purpose. By February 2013 Kepler had detected 105 of the 6,416 confirmed exoplanets, and one of them, Kepler-22b, is potentially habitable. After it was discovered, the SETI Institute resumed the search for an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization, focusing on Kepler's candidate planets, with funding from the United States Air Force.
+Newly discovered planets, particularly ones that are potentially habitable, have enabled SETI and METI programs to refocus projects for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. In 2009 A Message From Earth (AMFE) was sent toward the Gliese 581 planetary system, which contains two potentially habitable planets, the confirmed Gliese 581d and the more habitable but unconfirmed Gliese 581g. In the SETILive project, which began in 2012, human volunteers analyze data from the Allen Telescope Array to search for possible alien signals that computers might miss because of terrestrial radio interference. The data for the study is obtained by observing Kepler target stars with the radio telescope.
+In addition to radio-based methods, some projects, such as SEVENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Visible Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) at the University of California, Berkeley, are using other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum to search for extraterrestrial signals. Various other projects are not searching for coherent signals, but want to rather use electromagnetic radiation to find other evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, such as megascale astroengineering projects.
+Several signals, such as the Wow! signal, have been detected in the history of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but none have yet been confirmed as being of intelligent origin.
+
+=== Impact assessment ===

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+The implications of extraterrestrial contact depend on the method of discovery, the nature of the extraterrestrial beings, and their location relative to the Earth. Considering these factors, the Rio scale has been devised in order to provide a more quantitative picture of the results of extraterrestrial contact. More specifically, the scale gauges whether communication was conducted through radio, the information content of any messages, and whether discovery arose from a deliberately beamed message (and if so, whether the detection was the result of a specialized SETI effort or through general astronomical observations) or by the detection of occurrences such as radiation leakage from astroengineering installations. The question of whether or not a purported extraterrestrial signal has been confirmed as authentic, and with what degree of confidence, will also influence the impact of the contact. The Rio scale was modified in 2011 to include a consideration of whether contact was achieved through an interstellar message or through a physical extraterrestrial artifact, with a suggestion that the definition of artifact be expanded to include "technosignatures", including all indications of intelligent extraterrestrial life other than the interstellar radio messages sought by traditional SETI programs.
+A study by astronomer Steven J. Dick at the United States Naval Observatory considered the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact by analyzing events of similar significance in the history of science. The study argues that the impact would be most strongly influenced by the information content of the message received, if any. It distinguishes short-term and long-term impact. Seeing radio-based contact as a more plausible scenario than a visit from extraterrestrial spacecraft, the study rejects the commonly stated analogy of European colonization of the Americas as an accurate model for information-only contact, preferring events of profound scientific significance, such as the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions, as more predictive of how humanity might be impacted by extraterrestrial contact.
+The physical distance between the two civilizations has also been used to assess the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact. Historical examples show that the greater the distance, the less the contacted civilization perceives a threat to itself and its culture. Therefore, contact occurring within the Solar System, and especially in the immediate vicinity of Earth, is likely to be the most disruptive and negative for humanity. On a smaller scale, people close to the epicenter of contact would experience a greater effect than would those living farther away, and a contact having multiple epicenters would cause a greater shock than one with a single epicenter. Space scientists Martin Dominik and John Zarnecki state that in the absence of any data on the nature of extraterrestrial intelligence, one must predict the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact on the basis of generalizations encompassing all life and of analogies with history.
+The beliefs of the general public about the effect of extraterrestrial contact have also been studied. A poll of United States and Chinese university students in 2000 provides factor analysis of responses to questions about, inter alia, the participants' belief that extraterrestrial life exists in the Universe, that such life may be intelligent, and that humans will eventually make contact with it. The study shows significant weighted correlations between participants' belief that extraterrestrial contact may either conflict with or enrich their personal religious beliefs and how conservative such religious beliefs are. The more conservative the respondents, the more harmful they considered extraterrestrial contact to be. Other significant correlation patterns indicate that students took the view that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence may be futile or even harmful. While earlier studies focused on student or public perceptions, a 2025 survey published in Nature Astronomy established an empirical baseline for expert opinion. The study found that 58.2% of astrobiology experts believe intelligent extraterrestrial life likely exists, with 86.6% agreeing that basic life is likely. This suggests that expert confidence in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is significantly higher than often assumed in sociological models of contact.
+Psychologists Douglas Vakoch and Yuh-shiow Lee conducted a survey to assess people's reactions to receiving a message from extraterrestrials, including their judgments about likelihood that extraterrestrials would be malevolent. "People who view the world as a hostile place are more likely to think extraterrestrials will be hostile," Vakoch told USA Today.
+
+=== Post-detection protocols ===
+
+Various protocols have been drawn up detailing a course of action for scientists and governments after extraterrestrial contact. Post-detection protocols must address three issues: what to do in the first weeks after receiving a message from an extraterrestrial source; whether or not to send a reply; and analyzing the long-term consequences of the message received. No post-detection protocol, however, is binding under national or international law, and Dominik and Zarnecki consider the protocols likely to be ignored if contact occurs.
+One of the first post-detection protocols, the "Declaration of Principles for Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence", was created by the SETI Permanent Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). It was later approved by the Board of Trustees of the IAA and by the International Institute of Space Law, and still later by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the Committee on Space Research, the International Union of Radio Science, and others. It was subsequently endorsed by most researchers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, including the SETI Institute.
+The Declaration of Principles contains the following broad provisions:

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+
+=== Scientific and technological ===
+The scientific and technological impact of extraterrestrial contact through electromagnetic waves would probably be quite small, especially at first. However, if the message contains a large amount of information, deciphering it could give humans access to a galactic heritage perhaps predating the formation of the Solar System, which may greatly advance our technology and science. A possible negative effect could be to demoralize research scientists as they come to know that what they are researching may already be known to another civilization.
+On the other hand, extraterrestrial civilizations with malicious intent could send (unfiltered) information that could enable or facilitate human civilization to destroy itself, such as powerful computer viruses, knowledge to build an advanced artificial intelligence or information on how to make extremely potent weapons that humans would not yet be able to use responsibly. While the motives for such an action are unknown, it may require minimal energy use on the part of the extraterrestrials. It may also be possible that such is sent without malicious intent. According to Musso, however, computer viruses in particular will be nearly impossible unless extraterrestrials possess detailed knowledge of human computer architectures, which would only happen if a human message sent to the stars were protected with little thought to security. Even a virtual machine on which extraterrestrials could run computer programs could be designed specifically for the purpose, bearing little relation to computer systems commonly used on Earth. In addition, humans could send messages to extraterrestrials detailing that they do not want access to the Encyclopædia Galactica until they have reached a suitable level of advancement, thus possibly raising chances that harmful impacts of technology from recipient extraterrestrials are mitigated.
+Extraterrestrial technology could have profound impacts on the nature of human culture and civilization. Just as television provided a new outlet for a wide variety of political, religious, and social groups, and as the printing press made the Bible available to the common people of Europe, allowing them to interpret it for themselves, so an extraterrestrial technology might change humanity in ways not immediately apparent. Harrison speculates that a knowledge of extraterrestrial technologies could increase the gap between scientific and cultural progress, leading to societal shock and an inability to compensate for negative effects of technology. He gives the example of improvements in agricultural technology during the Industrial Revolution, which displaced thousands of farm laborers until society could retrain them for jobs suited to the new social order. Contact with an extraterrestrial civilization far more advanced than humanity could cause a much greater shock than the Industrial Revolution, or anything previously experienced by humanity.
+Michaud suggests that humanity could be impacted by an influx of extraterrestrial science and technology in the same way that medieval European scholars were impacted by the knowledge of Arab scientists. Humanity might at first revere the knowledge as having the potential to advance the human species, and might even feel inferior to the extraterrestrial species, but would gradually grow in arrogance as it gained more and more intimate knowledge of the science, technology, and other cultural developments of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.
+The discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence would have various impacts on biology and astrobiology. The discovery of extraterrestrial life in any form, intelligent or non-intelligent, would give humanity greater insight into the nature of life on Earth and would improve the conception of how the tree of life is organized. Human biologists could possibly learn about extraterrestrial biochemistry and observe how it differs from that found on Earth. This knowledge could help human civilization to learn which aspects of life are common throughout the universe and which are possibly specific to Earth.
+
+=== Worldviews ===
+Some have argued that confirmed reliable detection of extraterrestrial intelligence or contact may be one of the biggest moments in human history and would have major implications for humanity including its contemporary prevalent worldviews, not just from implications within the fields of theology (see above) and science (see above), similar to the paradigm shift away from geocentrism as a dominant element of human worldviews.
+Harvard astronomer and lead scientist of The Galileo Project, Avi Loeb, has argued that humanity is not ready to adopt a sense of what he calls "cosmic modesty" and that this could change if the project detects "relics" of more advanced civilizations. Loeb postulates that if we find that we "are not the smartest kid on the cosmic block, it will give us a different perspective" – such as the way we think about our place in the universe, for example with relevance to prevalent religious worldviews, in which humans may often be considered unique or exceptional.
+According to Major John R. King, potential sociological consequences of alien contact may include (1) Initial shock and consternation (2) Loss or reduction of ego (3) Modification of human values (4) Decrease in status of [certain] scientists and (5) Reevaluation of religions. The "mediocrity principle" which claims that "there is nothing special about Earth's status or position in the Universe" could present a great challenge to Abrahamic religions, which "teach that human beings are purposefully created by God and occupy a privileged position in relation to other creatures", albeit some have argued that "discovery of life elsewhere in the Universe would not compromise God's love for Earth life" despite there being no "positive affirmation of alien life" in popular religious texts such as the Bible and that other civilisations may be "completely unaware of Jesus' story" and may have no such popular story from their own past. There is widespread belief that religions would adapt to contact.

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+title: "Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact"
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+
+=== Ethics ===
+Astroethics refers to the contemplation and development of ethical standards for a variety of outer space issues, including questions of how to interact remotely or in close encounters and concerns not only humans' ethics but also ethics of non-human intelligences, including whether they all afford us rights (and which each or overall).
+Lewis White Beck notes that an analysis of the evolution of philosophical thought from ancient times into the modern era suggests that humanity is often comforted during periods of intense cultural transition by subtle archetypal ideas which are derived from firmly held religious, philosophical, ethical and existential belief systems. He includes mankind's search for extraterrestrial life as a manifestation of such beliefs and argues that even if humanity's search for extraterrestrial life proves to be unsuccessful in the short term, it may have longer term beneficial consequences by inspiring humanity to embrace a superior ethical paradigm.
+
+=== Ecological and biological-warfare impacts ===
+
+An extraterrestrial civilization might bring to Earth pathogens or invasive life forms that do not harm its own biosphere. Alien pathogens could decimate the human population, which would have no immunity to them, or they might use terrestrial livestock or plants as hosts, causing indirect harm to humans. Invasive organisms brought by extraterrestrial civilizations could cause great ecological harm because of the terrestrial biosphere's lack of defenses against them.
+On the other hand, pathogens and invasive species of extraterrestrial origin might differ enough from terrestrial organisms in their biology to have no adverse effects. Furthermore, pathogens and parasites on Earth are generally suited to only a small and exclusive set of environments, to which extraterrestrial pathogens would have had no opportunity to adapt.
+If an extraterrestrial civilization bearing malice towards humanity gained sufficient knowledge of terrestrial biology and weaknesses in the immune systems of terrestrial biota, it might be able to create extremely potent biological weapons. Even a civilization without malicious intent could inadvertently cause harm to humanity by not taking account of all the risks of their actions.
+According to Baum, even if an extraterrestrial civilization were to communicate using electromagnetic signals alone, it could send humanity information with which humans themselves could create lethal biological weapons.
+
+== See also ==
+
+Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
+Relative species abundance
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Dick, Steven J. (2015). The impact of discovering life beyond earth. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-10998-8.
+Ashkenazi, Michael (2016). What We Know About Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-44455-0.
+Vakoch, Douglas (2013). Astrobiology, History, and Society — Life Beyond Earth and the Impact of Discovery. Springer. ISBN 978-3-642-43540-9.
+
+== External links ==
+SETI Institute
+Cultural Aspects of SETI
+Introduction to ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence

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+
+Any person or organization detecting a signal should try to verify that it is likely to be of intelligent origin before announcing it.
+The discoverer of a signal should, for the purposes of independent verification, communicate with other signatories of the Declaration before making a public announcement, and should also inform their national authorities.
+Once a given astronomical observation has been determined to be a credible extraterrestrial signal, the astronomical community should be informed through the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams of the IAU. The Secretary-General of the United Nations and various other global scientific unions should also be informed.
+Following confirmation of an observation's extraterrestrial origin, news of the discovery should be made public. The discoverer has the right to make the first public announcement.
+All data confirming the discovery should be published to the international scientific community and stored in an accessible form as permanently as possible.
+Should evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence take the form of electromagnetic signals, the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) should be contacted, and may request in the next ITU Weekly Circular to minimize terrestrial use of the electromagnetic frequency bands in which the signal was detected.
+Neither the discoverer nor anyone else should respond to an observed extraterrestrial intelligence; doing so requires international agreement under separate procedures.
+The SETI Permanent Committee of the IAA and Commission 51 of the IAU should continually review procedures regarding detection of extraterrestrial intelligence and management of data related to such discoveries. A committee comprising members from various international scientific unions, and other bodies designated by the committee, should regulate continued SETI research.
+A separate "Proposed Agreement on the Sending of Communications to Extraterrestrial Intelligence" was subsequently created. It proposes an international commission, membership of which would be open to all interested nations, to be constituted on detection of extraterrestrial intelligence. This commission would decide whether to send a message to the extraterrestrial intelligence, and if so, would determine the contents of the message on the basis of principles such as justice, respect for cultural diversity, honesty, and respect for property and territory. The draft proposes to forbid the sending of any message by an individual nation or organization without the permission of the commission, and suggests that, if the detected intelligence poses a danger to human civilization, the United Nations Security Council should authorize any message to extraterrestrial intelligence. However, this proposal, like all others, has not been incorporated into national or international law.
+Paul Davies, a member of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, has stated that post-detection protocols, calling for international consultation before taking any major steps regarding the detection, are unlikely to be followed by astronomers, who would put the advancement of their careers over the word of a protocol that is not part of national or international law.
+
+== Contact scenarios and considerations ==
+Scientific literature and science fiction have put forward various models of the ways in which extraterrestrial and human civilizations might interact. Their predictions range widely, from sophisticated civilizations that could advance human civilization in many areas to imperial powers that might draw upon the forces necessary to subjugate humanity. Some theories suggest that an extraterrestrial civilization could be advanced enough to dispense with biology, living instead inside of advanced computers.
+The implications of discovery depend heavily on the level of aggressiveness of the civilization interacting with humanity, its ethics, and how much human and extraterrestrial biologies have in common. These factors may govern the quantity and type of dialogue that can take place.
+The question of whether contact is via signals from distant places or via probes or extraterrestrials in Earth's vicinity (or both) will also govern the magnitude of the long-term implications of contact.
+In the case of communication using electromagnetic signals, the long silence between the reception of one message and another would mean that the content of any message would particularly affect the consequences of contact (see also #Scientific and technological and #Political below), as would the extent of mutual comprehension.
+Concerning probes, a study suggested the first interstellar probe to transit between two civilizations is not likely to be the civilization's earliest (e.g. the ones sent first) but a more advanced one as (at least) the departure speed is thought to (likely) improve for at least some duration per each civilization, which e.g. may have implications for the type of probes to expect and the impacts of any probes sent earlier.
+
+=== Friendly civilizations ===
+Many writers have speculated on the ways in which a friendly civilization might interact with humankind. Albert Harrison, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Davis, thought that a highly advanced civilization might teach humanity such things as a physical theory of everything, how to use zero-point energy, or how to travel faster than light. They suggest that collaboration with such a civilization could initially be in the arts and humanities before moving to the hard sciences, and even that artists may spearhead collaboration. Seth D. Baum, of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, and others consider that the greater longevity of cooperative civilizations in comparison to uncooperative and aggressive ones might render extraterrestrial civilizations in general more likely to aid humanity. In contrast to these views, Paolo Musso, a member of the SETI Permanent Study Group of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, took the view that extraterrestrial civilizations possess, like humans, a morality driven not entirely by altruism but for individual benefit as well, thus leaving open the possibility that at least some extraterrestrial civilizations are hostile.

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+Futurist Allen Tough suggests that an extremely advanced extraterrestrial civilization, recalling its own past of war and plunder and knowing that it possesses superweapons that could destroy it, would be likely to try to help humans rather than to destroy them. He identifies three approaches that a friendly civilization might take to help humanity:
+Intervention only to avert catastrophe: this would involve occasional limited intervention to stop events that could destroy human civilization completely, such as nuclear war or asteroid impact.
+Advice and action with consent: under this approach, the extraterrestrials would be more closely involved in terrestrial affairs, advising world leaders and acting with their consent to protect against danger.
+Forcible corrective action: the extraterrestrials could require humanity to reduce major risks against its will, intending to help humans advance to the next stage of civilization.
+Tough considers advising and acting only with consent to be a more likely choice than the forceful option. While coercive aid may be possible, and advanced extraterrestrials would recognize their own practices as superior to those of humanity, it may be unlikely that this method would be used in cultural cooperation. Lemarchand suggests that instruction of a civilization in its "technological adolescence", such as humanity, would probably focus on morality and ethics rather than on science and technology, to ensure that the civilization did not destroy itself with technology it was not yet ready to use.
+According to Tough, it is unlikely that the avoidance of immediate dangers and prevention of future catastrophes would be conducted through radio, as these tasks would demand constant surveillance and quick action. However, cultural cooperation might take place through radio or a space probe in the Solar System, as radio waves could be used to communicate information about advanced technologies and cultures to humanity.
+Even if an ancient and advanced extraterrestrial civilization wished to help humanity, humans could suffer from a loss of identity and confidence due to the technological and cultural prowess of the extraterrestrial civilization. However, a friendly civilization may calibrate its contact with humanity in such a way as to minimize unintended consequences. Michael A. G. Michaud suggests that a friendly and advanced extraterrestrial civilization may even avoid all contact with an emerging intelligent species like humanity, to ensure that the less advanced civilization can develop naturally at its own pace; this is known as the zoo hypothesis.

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+
+=== Hostile civilizations ===
+Science fiction often depicts humans successfully repelling alien invasions, but scientists more often take the view that an extraterrestrial civilization with sufficient power to reach the Earth would be able to destroy human civilization or humanity with minimal effort. Operations that are enormous on a human scale, such as destroying all major population centers on a planet, bombarding a planet with deadly neutron radiation, or even traveling to another planetary system in order to lay waste to it, may be important tools for a hostile civilization.
+Deardorff speculates that a small proportion of the intelligent life forms in the galaxy may be aggressive, but the actual aggressiveness or benevolence of the civilizations would cover a wide spectrum, with some civilizations "policing" others. As among humans, civilizations may not be homogeneous and contain different factions or subgroups. According to Harrison and Dick, hostile extraterrestrial life may indeed be rare in the Universe, just as belligerent and autocratic nations on Earth have been the ones that lasted for the shortest periods of time, and humanity is seeing a shift away from these characteristics in its own sociopolitical systems. In addition, the causes of war may be diminished greatly for a civilization with access to the galaxy, as there are prodigious quantities of natural resources in space accessible without resort to violence.
+SETI researcher Carl Sagan believed that a civilization with the technological prowess needed to reach the stars and come to Earth must have transcended war to be able to avoid self-destruction. Representatives of such a civilization would treat humanity with dignity and respect, and humanity, with its relatively backward technology, would have no choice but to reciprocate. Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, disagrees, stating that the finite quantity of resources in the galaxy would cultivate aggression in any intelligent species, and that an explorer civilization that would want to contact humanity would be aggressive. Similarly, Ragbir Bhathal claimed that since the laws of evolution would be the same on another habitable planet as they are on Earth, an extremely advanced extraterrestrial civilization may have the motivation to colonize humanity in a similar manner to the European colonization of much of the rest of the world.
+Disputing these analyses, David Brin states that while an extraterrestrial civilization may have an imperative to act for no benefit to itself, it would be naïve to suggest that such a trait would be prevalent throughout the galaxy. Brin points to the fact that in many moral systems on Earth, such as the Aztec or Carthaginian one, non-military killing has been accepted and even "exalted" by society, and further mentions that such acts are not confined to humans but can be found throughout the animal kingdom.
+Baum et al. speculate that highly advanced civilizations are unlikely to come to Earth to enslave humans, as the achievement of their level of advancement would have required them to solve the problems of labor and resources by other means, such as creating a sustainable environment and using mechanized labor. Moreover, humans may be an unsuitable food source for extraterrestrials because of marked differences in biochemistry. For example, the chirality of molecules used by terrestrial biota may differ from those used by extraterrestrial beings. Douglas Vakoch argues that transmitting intentional signals does not increase the risk of an alien invasion, contrary to concerns raised by British cosmologist Stephen Hawking, because "any civilization that has the ability to travel between the stars can already pick up our accidental radio and TV leakage" at a distance of several hundred light-years. The easiest or most likely artificial signals from Earth to be detectable are brief pulses transmitted by anti-ballistic missile (ABM) early-warning and space-surveillance radars during the Cold War and later astronomical and military radars. Unlike the earliest and conventional radio- and television-broadcasting which has been claimed to be undetectable at short distances, such signals could be detected also from relatively distant receiver stations in certain regions.
+Politicians have also commented on the likely human reaction to contact with hostile species. In a 1987 speech at the 42d Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Ronald Reagan said, "I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world."

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+
+=== Equally advanced and more advanced civilizations ===
+ Robert Freitas speculated in 1978 that the technological advancement and energy usage of a civilization, measured either relative to another civilization or in absolute terms by its rating on the Kardashev scale, may play an important role in the result of extraterrestrial contact. Given the infeasibility of interstellar space flight for civilizations at a technological level similar to that of humanity, interactions between such civilizations would have to take place by radio. Because of the long transit times of radio waves between stars, such interactions would not lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations, nor any significant future interaction at all, between the two civilizations.
+According to Freitas, direct contact with civilizations significantly more advanced than humanity would have to take place within the Solar System, as only the more advanced society would have the resources and technology to cross interstellar space. Consequently, such contact could only be with civilizations rated as Type II or higher on the Kardashev scale, as Type I civilizations would be incapable of regular interstellar travel. Freitas expected that such interactions would be carefully planned by the more advanced civilization to avoid mass societal shock for humanity.
+However much planning an extraterrestrial civilization may do before contacting humanity, the humans may experience great shock and terror on their arrival, especially as they would lack any understanding of the contacting civilization. Ben Finney compares the situation to that of the tribespeople of New Guinea, an island that was settled fifty thousand years ago during the last glacial period but saw little contact with the outside world until the arrival of European colonial powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The huge difference between the indigenous stone-age society and the Europeans' technical civilization caused unexpected behaviors among the native populations known as cargo cults: to coax the gods into bringing them the technology that the Europeans possessed, the natives created wooden "radio stations" and "airstrips" as a form of sympathetic magic. Finney argues that humanity may misunderstand the true meaning of an extraterrestrial transmission to Earth, much as the people of New Guinea could not understand the source of modern goods and technologies. He concludes that the results of extraterrestrial contact will become known over the long term with rigorous study, rather than as fast, sharp events briefly making newspaper headlines.
+Billingham has suggested that a civilization which is far more technologically advanced than humanity is also likely to be culturally and ethically advanced, and would therefore be unlikely to conduct astroengineering projects that would harm human civilization. Such projects could include Dyson spheres, which completely enclose stars and capture all energy coming from them. Even if well within the capability of an advanced civilization and providing an enormous amount of energy, such a project would not be undertaken. For similar reasons, such civilizations would not readily give humanity the knowledge required to build such devices. Nevertheless, the existence of such capabilities would at least show that civilizations have survived "technological adolescence". Despite the caution that such an advanced civilization would exercise in dealing with the less mature human civilization, Sagan imagined that an advanced civilization might send those on Earth an Encyclopædia Galactica describing the sciences and cultures of many extraterrestrial societies.
+Whether an advanced extraterrestrial civilization would send humanity a decipherable message is a matter of debate in itself. Sagan argued that a highly advanced extraterrestrial civilization would bear in mind that they were communicating with a relatively primitive one and therefore would try to ensure that the receiving civilization would be able to understand the message. Marvin Minsky believed that aliens might think similarly to humans because of shared constraints, permitting communication. Arguing against this view, astronomer Guillermo Lemarchand stated that an advanced civilization would probably encrypt a message with high information content, such as an Encyclopædia Galactica, in order to ensure that only other ethically advanced civilizations would be able to understand it. Douglas Vakoch assumes it may take some time to decode any message, telling ABC News that "I don't think we're going to understand immediately what they have to say." "There's going to be a lot of guesswork in trying to interpret another civilization," he told Science Friday, adding that "in some ways, any message we get from an extraterrestrial will be like a cosmic Rorschach ink blot test."
+
+=== Interstellar groups of civilizations ===

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+Given the age of the galaxy, Harrison surmises that "galactic clubs" might exist, groupings of civilizations from across the galaxy. Such clubs could begin as loose confederations or alliances, eventually developing into powerful unions of many civilizations. If humanity could enter into a dialogue with one extraterrestrial civilization, it might be able to join such a galactic club. As more extraterrestrial civilizations, or unions thereof, are found, these could also become assimilated into such a club. Sebastian von Hoerner has suggested that entry into a galactic club may be a way for humanity to handle the culture shock arising from contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.
+Whether a broad spectrum of civilizations from many places in the galaxy would even be able to cooperate is disputed by Michaud, who states that civilizations with huge differences in the technologies and resources at their command "may not consider themselves even remotely equal". It is unlikely that humanity would meet the basic requirements for membership at its current low level of technological advancement. A galactic club may, William Hamilton speculates, set extremely high entrance requirements that are unlikely to be met by less advanced civilizations.
+When two Canadian astronomers argued that they potentially discovered 234 extraterrestrial civilizations through analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database, Douglas Vakoch doubted their explanation for their findings, noting that it would be unusual for all of these stars to pulse at exactly the same frequency unless they were part of a coordinated network: "If you take a step back," he said, "that would mean you have 234 independent stars that all decided to transmit the exact same way."
+Michaud suggests that an interstellar grouping of civilizations might take the form of an empire, which need not necessarily be a force for evil, but may provide for peace and security throughout its jurisdiction. Owing to the distances between the stars, such an empire would not necessarily maintain control solely by military force, but may rather tolerate local cultures and institutions to the extent that these would not pose a threat to the central imperial authority. Such tolerance may, as has happened historically on Earth, extend to allowing nominal self-rule of specific regions by existing institutions, while maintaining that area as a puppet or client state to accomplish the aims of the imperial power. However, particularly advanced powers may use methods, including faster-than-light travel, to make centralized administration more effective.
+In contrast to the belief that an extraterrestrial civilization would want to establish an empire, Ćirković proposes that an extraterrestrial civilization would maintain equilibrium rather than expand outward. In such an equilibrium, a civilization would only colonize a small number of stars, aiming to maximize efficiency rather than to expand massive and unsustainable imperial structures. This contrasts with the classic Kardashev Type III civilization, which has access to the energy output of an entire galaxy and is not subject to any limits on its future expansion. According to this view, advanced civilizations may not resemble the classic examples in science fiction, but might more closely reflect the small, independent Greek city-states, with an emphasis on cultural rather than territorial growth.
+
+=== Extraterrestrial artifacts ===

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+An extraterrestrial civilization may choose to communicate with humanity by means of artifacts or probes rather than by radio, for various reasons. While probes may take a long time to reach the Solar System, once there they would be able to hold a sustained dialogue that would be impossible using radio from hundreds or thousands of light-years away. Radio would be completely unsuitable for surveillance and continued monitoring of a civilization, and should an extraterrestrial civilization wish to perform these activities on humanity, artifacts may be the only option other than to send large, crewed spacecraft to the Solar System.
+Although faster-than-light travel has been seriously considered by physicists such as Miguel Alcubierre, Tough speculates that the enormous amount of energy required to achieve such speeds under currently proposed mechanisms means that robotic probes traveling at conventional speeds will still have an advantage for various applications. 2013 research at NASA's Johnson Space Center, however, shows that faster-than-light travel with the Alcubierre drive requires dramatically less energy than previously thought, needing only about 1 tonne of exotic mass-energy to move a spacecraft at 10 times the speed of light, in contrast to previous estimates that stated that only a Jupiter-mass object would contain sufficient energy to power a faster-than-light spacecraft.
+According to Tough, an extraterrestrial civilization might want to send various types of information to humanity by means of artifacts, such as an Encyclopædia Galactica, containing the wisdom of countless extraterrestrial cultures, or perhaps an invitation to engage in diplomacy with them. A civilization that sees itself on the brink of decline might use the abilities it still possesses to send probes throughout the galaxy, with its cultures, values, religions, sciences, technologies, and laws, so that these may not die along with the civilization itself.
+Freitas finds numerous reasons why interstellar probes may be a preferred method of communication among extraterrestrial civilizations wishing to make contact with Earth. A civilization aiming to learn more about the distribution of life within the galaxy might, he speculates, send probes to a large number of star systems, rather than using radio, as one cannot ensure a response by radio but can (he says) ensure that probes will return to their sender with data on the star systems they survey. Furthermore, probes would enable the surveying of non-intelligent populations, or those not yet capable of space navigation (like humans before the 20th century), as well as intelligent populations that might not wish to provide information about themselves and their planets to extraterrestrial civilizations. In addition, the greater energy required to send living beings rather than a robotic probe would, according to Michaud, be only used for purposes such as a one-way migration.
+Freitas points out that probes, unlike the interstellar radio waves commonly targeted by SETI searches, could store information for long, perhaps geological, timescales, and could emit strong radio signals unambiguously recognizable as being of intelligent origin, rather than being dismissed as a UFO or a natural phenomenon. Probes could also modify any signal they send to suit the system they were in, which would be impossible for a radio transmission originating from outside the target star system. Moreover, the use of small robotic probes with widely distributed beacons in individual systems, rather than a small number of powerful, centralized beacons, would provide a security advantage to the civilization using them. Rather than revealing the location of a radio beacon powerful enough to signal the whole galaxy and risk such a powerful device being compromised, decentralized beacons installed on robotic probes need not reveal any information that an extraterrestrial civilization prefers others not to have.
+Given the age of the Milky Way galaxy, an ancient extraterrestrial civilization may have existed and sent probes to the Solar System millions or even billions of years before the evolution of Homo sapiens. Thus, a probe sent may have been nonfunctional for millions of years before humans learn of its existence. Such a "dead" probe would not pose an imminent threat to humanity, but would prove that interstellar flight is possible. However, if an active probe were to be discovered, humans would react much more strongly than they would to the discovery of a probe that has long since ceased to function.
+
+== Further implications of contact ==
+
+=== Theological ===

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+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_cultural_impact_of_extraterrestrial_contact"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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+---
+
+The confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence could have a profound impact on religious doctrines, potentially causing theologians to reinterpret scriptures to accommodate the new discoveries. However, a survey of people with many different religious beliefs indicated that their faith would not be affected by the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, and another study, conducted by Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, shows that most people would not consider their religious beliefs superseded by it. Surveys of religious leaders indicate that only a small percentage are concerned that the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence might fundamentally contradict the views of the adherents of their religion. Gabriel Funes, the chief astronomer of the Vatican Observatory and a papal adviser on science, has stated that the Catholic Church would be likely to welcome extraterrestrial visitors warmly. There are many UFO religions such as Raëlism. Astronomer David Weintraub suggests unambiguous contact would result in more of these kinds of beliefs and communities, saying "There undoubtedly would be people who would find this as an opportunity or an excuse to call attention to themselves for whatever reason and there would be new religions".
+Contact with extraterrestrial intelligence would not be completely inconsequential for religion. The Peters study showed that most non-religious people, and a significant minority of religious people, believe that the world could face a religious crisis, even if their own beliefs were unaffected. Contact with extraterrestrial intelligence would be most likely to cause a problem for western religions, in particular traditionalist Christianity, because of the geocentric nature of western faiths. The discovery of extraterrestrial life would not contradict basic conceptions of God, however, and seeing that science has challenged established dogma in the past, for example with the theory of evolution, it is likely that existing religions will adapt similarly to the new circumstances. Douglas Vakoch argues that it is not likely that the discovery of extraterrestrial life will impact religious beliefs. In the view of Musso, a global religious crisis would be unlikely even for Abrahamic faiths, as the studies of himself and others on Christianity, the most "anthropocentric" religion, see no conflict between that religion and the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. In addition, the cultural and religious values of extraterrestrial species would likely be shared over centuries if contact is to occur by radio, meaning that rather than causing a huge shock to humanity, such information would be viewed much as archaeologists and historians view ancient artifacts and texts.
+Funes speculates that a decipherable message from extraterrestrial intelligence could initiate an interstellar exchange of knowledge in various disciplines, including whatever religions an extraterrestrial civilization may host. Billingham further suggests that an extremely advanced and friendly extraterrestrial civilization might put an end to present-day religious conflicts and lead to greater religious toleration worldwide. On the other hand, Jill Tarter puts forward the view that contact with extraterrestrial intelligence might eliminate religion as we know it and introduce humanity to an all-encompassing faith. Vakoch doubts that humans would be inclined to adopt extraterrestrial religions, telling ABC News "I think religion meets very human needs, and unless extraterrestrials can provide a replacement for it, I don't think religion is going to go away," and adding, "if there are incredibly advanced civilizations with a belief in God, I don't think Richard Dawkins will start believing."
+
+=== Political ===

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+title: "Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact"
+chunk: 10/12
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_cultural_impact_of_extraterrestrial_contact"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:45.687876+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+According to experts such as Niklas Hedman, executive director of UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, there are "no international agreements or mechanisms in place for how humanity would handle an encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence".
+Tim Folger speculates that news of radio contact with an extraterrestrial civilization would prove impossible to suppress and would travel rapidly, though Cold War scientific literature on the subject contradicts this. Media coverage of the discovery would probably die down quickly, though, as scientists began to decipher the message and learn its true impact. Different branches of government (for example legislative, executive, and judiciary) may pursue their own policies, potentially giving rise to power struggles. Even in the event of a single contact with no follow-up, radio contact may prompt fierce disagreements as to which bodies have the authority to represent humanity as a whole. Michaud hypothesizes that the fear arising from direct contact may cause nation-states to put aside their conflicts and work together for the common defense of humanity.
+Apart from the question of who would represent the Earth as a whole, contact could create other international problems, such as the degree of involvement of governments foreign to the one whose radio astronomers received the signal. The United Nations discussed various issues of foreign relations immediately before the launch of the Voyager probes, which in 2012 left the Solar System carrying a golden record in case they are found by extraterrestrial intelligence. Among the issues discussed were what messages would best represent humanity, what format they should take, how to convey the cultural history of the Earth, and what international groups should be formed to study extraterrestrial intelligence in greater detail.
+According to Luca Codignola of the University of Genoa, contact with a powerful extraterrestrial civilization is comparable to occasions where one powerful civilization destroyed another, such as the arrival of Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés into the Americas and the subsequent destruction of the indigenous civilizations and their ways of life. However, the applicability of such a model to contact with extraterrestrial civilizations, and that specific interpretation of the arrival of the European colonists to the Americas, have been disputed. Even so, any large difference between the power of an extraterrestrial civilization and our own could be demoralizing and potentially cause or accelerate the collapse of human society. Being discovered by a "superior" extraterrestrial civilization, and continued contact with it, might have psychological effects that could destroy a civilization, as is claimed to have happened in the past on Earth.
+Even in the absence of close contact between humanity and extraterrestrials, high-information messages from an extraterrestrial civilization to humanity have the potential to cause a great cultural shock. Sociologist Donald Tarter has conjectured that knowledge of extraterrestrial culture and theology has the potential to compromise human allegiance to existing organizational structures and institutions. The cultural shock of meeting an extraterrestrial civilization may be spread over decades or even centuries if an extraterrestrial message to humanity is extremely difficult to decipher.
+A study suggests there may be a threat from the perception by state actors (or their subsequent actions based on this perception) that other state-level actors could seek to gain and achieve an information monopoly on communications with an extraterrestrial intelligence. It recommends transparency and data sharing, further development of postdetection protocols (see above), and better education of policymakers in this space.
+
+=== Legal ===
+
+Contact with extraterrestrial civilizations would raise legal questions, such as the rights of the extraterrestrial beings. An extraterrestrial arriving on Earth might only have the protection of animal cruelty statutes. Much as various classes of human being, such as women, children, and indigenous people, were initially denied human rights, so might extraterrestrial beings, who could therefore be legally owned and killed. If such a species were not to be treated as a legal animal, there would arise the challenge of defining the boundary between a legal person and a legal animal, considering the numerous factors that constitute intelligence. Some ethicists (see below) are considering "how the rights of a completely unfamiliar alien species would fit into our legal and ethical frameworks" and there is a case for "human rights" to evolve into "sentient rights".
+Freitas considers that even if an extraterrestrial being were to be afforded legal personhood, problems of nationality and immigration would arise. An extraterrestrial being would not have a legally recognized earthly citizenship, and drastic legal measures might be required in order to account for the technically illegal immigration of extraterrestrial individuals.
+If contact were to take place through electromagnetic signals, these issues would not arise. Rather, issues relating to patent and copyright law regarding who, if anyone, has rights to the information from the extraterrestrial civilization would be the primary legal problem.

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+title: "Process philosophy"
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+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:47.022286+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Process philosophy (also ontology of becoming or processism) is an approach in philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only real experience of everyday living. In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory (as argued by Parmenides) or accidental (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the most fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.
+Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, classical ontology has posited ordinary world reality as constituted of enduring substances, to which transient processes are ontologically subordinate, if they are not denied. If Socrates changes, becomes sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, and devoid of primary reality, whereas the substance is essential.
+In physics, Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.
+Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in continental philosophy departments. However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus continental methods in contemporary philosophy.
+
+== History ==
+
+=== In ancient Greek thought ===
+Heraclitus proclaimed that the basic nature of all things is change; he posits strife, ἡ ἔρις hē eris ("strife, conflict"), as the underlying basis of all reality, which is itself thus defined by change.
+The quotation from Heraclitus appears in Plato's Cratylus twice; first, in 401d:
+
+τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδένTa onta ienai te panta kai menein ouden"All entities move and nothing remains still."and, second, in 402a:
+"πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει" καὶ "δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης"Panta chōrei kai ouden menei kai dis es ton auton potamon ouk an embaies
+"Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream."
+Heraclitus considered fire to be the most fundamental element:
+
+"All things are an interchange for fire, and fire for all things, just like goods for gold and gold for goods."
+The following is an interpretation of Heraclitus's concepts in modern terms, as understood by Nicholas Rescher:
+
+"...reality is not a constellation of things at all, but one of processes.  The fundamental 'stuff' of the world is not material substance, but volatile flux, namely 'fire', and all things are versions thereof (puros tropai).  Process is fundamental: the river is not an object, but a continuing flow; the sun is not a thing, but an enduring fire.  Everything is a matter of process, of activity, of change (panta rhei)."
+
+=== Nietzsche and Kierkegaard ===
+In his written works, Friedrich Nietzsche proposed what has been regarded as a philosophy of becoming that encompasses a "naturalistic doctrine intended to counter the metaphysical preoccupation with being", and a theory of "the incessant shift of perspectives and interpretations in a world that lacks a grounding essence".
+Søren Kierkegaard posed questions of individual becoming in Christianity which were opposed to the ancient Greek philosophers' focus on the indifferent becoming of the cosmos. However, he established as much of a focus on aporia as Heraclitus and others previously had, such as in his concept of the leap of faith which marks an individual becoming. As well as this, Kierkegaard opposed his philosophy to Hegel's system of philosophy approaching becoming and difference for what he saw as a "dialectical conflation of becoming and rationality", making the system take on the same trait of motionlessness as Parmenides' system.
+
+=== Twentieth century ===
+In the early twentieth century, the philosophy of mathematics was undertaken to develop mathematics as an airtight, axiomatic system in which every truth could be derived logically from a set of axioms. In the foundations of mathematics, this project is variously understood as logicism or as part of the formalist program of David Hilbert. Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell attempted to complete, or at least facilitate, this program with their seminal book Principia Mathematica, which purported to build a logically consistent set theory on which to found mathematics. After this, Whitehead extended his interest to natural science, which he held needed a deeper philosophical basis. He intuited that natural science was struggling to overcome a traditional ontology of timeless material substances that does not suit natural phenomena. According to Whitehead, material is more properly understood as 'process'. 

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+title: "Process philosophy"
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+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:47.022286+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Whitehead's Process and Reality ==
+Alfred North Whitehead began teaching and writing on process and metaphysics when he joined Harvard University in 1924.
+In his book Science and the Modern World (1925), Whitehead noted that the human intuitions and experiences of science, aesthetics, ethics, and religion influence the worldview of a community, but that in the last several centuries science dominates Western culture. Whitehead sought a holistic, comprehensive cosmology that provides a systematic descriptive theory of the world which can be used for the diverse human intuitions gained through ethical, aesthetic, religious, and scientific experiences, and not just the scientific.
+In 1929, Whitehead produced the most famous work of process philosophy, Process and Reality, continuing the work begun by Hegel but describing a more complex and fluid dynamic ontology.
+Process thought describes truth as "movement" in and through substance (Hegelian truth), rather than substances as fixed concepts or "things" (Aristotelian truth). Since Whitehead, process thought is distinguished from Hegel in that it describes entities that arise or coalesce in becoming, rather than being simply dialectically determined from prior posited determinates. These entities are referred to as complexes of occasions of experience. It is also distinguished in being not necessarily conflictual or oppositional in operation. Process may be integrative, destructive or both together, allowing for aspects of interdependence, influence, and confluence, and addressing coherence in universal as well as particular developments, i.e., those aspects not befitting Hegel's system. Additionally, instances of determinate occasions of experience, while always ephemeral, are nonetheless seen as important to define the type and continuity of those occasions of experience that flow from or relate to them.
+Whitehead's influences were not restricted to philosophers or physicists or mathematicians. He was influenced by the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), whom he credits along with William James and John Dewey in the preface to Process and Reality.
+
+=== Process metaphysics ===
+For Whitehead, metaphysics is about logical frameworks for the conduct of discussions of the character of the world. It is not directly and immediately about facts of nature, but only indirectly so, in that its task is to explicitly formulate the language and conceptual presuppositions that are used to describe the facts of nature. Whitehead thinks that discovery of previously unknown facts of nature can in principle call for reconstruction of metaphysics.
+The process metaphysics elaborated in Process and Reality posits an ontology which is based on the two kinds of existence of an entity, that of actual entity and that of abstract entity or abstraction, also called 'object'.
+Actual entity is a term coined by Whitehead to refer to the entities that really exist in the natural world. For Whitehead, actual entities are spatiotemporally extended events or processes. An actual entity is how something is happening, and how its happening is related to other actual entities. The actually existing world is a multiplicity of actual entities overlapping one another.
+The ultimate abstract principle of actual existence for Whitehead is creativity. Creativity is a term coined by Whitehead to show a power in the world that allows the presence of an actual entity, a new actual entity, and multiple actual entities. Creativity is the principle of novelty. It is manifest in what can be called singular causality, which term may be contrasted with the term nomic causality. An example of singular causation might be that "I woke this morning because my alarm clock rang"; an example of nomic causation is that "alarm clocks generally wake people in the morning." Aristotle recognizes singular causality as efficient causality. For Whitehead, there are many contributory singular causes for an event; for example, a further contributory singular cause of someone being awoken by an alarm clock on a particular morning may be that they were sleeping next to it (till it rang).
+An actual entity is a general philosophical term for an utterly determinate and completely concrete individual particular of the actually existing world or universe of changeable entities considered in terms of singular causality, about which categorical statements can be made. Whitehead's most far-reaching and radical contribution to metaphysics is his invention of a better way of choosing the actual entities. Whitehead chooses a way of defining the actual entities that makes them all alike, qua actual entities, with a single exception.
+For example, for Aristotle, the actual entities were the substances, such as Socrates. Besides Aristotle's ontology of substances, another example of an ontology that posits actual entities is in the monads of Leibniz, which are said to be 'windowless'.

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+title: "Process philosophy"
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+category: "reference"
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+---
+
+==== Whitehead's 'actual entities' ====
+For Whitehead's ontology of processes as defining the world, the actual entities exist as the only fundamental elements of reality.
+The actual entities are of two kinds, temporal and atemporal.
+With one exception, all actual entities for Whitehead are temporal and are occasions of experience (which are not to be confused with consciousness). An entity that people commonly think of as a simple concrete object, or that Aristotle would think of as a substance, is, in this ontology, considered to be a temporally serial composite of indefinitely many overlapping occasions of experience. A human being is thus composed of indefinitely many occasions of experience.
+The one exceptional actual entity is at once both temporal and atemporal: God. He is objectively immortal, as well as being immanent in the world. He is objectified in each temporal actual entity; but He is not an eternal object.
+The occasions of experience are of four grades. The first grade comprises processes in a physical vacuum such as the propagation of an electromagnetic wave or gravitational influence across empty space. The occasions of experience of the second grade involve just inanimate matter; "matter" being the composite overlapping of occasions of experience from the previous grade. The occasions of experience of the third grade involve living organisms. Occasions of experience of the fourth grade involve experience in the mode of presentational immediacy, which means more or less what are often called the qualia of subjective experience. So far as we know, experience in the mode of presentational immediacy occurs in only more evolved animals. That some occasions of experience involve experience in the mode of presentational immediacy is the one and only reason why Whitehead makes the occasions of experience his actual entities; for the actual entities must be of the ultimately general kind. Consequently, it is inessential that an occasion of experience have an aspect in the mode of presentational immediacy; occasions of the grades one, two, and three, lack that aspect.
+There is no mind-matter duality in this ontology, because "mind" is simply seen as an abstraction from an occasion of experience which has also a material aspect, which is of course simply another abstraction from it; thus the mental aspect and the material aspect are abstractions from one and the same concrete occasion of experience. The brain is part of the body, both being abstractions of a kind known as persistent physical objects, neither being actual entities. Though not recognized by Aristotle, there is biological evidence, written about by Galen, that the human brain is an essential seat of human experience in the mode of presentational immediacy. We may say that the brain has a material and a mental aspect, all three being abstractions from their indefinitely many constitutive occasions of experience, which are actual entities.
+
+==== Time, causality, and process ====
+Inherent in each actual entity is its respective dimension of time. Potentially, each Whiteheadean occasion of experience is causally consequential on every other occasion of experience that precedes it in time, and has as its causal consequences every other occasion of experience that follows it in time; thus it has been said that Whitehead's occasions of experience are 'all window', in contrast to Leibniz's 'windowless' monads. In time defined relative to it, each occasion of experience is causally influenced by prior occasions of experiences, and causally influences future occasions of experience. An occasion of experience consists of a process of prehending other occasions of experience, reacting to them. This is the process in process philosophy.
+Such process is never deterministic. Consequently, free will is essential and inherent to the universe.
+The causal outcomes obey the usual well-respected rule that the causes precede the effects in time. Some pairs of processes cannot be connected by cause-and-effect relations, and they are said to be spatially separated. This is in perfect agreement with the viewpoint of the Einstein theory of special relativity and with the Minkowski geometry of spacetime. It is clear that Whitehead respected these ideas, as may be seen for example in his 1919 book An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge as well as in Process and Reality. In this view, time is relative to an inertial reference frame, different reference frames defining different versions of time.
+
+==== Atomicity ====
+The actual entities, the occasions of experience, are logically atomic in the sense that an occasion of experience cannot be cut and separated into two other occasions of experience. This kind of logical atomicity is perfectly compatible with indefinitely many spatio-temporal overlaps of occasions of experience. One can explain this kind of atomicity by saying that an occasion of experience has an internal causal structure that could not be reproduced in each of the two complementary sections into which it might be cut. Nevertheless, an actual entity can completely contain each of indefinitely many other actual entities.
+Another aspect of the atomicity of occasions of experience is that they do not change. An actual entity is what it is. An occasion of experience can be described as a process of change, but it is itself unchangeable.
+The atomicity of the actual entities is of a simply logical or philosophical kind, thoroughly different in concept from the natural kind of atomicity that describes the atoms of physics and chemistry.

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+title: "Process philosophy"
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+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy"
+category: "reference"
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+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:47.022286+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+==== Topology ====
+Whitehead's theory of extension was concerned with the spatio-temporal features of his occasions of experience. Fundamental to both Newtonian and to quantum theoretical mechanics is the concept of momentum. The measurement of a momentum requires a finite spatiotemporal extent. Because it has no finite spatiotemporal extent, a single point of Minkowski space cannot be an occasion of experience, but is an abstraction from an infinite set of overlapping or contained occasions of experience, as explained in Process and Reality. Though the occasions of experience are atomic, they are not necessarily separate in extension, spatiotemporally, from one another. Indefinitely many occasions of experience can overlap in Minkowski space.
+Nexus is a term coined by Whitehead to show the network actual entity from the universe. In the universe of actual entities spread actual entity. Actual entities are clashing with each other and form other actual entities. The birth of an actual entity based on an actual entity, actual entities around him referred to as nexus.
+An example of a nexus of temporally overlapping occasions of experience is what Whitehead calls an enduring physical object, which corresponds closely with an Aristotelian substance. An enduring physical object has a temporally earliest and a temporally last member. Every member (apart from the earliest) of such a nexus is a causal consequence of the earliest member of the nexus, and every member (apart from the last) of such a nexus is a causal antecedent of the last member of the nexus. There are indefinitely many other causal antecedents and consequences of the enduring physical object, which overlap, but are not members, of the nexus. No member of the nexus is spatially separate from any other member. Within the nexus are indefinitely many continuous streams of overlapping nexūs, each stream including the earliest and the last member of the enduring physical object. Thus an enduring physical object, like an Aristotelian substance, undergoes changes and adventures during the course of its existence.
+In some contexts, especially in the theory of relativity in physics, the word 'event' refers to a single point in Minkowski or in Riemannian space-time. A point event is not a process in the sense of Whitehead's metaphysics. Neither is a countable sequence or array of points. A Whiteheadian process is most importantly characterized by extension in space-time, marked by a continuum of uncountably many points in a Minkowski or a Riemannian space-time. The word 'event', indicating a Whiteheadian actual entity, is not being used in the sense of a point event.
+
+==== Whitehead's abstractions ====
+Whitehead's abstractions are conceptual entities that are abstracted from or derived from and founded upon his actual entities. Abstractions are themselves not actual entities. They are the only entities that can be real but are not actual entities. This statement is one form of Whitehead's 'ontological principle'.
+An abstraction is a conceptual entity that refers to more than one single actual entity. Whitehead's ontology refers to importantly structured collections of actual entities as nexuses of actual entities. Collection of actual entities into a nexus emphasizes some aspect of those entities, and that emphasis is an abstraction, because it means that some aspects of the actual entities are emphasized or dragged away from their actuality, while other aspects are de-emphasized or left out or left behind.
+'Eternal object' is a term coined by Whitehead. It is an abstraction, a possibility, or pure potential. It can be ingredient into some actual entity. It is a principle that can give a particular form to an actual entity.
+Whitehead admitted indefinitely many eternal objects. An example of an eternal object is a number, such as the number 'two'. Whitehead held that eternal objects are abstractions of a very high degree of abstraction. Many abstractions, including eternal objects, are potential ingredients of processes.
+
+==== Relation between actual entities and abstractions stated in the ontological principle ====
+For Whitehead, besides its temporal generation by the actual entities which are its contributory causes, a process may be considered as a concrescence of abstract ingredient eternal objects. God enters into every temporal actual entity.
+Whitehead's ontological principle is that whatever reality pertains to an abstraction is derived from the actual entities upon which it is founded or of which it is comprised.
+
+==== Causation and concrescence of a process ====
+Concrescence is a term coined by Whitehead for the process of a new occasion manifesting as "fully actual"—i.e., becoming concrete—and, having completed this process of actualization (achieving satisfaction, in his terms), in turn becoming an objective datum for successor occasions. The concretion process can be regarded as a process of subjectification.
+Datum is a term coined by Whitehead to show the different variants of information possessed by actual entity. In process philosophy, each datum is obtained through the events of concrescence.
+
+== Commentary on Whitehead and on process philosophy ==
+Whitehead is not an idealist in the strict sense. Whitehead's thought may be regarded as related to the idea of panpsychism (also known as panexperientialism, because of Whitehead's emphasis on experience).
+
+=== On God ===
+Whitehead's philosophy is complex and nuanced regarding the concept of "God". In Process and Reality: Corrected Edition (1978), the editors elaborate upon Whitehead's view of the concept:
+
+He is the unconditioned actuality of conceptual feeling at the base of things; so that by reason of this primordial actuality, there is an order in the relevance of eternal objects to the process of creation. [...] The particularities of the actual world presuppose it; while it merely presupposes the general metaphysical character of creative advance, of which it is the primordial exemplification.
+Process philosophy might be considered, according to some theistic forms of religion, to give God a special place in the universe of occasions of experience. Regarding Whitehead's use of the term "occasions" in reference to "God", Process and Reality: Corrected Edition explains:

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+title: "Process philosophy"
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+
+'Actual entities' – also termed 'actual occasions' – are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are gradations of importance, and diversities of function, yet in the principles which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level. The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.
+It also can be assumed, within some forms of theology, that a God encompasses all the other occasions of experience, yet also transcends them; it might, therefore, be argued that Whitehead endorses some form of panentheism. Since (as it is argued in many theologies) "free will" is inherent to the nature of the universe, Whitehead's God is not omnipotent in Whitehead's metaphysics. God's role is to offer enhanced occasions of experience. God participates in the evolution of the universe by offering possibilities, which may be accepted or rejected. Whitehead's thinking here has given rise to process theology, whose prominent advocates include Charles Hartshorne, John B. Cobb, Jr., and Hans Jonas (with the latter being influenced by the—non-theological—philosopher Martin Heidegger as well). However, other process philosophers have questioned Whitehead's theology, seeing it as a regressive Platonism.
+Whitehead enumerated three essential natures of God. First, the primordial nature of God consists of all potentialities of existence for actual occasions, which Whitehead dubbed eternal objects; God can offer possibilities by ordering the relevance of eternal objects. Second, the consequent nature of God prehends everything that happens in reality; as such, God experiences all of reality in a sentient manner. Third and last, the superjective nature is the way in which God's synthesis becomes a sense-datum for other actual entities; in some sense, God is prehended by existing actual entities.
+
+== Legacy and applications ==
+
+=== Biology ===
+In plant morphology, Rolf Sattler developed a process morphology (dynamic morphology) that overcomes the structure/process (or structure/function) dualism that is commonly taken for granted in biology. According to process morphology, structures such as leaves of plants do not have processes, they are processes.
+In evolution and in development, the nature of the changes of biological objects are considered by many authors to be more radical than in physical systems. In biology, changes are not just changes of state in a pre-given space, instead the space and more generally the mathematical structures required to understand object change over time.
+
+=== Ecology ===
+With its perspective that everything is interconnected, that all life has value, and that non-human entities are also experiencing subjects, process philosophy has played an important role in discourse on ecology and sustainability. The first book to connect process philosophy with environmental ethics was John B. Cobb, Jr.'s 1971 work, Is It Too Late: A Theology of Ecology. In a more recent book (2018) edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Wm. Andrew Schwartz, Putting Philosophy to Work: Toward an Ecological Civilization contributors explicitly explore the ways in which process philosophy can be put to work to address the most urgent issues facing our world today, by contributing to a transition toward an ecological civilization. That book emerged from the largest international conference held on the theme of ecological civilization (Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization) which was organized by the Center for Process Studies in June 2015. The conference brought together roughly 2,000 participants from around the world and featured such leaders in the environmental movement as Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva, John B. Cobb, Jr., Wes Jackson, and Sheri Liao. The notion of ecological civilization is often affiliated with the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead—especially in China.
+
+=== Mathematics ===
+
+In the philosophy of mathematics, some of Whitehead's ideas re-emerged in combination with cognitivism as the cognitive science of mathematics and embodied mind theses.
+Somewhat earlier, exploration of mathematical practice and quasi-empiricism in mathematics from the 1950s to 1980s had sought alternatives to metamathematics in social behaviours around mathematics itself: for instance, Paul Erdős's simultaneous belief in Platonism and a single "big book" in which all proofs existed, combined with his personal obsessive need or decision to collaborate with the widest possible number of other mathematicians. The process, rather than the outcomes, seemed to drive his explicit behaviour and odd use of language, as if the synthesis of Erdős and collaborators in seeking proofs, creating sense-datum for other mathematicians, was itself the expression of a divine will. Certainly, Erdős behaved as if nothing else in the world mattered, including money or love, as emphasized in his biography The Man Who Loved Only Numbers.
+
+=== Medicine ===
+
+Several fields of science and especially medicine seem  to make liberal use of ideas in process philosophy, notably the theory of pain and healing of the late 20th century. The philosophy of medicine began to deviate somewhat from scientific method and an emphasis on repeatable results in the very late 20th century by embracing population thinking, and a more pragmatic approach to issues in public health, environmental health, and especially mental health. In this latter field, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Michel Foucault were instrumental in moving medicine away from emphasis on "cures" and towards concepts of individuals in balance with their society, both of which are changing, and against which no benchmarks or finished "cures" were very likely to be measurable.
+
+=== Psychology ===

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+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+In psychology, the subject of imagination was again explored more extensively since Whitehead, and the question of feasibility or "eternal objects" of thought became central to the impaired theory of mind explorations that framed postmodern cognitive science. A biological understanding of the most eternal object, that being the emerging of similar but independent cognitive apparatus, led to an obsession with the process "embodiment", that being, the emergence of these cognitions. Like Whitehead's God, especially as elaborated in J. J. Gibson's perceptual psychology emphasizing affordances, by ordering the relevance of eternal objects (especially the cognitions of other such actors), the world becomes. Or, it becomes simple enough for human beings to begin to make choices, and to prehend what happens as a result. These experiences may be summed in some sense but can only approximately be shared, even among very similar cognitions with identical DNA. An early explorer of this view was Alan Turing who sought to prove the limits of expressive complexity of human genes in the late 1940s, to put bounds on the complexity of human intelligence and so assess the feasibility of artificial intelligence emerging. Since 2000, Process Psychology has progressed as an independent academic and therapeutic discipline: In 2000, Michel Weber created the Whitehead Psychology Nexus: an open forum dedicated to the cross-examination of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and the various facets of the contemporary psychological field.
+
+=== Philosophy of movement ===
+The philosophy of movement is a sub-area within process philosophy that treats processes as movements. It studies processes as flows, folds, and fields in historical patterns of centripetal, centrifugal, tensional, and elastic motion. See Thomas Nail's philosophy of movement and process materialism.
+
+== See also ==
+Concepts
+Actual idealism
+Anicca, the Buddhist doctrine that all is "transient, evanescent, inconstant"
+Panta rhei, Heraclitus's concept that "everything flows"
+Dialectic
+Dialectical monism
+Elisionism
+Holomovement
+Pancreativism
+Salishan languages#Nounlessness
+Speculative realism
+People
+John B. Cobb
+David Ray Griffin
+Arthur Peacocke
+Michel Weber
+Arran Gare
+Joseph A. Bracken
+Milič Čapek
+Wilfrid Sellars
+Wilmon Henry Sheldon
+Thomas Nail
+Iain McGilchrist
+Eugene Gendlin
+Rein Raud
+Charles Hartshorne
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== References ==
+
+== External links ==
+Academia pages of the Center for Philosophical Practice.
+Seibt, Johanna. "Process Philosophy". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 1095-5054. OCLC 429049174.
+Process philosophy at PhilPapers
+Process philosophy at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
+Hustwit, Jeremy R. "Process philosophy". In Fieser, James; Dowden, Bradley (eds.). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002. OCLC 37741658.
+Whitehead Research Project
+Process and Reality. Part V. Final Interpretation
+Wolfgang Sohst: Prozessontologie. Ein systematischer Entwurf der Entstehung von Existenz (Berlin 2009)
+Critique of a Metaphysics of Process (Antwerp 2012)

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+
+Process theology is a type of theology developed from Alfred North Whitehead's (1861–1947) process philosophy, but most notably by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb (1925–2024), and Eugene H. Peters  (1929–1983). Process theology and process philosophy are collectively referred to as "process thought".
+For both Whitehead and Hartshorne, it is an essential attribute of God to affect and be affected by temporal processes, contrary to the forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable), and unaffected by the world (impassible). Process theology does not deny that God is in some respects eternal (will never die), immutable (in the sense that God is unchangingly good), and impassible (in the sense that God's eternal aspect is unaffected by actuality), but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible.
+According to Cobb, "process theology may refer to all forms of theology that emphasize event, occurrence, or becoming over substance. In this sense theology influenced by G. W. F. Hegel is process theology just as much as that influenced by Whitehead. This use of the term calls attention to affinities between these otherwise quite different traditions." Also Pierre Teilhard de Chardin can be included among process theologians, even if they are generally understood as referring to the Whiteheadian/Hartshornean school, where there continue to be ongoing debates within the field on the nature of God, the relationship of God and the world, and immortality.
+
+== History ==
+Various theological and philosophical aspects have been expanded and developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb, Eugene H. Peters, and David Ray Griffin. A characteristic of process theology each of these thinkers shared was a rejection of metaphysics that privilege existence over becoming, particularly those of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Hartshorne was deeply influenced by French philosopher Jules Lequier and by Swiss philosopher Charles Secrétan who were probably the first ones to claim that in God liberty of becoming is above his substantiality.
+Process theology soon influenced a number of Rabbinic Jewish theologians, including rabbis Max Kadushin, Milton Steinberg, Levi Olan, Harry Slominsky, and, to a lesser degree, Abraham Joshua Heschel. Contemporary Jewish theologians who advocate some form of process theology include Bradley Shavit Artson, Lawrence A. Englander, William E. Kaufman, Harold Kushner, Anson Laytner, Michael Lerner, Sandra Lubarsky, Gilbert S. Rosenthal, Lawrence Troster, Donald B. Rossoff, Burton Mindick, and Nahum Ward-Lev.
+Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse applied process theology to the New Thought movement in Christianity.
+
+== God and the World relationship ==
+Whitehead's classical statement is a set of antithetical statements that attempt to avoid self-contradiction by shifting them from a set of oppositions into a contrast:
+
+It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent.
+It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many.
+It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.
+It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.
+It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.
+It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.
+
+== Themes ==
+God is not omnipotent in the sense of being coercive. The divine has the power of persuasion rather than coercion. Process theologians interpret the classical doctrine of omnipotence as involving force and suggest a forbearance in divine power instead. "Persuasion" in the causal sense means that God does not exert unilateral control.
+Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time but serially ordered, experiential events. These events have both a physical and mental aspect. All experiences (male, female, atomic, and botanical) are important and contribute to reality's ongoing and interrelated process.
+The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God cannot totally control any series of events or individuals, but God influences the creaturely exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. To say it another way, God has a will in everything, but not everything that occurs is God's will.
+God contains the universe but is not identical with it (panentheism, not pantheism or pandeism). Some also call this "theocosmocentrism" to emphasize that God has always been related to some world or another.
+Because God interacts with the changing universe, God is changeable (that is to say, God is affected by the actions that take place in the universe) over time. However, the abstract elements of God (goodness, wisdom, etc.) remain eternally solid.
+Charles Hartshorne believes that people do not experience subjective (or personal) immortality, but they do have objective immortality because their experiences live on forever in God, who contains all that was. Other process theologians believe that people do have subjective experiences after bodily death.
+Dipolar theism is the idea that God has both a changing aspect (God's existence as a Living God) and an unchanging aspect (God's eternal essence).

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+
+== Relationship to liberation theology ==
+Henry Young combines black theology and process theology in his book Hope in Process. Young seeks a model for American society that goes beyond the alternatives of integration of blacks into white society and black separateness. He finds useful the process model of the many becoming one. Here the one is a new reality that emerges from the discrete contributions of the many, not the assimilation of the many to an already established one.
+Monica Coleman has combined womanist theology and process theology in her book Making a Way Out of No Way. In it, she argues that 'making a way out of no way' and 'creative transformation' are complementary insights from the respective theological traditions. She is one of many theologians who identify both as a process theologian and feminist/womanist/ecofeminist theologian, which includes persons such as Sallie McFague, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Catherine Keller, and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki.
+C. Robert Mesle, in his book Process Theology, outlines three aspects of a process theology of liberation:
+
+There is a relational character to the divine which allows God to experience both the joy and suffering of humanity. God suffers just as those who experience oppression and God seeks to actualize all positive and beautiful potentials. God must, therefore, be in solidarity with the oppressed and must also work for their liberation.
+God is not omnipotent in the classical sense and so God does not provide support for the status quo, but rather seeks the actualization of greater good.
+God exercises relational power and not unilateral control. In this way God cannot instantly end evil and oppression in the world. God works in relational ways to help guide persons to liberation.
+
+== Relationship to pluralism ==
+Process theology affirms that God is working in all persons to actualize potentialities. In that sense each religious manifestation is the Divine working in a unique way to bring out the beautiful and the good. Additionally, scripture and religion represent human interpretations of the divine. In this sense pluralism is the expression of the diversity of cultural backgrounds and assumptions that people use to approach the Divine.
+
+== Relationship to the doctrine of the incarnation ==
+
+Contrary to Christian orthodoxy, the Christ of mainstream process theology is not the mystical and historically unique union of divine and human natures in one hypostasis, the eternal Logos of God incarnated and identifiable as the man Jesus. Rather, God is incarnate in the lives of all people when they act according to a call from God. Jesus fully and in every way responded to God's call; thus, the person of Jesus is theologically understood as "the divine Word in human form." Jesus is not singularly or essentially God, but he was perfectly in sync with God at all moments of his life. 
+Cobb expressed the Incarnation in process terms that link it to his understanding of actualization of human potential: "'Christ' refers to the Logos as incarnate hence as the process of creative transformation in and of the world".

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+
+== Debate about process theology's conception of God's power ==
+A criticism of process theology is that it offers a too severely diminished conception of God's power.  Process theologians argue that God does not have unilateral, coercive control over everything in the universe.  In process theology, God cannot override a person's freedom, nor perform miracles that violate the laws of nature, nor perform physical actions such as causing or halting a flood or an avalanche.  Critics argue that this conception diminishes divine power to such a degree that God is no longer worshipful.
+The process theology response to this criticism is that the traditional Christian conception of God is actually not worshipful as it stands, and that the traditional notion of God's omnipotence fails to make sense.
+First, power is a relational concept.  It is not exerted in a vacuum, but always by some entity A over some other entity B. As such, power requires analysis of both the being exerting power, and the being that power is being exerted upon.  To suppose that an entity A (in this case, God), can always successfully control any other entity B is to say, in effect, that B does not exist as a free and individual being in any meaningful sense, since there is no possibility of its resisting A if A should decide to press the issue.
+Mindful of this, process theology makes several important distinctions between different kinds of power. The first distinction is between "coercive" power and "persuasive" power. Coercive power is the kind that is exerted by one physical body over another, such as one billiard ball hitting another, or one arm twisting another. Lifeless bodies (such as the billiard balls) cannot resist such applications of physical force at all, and even living bodies (like arms) can only resist so far, and can be coercively overpowered.  While finite, physical creatures can exert coercive power over one another in this way, God—lacking a physical body—cannot (not merely will not) exert coercive control over the world.
+But process theologians argue that coercive power is actually a secondary or derivative form of power, while persuasion is the primary form. Even the act of self-motion (of an arm, for instance) is an instance of persuasive power. The arm may not perform in the way a person wishes it to—it may be broken, or asleep, or otherwise unable to perform the desired action. It is only after the persuasive act of self-motion is successful that an entity can even begin to exercise coercive control over other finite physical bodies.  But no amount of coercive control can alter the free decisions of other entities; only persuasion can do so.
+For example, a child is told by his parent that he must go to bed. The child, as a self-conscious, decision-making individual, can always make the decision to not go to bed. The parent may then respond by picking up the child bodily and carrying him to his room, but nothing can force the child to alter his decision to resist the parent's directive. It is only the body of the child that can be coercively controlled by the body of the physically stronger parent; the child's free will remains intact.  While process theologians argue that God does not have coercive power, they also argue that God has supreme persuasive power, that God is always influencing/persuading us to choose the good.
+One classic exchange over the issue of divine power is between philosophers Frederick Sontag and John K. Roth and process theologian David Ray Griffin. Sontag and Roth argued that the process God's inability to, for instance, stop the genocide at Auschwitz meant that God was not worthy of worship, since there is no point in worshipping a God that cannot save us from such atrocities. Griffin's response was as follows:
+
+One of the stronger complaints from Sontag and Roth is that, given the enormity of evil in the world, a deity that is [merely] doing its best is not worthy of worship. The implication is that a deity that is not doing its best is worthy of worship. For example, in reference to Auschwitz, Roth mocks my God with the statement that “the best that God could possibly do was to permit 10,000 Jews a day to go up in smoke.” Roth prefers a God who had the power to prevent this Holocaust but did not do it! This illustrates how much people can differ in what they consider worthy of worship. For Roth, it is clearly brute power that evokes worship. The question is: is this what should evoke worship? To refer back to the point about revelation: is this kind of power worship consistent with the Christian claim that divinity is decisively revealed in Jesus? Roth finds my God too small to evoke worship; I find his too gross.
+The process argument, then, is that those who cling to the idea of God's coercive omnipotence are defending power for power's sake, which would seem to be inconsistent with the life of Jesus, who Christians believe died for humanity's sins rather than overthrow the Roman empire.  Griffin argues that it is actually the God whose omnipotence is defined in the "traditional" way that is not worshipful.
+One other distinction process theologians make is between the idea of "unilateral" power versus "relational" power.   Unilateral power is the power of a king (or more accurately, a tyrant) who wishes to exert control over his subjects without being affected by them.   However, most people would agree that a ruler who is not changed or affected by the joys and sorrows of his subjects is actually a despicable ruler and a psychopath.   Process theologians thus stress that God's power is relational; rather than being unaffected and unchanged by the world, God is the being most affected by every other being in the universe. As process theologian C. Robert Mesle puts it:

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+
+Relational power takes great strength.  In stark contrast to unilateral power, the radical  manifestations of relational power are found in people like Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Jesus. It requires the willingness to endure tremendous suffering while refusing to hate.  It demands that we keep our hearts open to those who wish to slam them shut. It means offering to open up a relationship with people who hate us, despise us, and wish to destroy us.
+In summation, then, process theologians argue that their conception of God's power does not diminish God, but just the opposite.  Rather than see God as one who unilaterally coerces other beings, judges and punishes them, and is completely unaffected by the joys and sorrows of others, process theologians see God as the one who persuades the universe to love and peace, is supremely affected by even the tiniest of joys and the smallest of sorrows, and is able to love all beings despite the most heinous acts they may commit.  God is, as Whitehead says, "the fellow sufferer who understands".
+
+== See also ==
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Bruce G. Epperly Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (NY: T&T Clark, 2011, ISBN 978-0-567-59669-7) This is "perhaps the best in-depth introduction to process theology available for non-specialists."
+Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki's God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology, new rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1989, ISBN 0-8245-0970-6) demonstrates the practical integration of process philosophy with Christianity.
+C. Robert Mesle's Process Theology: A Basic Introduction (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8272-2945-3) is an introduction to process theology written for the layperson.
+Jewish introductions to classical theism, limited theism and process theology can be found in A Question of Faith: An Atheist and a Rabbi Debate the Existence of God (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994, ISBN 1-56821-089-2) and The Case for God (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8272-0458-2), both written by Rabbi William E. Kaufman. Jewish variations of process theology are also presented in Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Anchor Books, 2004, ISBN 1-4000-3472-8) and Sandra B. Lubarsky and David Ray Griffin, eds., Jewish Theology and Process Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995, ISBN 0-7914-2810-9).
+Christian introductions may be found in Schubert M. Ogden's The Reality of God and Other Essays (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-87074-318-X); John B. Cobb, Doubting Thomas: Christology in Story Form (New York: Crossroad, 1990, ISBN 0-8245-1033-X); Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984, ISBN 0-87395-771-7); and Richard Rice, God's Foreknowledge & Man's Free Will (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1985; rev. ed. of the author's The Openness of God, cop. 1980; ISBN 0-87123-845-4). In French, the best introduction may be André Gounelle, Le Dynamisme Créateur de Dieu: Essai sur la Théologie du Process, édition revue, modifiée et augmentee (Paris: Van Dieren, 2000, ISBN 2-911087-26-7).
+The most important work by Paul S. Fiddes is The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); see also his short overview "Process Theology," in A. E. McGrath, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Modern Christian Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 472–76.
+Norman Pittenger's thought is exemplified in his God in Process (London: SCM Press, 1967, LCC BT83.6 .P5), Process-Thought and Christian Faith (New York: Macmillan Company, 1968, LCC BR100 .P615 1968), and Becoming and Belonging (Wilton, CT: Morehouse Publications, 1989, ISBN 0-8192-1480-9).
+Constance Wise's Hidden Circles in the Web: Feminist Wicca, Occult Knowledge, and Process Thought (Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7591-1006-9) applies process theology to one variety of contemporary Paganism.
+Michel Weber, « Shamanism and proto-consciousness », in René Lebrun, Julien De Vos et É. Van Quickelberghe (éds), Deus Unicus, Turnhout, Brepols, coll. Homo Religiosus série II, 14, 2015, pp. 247–260.
+David Ray Griffin Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Cornell University Press, 2001, ISBN 9780801437786), an exposition of the central theses of process theology.
+Staub, Jacob (October 1992). "Kaplan and Process Theology". In Goldsmith, Emanuel; Scult, Mel; Seltzer, Robert (eds.). The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-3257-1.
+Kwall, Roberta R. (2011–2012). "The Lessons of Living Gardens and Jewish Process Theology for Authorship and Moral Rights". Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law. 14: 889–.
+Bowman, Donna; McDaniel, Jay, eds. (January 2006). Handbook of Process Theology. Chalice Press. ISBN 978-0-8272-1467-5.
+Loomer, Bernard M. (1987). "Process Theology: Origins, Strengths, Weaknesses". Process Studies. 16 (4): 245–254. doi:10.5840/process198716446. S2CID 147092066.
+Cobb, John B. (1980). "Process Theology and Environmental Issues". The Journal of Religion. 60 (4): 440–458. doi:10.1086/486819. S2CID 144187859.
+Faber, Roland (6 April 2017). The Becoming of God: Process Theology, Philosophy, and Multireligious Engagement. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-60608-885-2.
+Burrell, David B. (1982). "Does Process Theology Rest on a Mistake?". Theological Studies. 43 (1): 125–135. doi:10.1177/004056398204300105. S2CID 171057603.
+Devenish, Philip E. (1982). "Postliberal Process Theology: A Rejoinder to Burrell". Theological Studies. 43 (3): 504–513. doi:10.1177/004056398204300307. S2CID 160021337.
+Pixley, George V. (1974). "Justice and Class Struggle: A Challenge for Process Theology". Process Studies. 4 (3): 159–175. doi:10.5840/process19744328. S2CID 147450649.
+Mesle, C. Robert (1988). "Does God Hide from Us?: John Hick and Process Theology on Faith, Freedom and Theodicy". International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 24 (1/2): 93–111. doi:10.1007/BF00134167. ISSN 0020-7047. JSTOR 40024796. S2CID 169572605.
+Dean, William (1984). "Deconstruction and Process Theology". The Journal of Religion. 64 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1086/487073. S2CID 170764846.
+Dorrien, Gary (2008). "The Lure and Necessity of Process Theology". CrossCurrents. 58 (2): 316–336. doi:10.1111/j.1939-3881.2008.00026.x. ISSN 0011-1953. JSTOR 24461426. S2CID 170653256.
+Stone, Bryan P.; Oord, Thomas Jay, eds. (2001). Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue. Kingswood Books. ISBN 978-0-687-05220-2.
+Mueller, J. J. (1986). "Process Theology and the Catholic Theological Community". Theological Studies. 47 (3): 412–427. doi:10.1177/004056398604700303. S2CID 147471058.
+O'Connor, June (1980). "Process Theology and Liberation Theology: Theological and Ethical Reflections". Horizons. 7 (2): 231–248. doi:10.1017/S0360966900021265. S2CID 171239767.
+Trethowan, Illtyd (1983). "The Significance of Process Theology". Religious Studies. 19 (3): 311–322. doi:10.1017/S0034412500015262. S2CID 170717776.
+Hare, Peter H.; Ryder, John (1980). "Buchler's Ordinal Metaphysics and Process Theology". Process Studies. 10 (3/4): 120–129. doi:10.5840/process1980103/411. JSTOR 44798127. S2CID 170543829.
+Hekman, Susan (2017). "Feminist New Materialism and Process Theology: Beginning the Dialogue". Feminist Theology. 25 (2): 198–207. doi:10.1177/0966735016678544. S2CID 152230362.
+Pittenger, Norman (1977). "Christology in Process Theology". Theology. 80 (675): 187–193. doi:10.1177/0040571X7708000306. S2CID 171066693.
+Pittenger, Norman (1974). "The Incarnation in Process Theology". Review & Expositor. 71 (1): 43–57. doi:10.1177/003463737407100105. S2CID 170805965.
+Inbody, Tyron (1975). "Paul Tillich and Process Theology". Theological Studies. 36 (3): 472–492. doi:10.1177/004056397503600304. S2CID 170482044.
+Griffin, David Ray (31 July 2003). "Reconstructive Theology". In Vanhoozer, Kevin J. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-79395-7.
+
+== External links ==
+The Center for Process Studies
+Process and Faith
+Reference works
+Byrne, Peter; Houlden, Leslie (2013). "Process Theology". Companion Encyclopedia of Theology. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-13492200-0.
+An encyclopedic-type article
+Michel Weber and Will Desmond (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008 (ISBN 978-3-938793-92-3).

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+---
+
+The study of religiosity and intelligence explores the link between religiosity and intelligence or educational level (by country and on the individual level). Religiosity and intelligence are both complex topics that include diverse variables, and the interactions among those variables are not always well understood. For instance, intelligence is often defined differently by different researchers; also, all scores from intelligence tests are only estimates of intelligence, because one cannot achieve concrete measurements of intelligence (as one would of mass or distance) due to the concept's abstract nature. Religiosity is also complex, in that it involves wide variations of interactions of religious beliefs, practices, behaviors, and affiliations, across a diverse array of cultures.
+The study on religion and intelligence has been ongoing since the 1920s and conclusions and interpretations have varied in the literature due to different measures for both religiosity and intelligence. Some studies find negative correlation between intelligence quotient (IQ) and religiosity. However, such studies and others have found the effect not to be generalizable and unable to predict religiosity from intelligence correlations alone. Some have suggested that nonconformity, cognitive style, and coping mechanism play a role while others  suggest that any correlations are due to a complex range of social, gender, economic,  educational and historical factors, which interact with religion and IQ in different ways. Less developed and poorer countries tend to be more religious, perhaps because religions play a more active social, moral and cultural role in those countries.
+Studies on analytic thinking and nonbelievers suggest that analytical thinking does not imply better reflection on religious matters or disbelief. A cross-cultural study observed that analytic thinking was not a reliable metric to predict disbelief. A review of the literature on cognitive style found that there are no correlations between rationality and belief/disbelief and that upbringing, whether religious or not, better explains why people end up religious or not. 
+A global study on educational attainment found that Jews, Christians, religiously unaffiliated persons, and Buddhists have, on average, higher levels of education than the global average. Numerous factors affect both educational attainment and religiosity.
+
+== Definitions and issues ==
+
+=== Intelligence ===
+
+The definitions of intelligence are controversial since at least 70 definitions have been found among diverse fields of research. Some groups of psychologists have suggested the following definitions: 
+From "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" (1994), an op-ed statement in the Wall Street Journal signed by fifty-two researchers (out of 131 total invited to sign). 
+
+A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.
+From "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" (1995), a report published by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association:
+
+Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions, and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen, somewhat different, definitions.
+Intelligence is a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to more specifically define intelligence. In some cases, intelligence may include traits such as creativity, personality, character, knowledge, or wisdom. However, some psychologists prefer not to include these traits in the definition of intelligence.
+A widely researched index or classification of intelligence among scientists is intelligence quotient (IQ). IQ is a summary index, calculated by testing individuals' abilities in a variety of tasks and producing a composite score to represent overall ability, e.g., Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. It is used to predict educational outcomes and other variables of interest.
+Others have attempted to measure intelligence indirectly by looking at individuals' or group's educational attainment, although this risks bias from other demographic factors, such as age, income, gender and cultural background, all of which can affect educational attainment.
+Dissatisfaction with traditional IQ tests has led to the development of alternative theories. In 1983, Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences, which broadens the conventional definition of intelligence, to include logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences.
+He chose not to include spiritual intelligence amongst his "intelligences" due to the challenge of codifying quantifiable scientific criteria, but suggested an "existential intelligence" as viable.
+
+=== Religiosity ===

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+title: "Religiosity and intelligence"
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+---
+
+The term religiosity refers to degrees of religious behaviour, belief, or spirituality. The measurement of religiosity is hampered by the difficulties involved in defining what is meant by the term. Numerous studies have explored the different components of religiosity, with most finding some distinction between religious beliefs/doctrine, religious practice, and spirituality. Studies can measure religious practice by counting attendance at religious services, religious beliefs/doctrine by asking a few doctrinal questions, and spirituality by asking respondents about their sense of oneness with the divine or through detailed standardized measurements. When religiosity is measured, it is important to specify which aspects of religiosity are referred to.
+According to Mark Chaves, decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research have established that "religious congruence" (the assumption that religious beliefs and values are tightly integrated in an individual's mind or that religious practices and behaviors follow directly from religious beliefs or that religious beliefs are chronologically linear and stable across different contexts) is actually rare. People's religious ideas are fragmented, loosely connected, and context-dependent, as in all other domains of culture and in life. The beliefs, affiliations, and behaviors of any individual are complex activities that have many sources including culture. As examples of religious incongruence he notes, "Observant Jews may not believe what they say in their Sabbath prayers. Christian ministers may not believe in God. And people who regularly dance for rain don't do it in the dry season."
+Demographic studies often show wide diversity of religious beliefs, belonging, and practices in both religious and non-religious populations. For instance, out of Americans who are not religious and not seeking religion, 68% believe in God, 12% are atheists, and 17% are agnostics; as for self-identification of religiosity, 18% consider themselves religious, 37% consider themselves spiritual but not religious, and 42% consider themselves neither spiritual nor religious, while 21% pray every day and 24% pray once a month. Global studies on religion also show diversity.
+Religion and belief in gods are not necessarily synonymous since nontheistic religions exist including within traditions like Hinduism and Christianity. According to anthropologist Jack David Eller, "atheism is quite a common position, even within religion" and that "surprisingly, atheism is not the opposite or lack, let alone the enemy, of religion but is the most common form of religion."
+
+== Studies comparing religious belief and IQ ==

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+
+In a 2013 meta-analysis of 63 studies, led by professor Miron Zuckerman, a correlation of -.20 to -.25 between religiosity and IQ was particularly strong when assessing beliefs (which in their view reflects intrinsic religiosity), but the negative effects were less defined when behavioral aspects of religion (such as church-going) were examined. They note limitations on this since viewing intrinsic religiosity as being about religious beliefs represents American Protestantism more than Judaism or Catholicism, both of which see behavior as just as important as religious beliefs. They also noted that the available data did not allow adequate consideration of the role of religion type and of culture in assessing the relationship between religion and intelligence. Most of the studies reviewed were American and 87% of participants in those studies were from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. They noted, "Clearly, the present results are limited to Western societies." The meta-analysis discussed three possible explanations: First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma, although this theory was contradicted in mostly atheist societies such as the Scandinavian populations, where the religiosity-IQ relationship still existed. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, intelligent people may have less need for religious beliefs and practices, as some of the functions of religiosity can be given by intelligence instead. Such functions include the presentation of a sense that the world is orderly and predictable, a sense of personal control and self-regulation and a sense of enhancing self-esteem and belongingness.
+A 2016 re-analysis of the Zuckerman et al study, found that the negative intelligence-religiosity associations were weaker and less generalizable across time, space, samples, measures, and levels of analysis, but still robust. For example, the negative intelligence–religiosity association was insignificant with samples using men, pre-college participants, and taking into account grade point average. When other variables like education and quality of human conditions were taken into account, positive relation between IQ and disbelief in God(s) was reduced. According to Dutton and Van der Linden, the re-analysis had controls that were too strict (life quality index and proximity of countries) and also some of the samples used problematic proxies of religiosity, which took away from the variance in the correlations. As such, the reduction of significance in the negative correlation likely reflected a sample anomaly. They also observed that the "weak but significant" correlation of -.20 on intelligence and religiosity from the Zuckerman study was also found when comparing intelligence with other variables like education and income.
+Zuckerman et al. published an updated metanalysis in 2019 with 83 studies finding "strong evidence" of a negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence of -.20 to -.23. Zuckerman cautioned that the "effect size of the relation is small", not generalizable beyond the Western world and that predicting religiosity from intelligence for individuals is fallible.
+Researchers Helmuth Nyborg and Richard Lynn compared belief in God and IQs.  Using data from a U.S. study of 6,825 adolescents, the authors found that the average IQ of atheists was 6 points higher than the average IQ of non-atheists. The authors also investigated the link between belief in a god and average national IQs in 137 countries. The authors reported a correlation of 0.60 between national IQ and disbelief in a god, which was determined to be "highly statistically significant".  ('Belief in a god' is not identical to 'religiosity.' Some nations have high proportions of people who do not believe in a god, but who may nevertheless be highly religious, following non-theistic belief systems such as Buddhism or Taoism.)
+Other researchers found Nyborg and Lynn's findings questionable since sporadic and inconsistent estimates were the basis for atheism rates, multiple factors better explain the fluctuations, including reversals, in both religion and IQ by nations through time; data that contradicted their hypothesis was minimized, and secularization debates among scholars were ignored, all of which rendered any predictability as unreliable.
+The Lynn et al. paper findings were discussed by Professor Gordon Lynch, from London's Birkbeck College, who expressed concern that the study failed to take into account a complex range of social, economic and historical factors, each of which has been shown to interact with religion and IQ in different ways. Gallup surveys, for example, have found that the world's poorest countries are consistently the most religious, perhaps because religion plays a more functional role (helping people cope) in poorer nations. Even at the scale of the individual, IQ may not directly cause more disbelief in gods. Dr. David Hardman of London Metropolitan University says: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief." He adds that other studies do nevertheless correlate IQ with being willing or able to question beliefs.
+In a sample of 2307 adults in the US., IQ was found to negatively correlate with self reports of religious identification, private practice or religion, mindfulness, religious support, and fundamentalism, but not spirituality.  The relationships were relatively unchanged after controlling for personality, education, age, and gender, and were typically modest. The study was limited only to Christian denominations.
+A critical review of the research on intelligence and religiosity by Sickles et al. observed that conclusions vary widely in the literature because most studies use inconsistent and poor measures for both religiosity and intelligence. Furthermore, they noted intelligence differences seen between people of varying religious beliefs and non-theists is most likely the result of educational differences that are in turn the result of holding fundamentalist religious beliefs rather than the result of innate differences in intelligence between them.
+According to Dutton et al. negative correlations on religion may be correlated with autistic spectrum on specialized learning ability since when members of the same ethnic group are compared there are very few differences in IQ in general.  
+In non-western countries like Korea, where religion is seen differently than in the West, non-religious people had lower mean IQs than religious persons. 
+A 2022 metanalysis of 89 studies found a small and weak negative correlation of -.14 and noted that the findings were not generalizable beyond a Western contexts.

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+---
+
+=== Studies examining theistic and atheistic cognitive style ===
+The idea that analytical thinking makes one less likely to be religious is an idea supported by Gervais and Noernzayan's 2012 study They observed that intuitive thinking tended to increase intrinsic religiosity, intuitive religious belief and belief in supernatural entities. They also added a causative element, finding that subtly triggering analytic thinking can increase religious disbelief. They concluded that "Combined, these studies indicate that analytic processing is one factor (presumably among several) that promotes religious disbelief." While these studies linked religious disbelief to analytical rather than intuitive thinking, they urged caution in the interpretation of these results, noting that they were not judging the relative merits of analytic and intuitive thinking in promoting optimal decision making, or the merits or validity of religiosity as a whole.
+In 2017, Calin-Jageman replicated the Gervais 2012 experiment and found no link between analytic thinking and decrease in religious belief. In another replication attempt, another team failed to get the same results as Gervais and Noernzayan . For which, Gervais and Noernzayan acknowledged that they no longer felt confident in their original 2012 findings. 
+In 2018, Gervais et al did a follow up study to assess if analytic thinking correlated with atheism in 13 countries and found that cross-culturally, the relation is very weak and fickle and that culture plays a bigger role than analytic thinking on core beliefs.
+Harvard researchers found evidence suggesting that all religious beliefs become more confident when participants are thinking intuitively (atheists and theists each become more convinced). Thus reflective thinking generally tends to create more qualified, doubted belief. Reflective thinking was further correlated with greater changes in beliefs since childhood: these changes were towards atheism for the most reflective participants, and towards greater belief in a god for the most intuitive thinkers — a 2025 article in Religious Studies conceptually replicated the former analytic apostasy across most regions of the globe. The studies controlled for personality differences and cognitive ability, suggesting the differences were due to thinking styles – not simply IQ or raw cognitive ability. An experiment in the study found that participants moved towards greater belief in a god after writing essays about how intuition yielded a right answer or reflection yielded a wrong answer (and conversely, towards atheism if primed to think about either a failure of intuition or success of reflection). The authors say it is all evidence that a relevant factor in religious belief is thinking style. The authors add that, even if intuitive thinking tends to increase belief in a god, "it does not follow that reliance on intuition is always irrational or unjustified."
+A 2017 study re-analyzed the relationship between intuitive and analytical thinking and its correlation with supernatural belief among three measurements (Pilgrimage setting, supernatural attribution, brain stimulation) and found no significant correlation.
+Reviewing psychological studies on atheists, Miguel Farias noted that studies concluding that analytical thinking leads to lower religious belief "do not imply that atheists are more conscious or reflective of their own beliefs, or that atheism is the outcome of a conscious refutation of previously held religious beliefs" since they too have variant beliefs such as in conspiracy theories of the naturalistic variety. He notes that studies on deconversion indicate that a greater proportion of people who leave religion do so for motivational rather than rational reasons, and the majority of deconversions occur in adolescence and young adulthood when one is emotionally volatile. Furthermore, he notes that atheists are indistinguishable from New Age individuals or Gnostics since there are commonalities such as being individualistic, non-conformist, liberal, and valuing hedonism and sensation.
+Concerning the cognitive science studies on atheists, Johnathan Lanman notes that there are implicit and explicit beliefs which vary among individuals. An individual's atheism and theism may be related to the amount of "credibility enhancing displays" (CRED) one experiences in that those who are exposed more to theistic CRED will likely be theist and those who have less exposure to theistic CRED will likely be atheists.
+Neurological research on mechanisms of belief and non-belief, using Christians and atheists as subjects, by Harris et al. have shown that the brain networks involved in evaluating the truthfulness of both religious and non religious statements are generally the same regardless of religiosity. However, the activity within these networks differed across the religiosity of statements, with the religious statements activating the insula and anterior cingulate cortex to a greater degree, and the non religious statements activating hippocampal and superior frontal regions to a greater degree.  The areas associated with religious statements are generally associated with salient emotional processing, while areas associated with non religious statements are generally associated with memory.  The association between the salience network and religious statements is congruent with the cognitive theory proposed by Boyer that the implausibility of religious propositions are offset by their salience.  The same neural networks were active in both Christians and atheists even when dealing with "blasphemous statements" to each other's worldviews. Furthermore, it supports the idea that "intuition" and "reason" are not two separate and segregated activities but are intertwined in both theists and atheists.
+A 2024 review of the literature on cognitive style noted that cognitive scientists understand there to be two systems of the mind: intuition and rationality, which intersect and overlap. Though some studies initially found some correlations between rationality and cognitive style, some studies failed to replicate. Some research has replicated correlations between disbelief/apostasy and rationality or reflection, but these correlations are small and are compatible with cases of reflective believers and converts indicating that reflective thinking does not guarantee or even characterize areligiosity or apostasy. A general review of the literature states that there are no correlations between rationality and belief/disbelief and instead other factors such as upbringing, whether religious or not, better explains why people end up religious or not and that rationality is compatible with the entire sprectrum of belief and disbelief.
+In an international study, very few scientists stated that scientific training or knowledge played a role in any declines in personal religiosity. Cross-national research on atheist scientists from the US and UK indicates that the majority came from a nonreligious upbringing and never had a religious affiliation. Also, fewer than half of the atheist scientists who were exposed to religion in their youth said science played a role in them becoming an atheist.

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+---
+
+=== Studies examining religiosity and emotional intelligence ===
+A small 2004 study by Ellen Paek examined the extent to which religiosity (in which only Christians were surveyed), operationalized as religious orientation and religious behaviour, is related to the controversial idea of emotional intelligence (EI). The study examined the extent to which religious orientation and behavior were related to self-reported EI in 148 church-attending adult Christians. (Non-religious individuals were not part of the study.) The study found that the individuals' self-reported religious orientation was positively correlated with their perceiving themselves to have greater EI. While the number of religious group activities was positively associated with perceived EI, the number of years of church attendance was unrelated. Significant positive correlations were also found between level of religious commitment and perceived EI. Thus, the Christian volunteers were more likely to consider themselves emotionally intelligent if they spent more time in group activities and had more commitment to their beliefs.
+Tischler, Biberman and McKeage warn that there is still ambiguity in the above concepts. In their 2002 article, entitled "Linking emotional intelligence, spirituality and workplace performance: Definitions, models and ideas for research", they reviewed literature on both EI and various aspect of spirituality. They found that both EI and spirituality appear to lead to similar attitudes, behaviors and skills, and that there often seems to be confusion, intersection and linking between the two constructs.
+Recently, Łowicki and Zajenkowski investigated the potential associations between various aspects of religious belief and ability and trait EI. In their first study they found that ability EI was positively correlated with general level of belief in God or a higher power. Their next study, conducted among Polish Christians, replicated the previous result and revealed that both trait and ability EI were negatively related to extrinsic religious orientation and negative religious coping.
+
+=== Studies exploring religiosity and educational attainment ===
+
+The relationship between the level of religiosity and one's level of education has been a philosophical, as well as a scientific and political concern since the second half of the 20th century.
+The parameters in this field are slightly different compared to those brought forward above: if the "level of religiosity" remains a concept which is difficult to determine scientifically, on the contrary, the "level of education" is, indeed, easy to compile, official data on this topic being publicly accessible to anyone in most countries.
+Different studies available show contrasting conclusions. An analysis of World Values Survey data showed that in most countries, there is no significant relationship between education and religious attendance, with some differences between "Western" countries and former socialist countries, which the authors attribute to historical, political, and economic factors, not intelligence. Other studies have noted a positive relationship.
+A 2016 Pew Center global study on religion and education around the world ranked Jews as the most educated (13.4 years of schooling) followed by Christians (9.3 years of schooling). The religiously unaffiliated—a category which includes atheists, agnostics and those who describe their religion as "nothing in particular"—ranked overall as the third most educated religious group (8.8 years of schooling) followed by Buddhists (7.9 years of schooling), Muslims (5.6 years of schooling), and Hindus (5.6 years of schooling). In the youngest age (25-34) group surveyed, Jews averaged 13.8 years of schooling, the unaffiliated group averaged 10.3 years of schooling, Christians averaged 9.9 years of schooling, Buddhists averaged 9.7 years of schooling, Hindus averaged 7.1 years of schooling, and Muslims averaged 6.7 years of schooling. 61% of Jews, 20% of Christians, 16% of the unaffiliated, 12% of Buddhists, 10% of Hindus, and 8% of Muslims have graduate and post-graduate degrees. The study observed that the probability of having a college degree in the U.S. is higher for all religious minorities surveyed (perhaps partly due to selective immigration policies that favor highly skilled applicants), including the unaffiliated group which ranks in the fifth place, being higher than the national average of 39%.
+
+== See also ==
+
+Outline of human intelligence
+Psychology of religion
+Relationship between religion and science
+Heritability of IQ
+Environment and intelligence
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Shermer, M. (2000). How we believe. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman. ISBN 978-0-8050-7479-6.
+
+== External links ==
+wikiversity:reflective thinking

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+title: "Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein"
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+
+Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood. Albert Einstein stated "I believe in Spinoza's God". He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. He clarified, however, that, "I am not an atheist", preferring to call himself an agnostic, or a "religious nonbeliever." In other interviews, he noted his belief in a cosmic "lawgiver" who sets the laws of the universe. Einstein also stated he did not believe in life after death, adding "one life is enough for me." He was closely involved in his lifetime with several humanist groups. Einstein rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science.
+
+== Religious beliefs ==
+Einstein himself stated "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist ... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings". Einstein believed the problem of God was the "most difficult in the world"—a question that could not be answered "simply with yes or no". He conceded that "the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds".
+Einstein explained his view on the relationship between science and religion in his lectures of 1939 and 1941:
+
+"For science can only ascertain what is but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts."
+
+=== Early childhood ===
+Einstein was raised by secular Jewish parents and attended a local Catholic public elementary school in Munich. In his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein wrote that he had gradually lost his faith early in childhood:
+
+... I came—though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. 
+
+=== Personal God ===
+Einstein expressed his skepticism regarding the existence of a personal god, often describing this view as "naïve" and "childlike". In a letter written in 1947, he stated that "The idea of a personal God seems to me an anthropological concept that I cannot take seriously." In a letter to Beatrice Frohlich on 17 December 1952, Einstein stated, "The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve."
+Prompted by his colleague L. E. J. Brouwer, Einstein read the philosopher Eric Gutkind's book Choose Life, a discussion of the relationship between Jewish revelation and the modern world. On January 3, 1954, Einstein replied to Gutkind: "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. .... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." In 2018, his letter to Gutkind was sold for $2.9 million.
+On 22 March 1954, Einstein received a letter from Joseph Dispentiere, an Italian immigrant who had worked as an experimental machinist in New Jersey. Dispentiere had declared himself an atheist and was disappointed by a news report that had cast Einstein as conventionally religious. Einstein replied on 24 March 1954:
+
+It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
+In his book Ideas and Opinions (1954), Einstein stated, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests." In December 1922, Einstein said the following on the idea of a saviour, "Denominational traditions I can only consider historically and psychologically; they have no other significance for me.
+
+=== Pantheism and Spinoza's God ===
+Einstein had explored the idea that humans could not understand the nature of God. In an interview published in George Sylvester Viereck's book Glimpses of the Great (1930), Einstein responded to a question about whether or not he defined himself as a pantheist. He explained:

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+title: "Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein"
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+
+Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.
+Einstein stated, "My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems."
+On 24 April 1929, Einstein cabled Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in German: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." He expanded on this in answers he gave to the Japanese magazine Kaizō in 1923:
+
+Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).
+
+=== Agnosticism and atheism ===
+Einstein said people could call him an agnostic rather than an atheist, stating: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal god is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." In an interview published by the German poet George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein stated, "I am not an Atheist." According to Prince Hubertus, Einstein said, "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
+In 1945, Guy Raner, Jr. wrote a letter to Einstein asking if it was true that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism. Einstein replied, "I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. ... It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it, and that is all."
+In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."
+According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people. Einstein said in correspondence, "[T]he fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people'—cannot hear the music of the spheres." Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such a belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook."
+Einstein, in a one-and-a-half-page hand-written German-language letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated Princeton, New Jersey, 3 January 1954, a year and three and a half months before his death, wrote: "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this. [...] For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. [...] I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them [the Jewish people]."

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+---
+title: "Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein"
+chunk: 11/11
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:53.313065+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+==== Ancient Greeks ====
+Einstein expressed his admiration for the Ancient Greek philosophers, pointing out that he had been far more interested in them than in science. He also noted; "The more I read the Greeks, the more I realize that nothing like them has ever appeared in the world since.”
+
+== See also ==
+
+Political views of Albert Einstein
+Religious views of Isaac Newton
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Fox, Kieran (2025). I Am a Part of Infinity: The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-5416-0357-8.
+Einstein, Albert (2009). Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1 ed.). Newburyport: Dover Publications, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-486-11312-8. Essays by Einstein from the 1930s and 40s.
+
+== External links ==
+The Reason for Life: What They Believe: Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy - by Waltenegus Dargie
+World Science Festival (2015-03-12). "The Genius of Einstein: The Science, His Brain, the Man". YouTube. Retrieved 2025-05-04.
+Einstein's God - talk by Walter Isaacson, FORA.tv
+"Einstein's "I don't believe in God" letter has sold on eBay..." Archived 2015-12-09 at the Wayback Machine, 23 October 2012
+Albert Einstein's "God Letter" fetches US $2,400,000 at Christie's New York auction house on 4 December 2018 [3]

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+title: "Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein"
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+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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+---
+
+=== Afterlife ===
+On 17 July 1953, a woman who was a licensed Baptist pastor sent Einstein a letter asking if he had felt assured about attaining everlasting life with the Creator. Einstein replied, "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." This sentiment was also expressed in Einstein's book The World as I See It (1935), "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature."
+Einstein was averse to the Abrahamic conception of Heaven and Hell, particularly as it pertained to a system of everlasting reward and punishment. In a 1915 letter to the Swiss physicist Edgar Meyer, Einstein wrote, "I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him." He also stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
+Part of Einstein's tension with the Abrahamic afterlife was his belief in determinism and his rejection of free will. Einstein stated, "The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events — that is, if he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through."
+
+=== Cosmic spirituality ===
+In 1930, Einstein published a widely discussed essay about his beliefs in The New York Times Magazine. With the title "Religion and Science," Einstein distinguished three human impulses which develop religious belief: fear, social or moral concerns, and a cosmic religious feeling. A primitive understanding of causality causes fear, and the fearful invent supernatural beings analogous to themselves. The desire for love and support creates a social and moral need for a supreme being; both these styles have an anthropomorphic concept of God. The third style, which Einstein deemed most mature, originates in a deep sense of awe and mystery. He said, the individual feels "the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves in nature ... and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole." Einstein saw science as an antagonist of the first two styles of religious belief, but as a partner in the third. He maintained, "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other," there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" as aspirations for truth derive from the religious sphere. He continued:

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+A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be...
+An understanding of causality was fundamental to Einstein's ethical beliefs. In Einstein's view, "the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science," for religion can always take refuge in areas that science can not yet explain. It was Einstein's belief that in the "struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope" and cultivate the "Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself."
+In his 1934 book The World as I See It, Einstein expanded on his religiosity, "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."
+In 1936, Einstein received a letter from a young girl in the sixth grade. She had asked him, with the encouragement of her teacher, if scientists pray. Einstein replied in the most elementary way he could:

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+Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e., by a wish addressed to a supernatural being. However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research. But, on the other hand, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”
+Einstein characterized himself as "devoutly religious" in the following sense: "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men."
+In December 1952, he commented on what inspires his religiosity, "My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the universe which we try to formulate as 'laws of nature.'" In a letter to Maurice Solovine Einstein spoke about his reasons for using the word "religious" to describe his spiritual feelings, "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza. (But) I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason."
+Einstein frequently referred to his belief system as "cosmic religion" and authored an eponymous article on the subject in 1954, which later became his book Ideas and Opinions in 1955. The belief system recognized a "miraculous order which manifests itself in all of nature as well as in the world of ideas," devoid of a personal God who rewards and punishes individuals based on their behavior. It rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science. For Einstein, "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." He told William Hermanns in an interview that "God is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified." He smiled, "Some centuries ago, I would have been burned or hanged. Nonetheless, I would have been in good company." Einstein devised a theology for the cosmic religion, wherein the rational discovery of the secrets of nature is a religious act. His religion and his philosophy were integral parts of the same package as his scientific discoveries.

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+
+=== Jewish identity ===
+In a letter to Eric Gutkind dated 3 January 1954, Einstein wrote in German, "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
+In 1938, Einstein discussed "the hatred of the Jews by those who shun popular enlightenment. More than anything else in the world, they fear the influence of men of intellectual independence. I see in this the essential cause for the savage hatred of Jews raging in present-day Germany. To the Nazi group the Jews are not merely a means for turning the resentment of the people away from themselves, the oppressors; they see the Jews as a nonassimilable element that cannot be driven into uncritical acceptance of dogma, and that, therefore as long as it exists at all—threatens their authority because of its insistence on popular enlightenment of the masses."
+In an interview published by Time magazine with George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein spoke of his feelings about Christianity. Born in Germany, Viereck supported National Socialism but he was not antisemitic. And like Einstein he was a pacifist. At the time of the interview, Einstein was informed that Viereck was not Jewish, but stated that Viereck had "the psychic adaptability of the Jew," making it possible for Einstein to talk to him "without barrier." Viereck began by asking Einstein if he considered himself a German or a Jew, to which Einstein responded, "It's possible to be both." Viereck moved along in the interview to ask Einstein if Jews should try to assimilate, to which Einstein replied, "We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform." Einstein was then asked to what extent Christianity influenced him. "As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene." Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historicity of Jesus, to which he replied, "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."
+In a conversation with the Dutch poet Willem Frederik Hermans Einstein stressed that, "I seriously doubt that Jesus himself said that he was God, for he was too much a Jew to violate that great commandment: Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God and He is one!' and not two or three." Einstein lamented, "Sometimes I think it would have been better if Jesus had never lived. No name was so abused for the sake of power!" In his 1934 book The World as I See It he expressed his belief that "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity." Later, in a 1943 interview, Einstein added, "It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished."
+Einstein interpreted the concept of a Kingdom of God as referring to the best people. "I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people."
+In the last year of his life, he said, "If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker."
+
+=== Views of the Christian churches ===
+The only Jewish school in Munich had been closed in 1872 for want of students, and in the absence of an alternative, Einstein attended a Catholic elementary school. He also received Jewish religious education at home, but he did not see a division between the two faiths, as he perceived the "sameness of all religions". Einstein was equally impressed by the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the Passion of Jesus. According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein immensely enjoyed the Catholic religion courses which he received at the school. The teachers at his school were liberal and generally made no distinction among students' religions, though some harbored a mild but ingrained antisemitism. Einstein later recalled an incident involving a teacher who particularly liked him, "One day that teacher brought a long nail to the lesson and told the students that with such nails Christ had been nailed to the Cross by the Jews" and that "Among the children at the elementary school anti-Semitism was prevalent...Physical attacks and insults on the way home from school were frequent, but for the most part not too vicious." Einstein noted, "That was at a Catholic school; how much worse the antisemitism must be in other Prussian schools, one can only imagine." He would later in life recall that "The religion of the fathers, as I encountered it in Munich during religious instruction and in the synagogue, repelled rather than attracted me."
+Einstein met several times and collaborated with the Belgian priest scientist Georges Lemaître, of the Catholic University of Leuven. Lemaître is known as the first proponent of the Big Bang theory of the origins of the cosmos and a pioneer in applying Einstein's theory of general relativity to cosmology. Einstein proposed Lemaitre for the 1934 Francqui Prize, which he received from the Belgian King.
+In 1940, Time magazine quoted Einstein lauding the Catholic Church for its role in opposing the Nazis:

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+Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
+The quotation has since been repeatedly cited by defenders of Pope Pius XII. An investigation of the quotation by mathematician William C. Waterhouse and Barbara Wolff of the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem found that the statement was mentioned in an unpublished letter from 1947. In the letter to Count Montgelas, Einstein explained that the original comment was a casual one made to a journalist regarding the support of "a few churchmen" for individual rights and intellectual freedom during the early rule of Hitler and that, according to Einstein, the comment had been drastically exaggerated.
+On 11 November 1950, a Brooklyn pastor named Cornelius Greenway wrote a letter to Einstein, which had also quoted his alleged remarks about the Church. Einstein responded, "I am, however, a little embarrassed. The wording of the statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience write down the statement you sent me as my own. The matter is all the more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember in detail), gives a wrong impression of my general attitude."
+In 2008, the Antiques Roadshow television program aired a manuscript expert, Catherine Williamson, authenticating a 1943 letter from Einstein in which he confirms that he "made a statement which corresponds approximately" to Time magazine's quotation of him. However, Einstein continued, "I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi regime—much earlier than 1940—and my expressions were a little more moderate."

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+
+==== William Hermanns conversations ====
+Einstein's conversations with William Hermanns were recorded over a 34-year correspondence. In the conversations, Einstein makes various statements about the Christian Churches in general and the Catholic Church in particular: "When you learn the history of the Catholic Church, you wouldn't trust the Center Party. Hasn't Hitler promised to smash the Bolsheviks in Russia? The Church will bless its Catholic soldiers to march alongside the Nazis" (March 1930). "I predict that the Vatican will support Hitler if he comes to power. The Church since Constantine has always favoured the authoritarian State, as long as the State allows the Church to baptize and instruct the masses" (March 1930). "So often in history the Jews have been the instigators of justice and reform whether in Spain, Germany or Russia. But no sooner have they done their job than their 'friends', often blessed by the Church, spit in their faces" (August 1943).
+"But what makes me shudder is that the Catholic Church is silent. One doesn't need to be a prophet to say, 'The Catholic Church will pay for this silence...I do not say that the unspeakable crimes of the Church for 2,000 years had always the blessing of the Vatican, but it vaccinated its believers with the idea: We have the true God, and the Jews have crucified Him.' The Church sowed hate instead of love, though the ten commandments state: Thou shalt not kill" (August 1943). "With a few exceptions, the Roman Catholic Church has stressed the value of dogma and ritual, conveying the idea theirs is the only way to reach heaven. I don't need to go to Church to hear if I'm good or bad; my heart tells me this" (August 1943). "I don't like to implant in youth the Church's doctrine of a personal God, because that Church has behaved so inhumanly in the past 2,000 years... Consider the hate the Church manifested against the Jews and then against the Muslims, the Crusades with their crimes, the burning stakes of the inquisition, the tacit consent of Hitler's actions while the Jews and the Poles dug their own graves and were slaughtered. And Hitler is said to have been an altar boy!" (August 1943).
+"Yes," Einstein replied vehemently, "It is indeed human, as proved by Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), who was behind the Concordat with Hitler. Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time?" (August 1943). "The Church has always sold itself to those in power, and agreed to any bargain in return for immunity." (August 1943) "If I were allowed to give advice to the Churches," Einstein continued, "I would tell them to begin with a conversion among themselves, and to stop playing power politics. Consider what mass misery they have produced in Spain, South America and Russia." (September 1948).
+In response to a Catholic convert who asked, "Didn't you state that the Church was the only opponent of Communism?" Einstein replied, "I don't have to emphasise that the Church [sic] at last became a strong opponent of National Socialism, as well." Einstein's secretary Helen Dukas added, "Dr. Einstein didn't mean only the Catholic church, but all churches." When the convert mentioned that the Nazis had gassed his family members, Einstein replied that "he also felt guilty—adding that the whole Church, beginning with the Vatican, should feel guilt" (September 1948).
+When asked for more precise responses in 1954, Einstein replied: "About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. [...] As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indoctrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking but by immutable laws." William Miller of Life Magazine who was present at this meeting described Einstein as looking like a "living saint" and speaking with "angelic indifference."
+
+== Philosophical beliefs ==
+From a young age he had an interest in philosophy. Einstein said about himself: "As a young man I preferred books whose content concerned a whole world view and, in particular, philosophical ones. Schopenhauer, David Hume, Mach, to some extent Kant, Plato, Aristotle."
+
+=== Relationship between science and philosophy ===
+Einstein believed that when trying to understand nature one should engage in both philosophical enquiry and enquiry through the natural sciences.
+Einstein believed that epistemology and science "are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled."
+
+=== Free will ===
+Like Spinoza, Einstein was a strict determinist who believed that human behavior was completely determined by causal laws. For that reason, he refused the chance aspect of quantum theory, famously telling Niels Bohr: "God does not play dice with the universe." In letters sent to physicist Max Born, Einstein revealed his belief in causal relationships:

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+You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly believe, but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game, although I am well aware that some of our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility.
+Einstein's emphasis on 'belief' and how it connected with determinism was illustrated in a letter of condolence responding to news of the death of Michele Besso, one of his lifelong friends. Einstein wrote to the family: "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
+Einstein had admitted to a fascination with philosopher Spinoza's deterministic version of pantheism. American philosopher Charles Hartshorne, in seeking to distinguish deterministic views with his own belief of free will panentheism, coined the distinct typology "Classical pantheism" to distinguish the views of those who hold similar positions to Spinoza's deterministic version of pantheism.
+He was also an incompatibilist; in 1932 he said:
+
+I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.
+And yet, Einstein maintains that whether or not a particular human life is meaningful depends on how the individual conceives of his or her own life with respect to the lives of fellow human beings. A primitive human being in this regard is one whose life is entirely devoted to the gratification of instinctual needs. Whereas Einstein accepts that the gratification of basic needs is a legitimate and indispensable goal, he regards it nevertheless as an elementary goal. The transition of the human mind from its initial and infantile state of disconnectedness (selfishness) to a state of unity with the universe, according to Einstein, requires the exercise of four types of freedoms: freedom from self, freedom of expression, freedom from time, and freedom of independence.
+
+=== Humanism and moral philosophy ===
+Einstein was a secular humanist and a supporter of the Ethical Culture movement. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York. For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism. He observed, "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity." He was an honorary associate of the British humanist organization the Rationalist Press Association. Its periodical, today known as New Humanist magazine, was famously seen at the top of his reading pile at the time of his death.
+With regard to punishment by God, Einstein stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." "A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees."
+On the importance of ethics he wrote, "The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action." "I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others." "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God."

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+---
+title: "Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein"
+chunk: 10/11
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:53.313065+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Teleology ===
+In a conversation with Ugo Onufri in 1955, with regards to nature's purpose he said, "I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic." In a 1947 letter he stated, "I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere."
+
+=== Epistemology ===
+
+==== Naïve realism ====
+Einstein believed naïve realism was "relatively simple" to disprove. He agreed with Bertrand Russell that humans observe the qualities objects have on them (greenness, coldness, hardness, etc.) and not the actual objects themselves.
+
+==== Positivism ====
+Einstein declared that he was no positivist, a philosophical system that declares that only those statements that are verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are useful in determining truth. Einstein maintained that people validly use certain ideas and values, such as intuition or religious faith, which cannot be proven with direct observation or logic.
+Einstein acknowledged however that positivist thinkers, such as Ernst Mach, had a deep influence on him in his early years. Regarding relativity theory, he writes: "the whole direction of thought of this theory conforms with Mach's..." Though Einstein maintained that Mach's positivism is unfruitful in theory development, he considered that positivism was still useful, commenting that: "It [positivistic philosophy] cannot give birth to anything living, it can only exterminate harmful vermin."
+
+===== Transcendental Idealism =====
+
+Einstein considered that Kant’s "denial of the objectivity of space can (...) hardly be taken seriously". He also believed that "if Kant had known what is known to us today of the natural order, I am certain that he would have fundamentally revised his philosophical conclusions. Kant built his structure upon the foundations of the world outlook of Kepler and Newton. Now that the foundation has been undermined, the structure no longer stands."
+
+=== Opinions on philosophers ===
+
+==== David Hume ====
+Einstein was an admirer of the philosophy of David Hume; in 1944 he said "If one reads Hume’s books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him." In a letter to Moritz Schlick Einstein remarked that he had read Hume's book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding "with eagerness and admiration shortly before finding relativity theory" and that "very possibly, I wouldn't have come to the solution without those philosophical studies".
+
+==== Immanuel Kant ====
+Some sources maintain that Einstein read the three Critiques at the age of 16 and studied Kant as a teenager. However Philip Stamp states that this is contradicted by some of his own claims. In 1949, Einstein said that he "did not grow up in the Kantian tradition, but came to understand the truly valuable which is to be found in his doctrine, alongside of errors which today are quite obvious, only quite late."
+In one of Einstein's letters in 1918 to Max Born, Einstein said that he was starting to discover this "truly valuable" in Kant: "I am reading Kant's Prolegomena here, among other things, and I am beginning to comprehend the enormous suggestive power that emanated from the fellow, and still does. Once you concede to him merely the existence of synthetic a priori judgements, you are trapped. Anyway it is nice to read him, even if it is not as good as his predecessor Hume's work. Hume also had a far sounder instinct."
+Einstein explained the significance of Kant's philosophy as follows:
+
+Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection, cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. Man has an intense desire for assured knowledge. That is why Hume's clear message seems crushing: the sensory raw material, the only source of our knowledge, through habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge and still less to the understanding of lawful relations. Then Kant took the stage with an idea which, though certainly untenable in the form in which he put it, signified a step towards the solution of Hume's dilemma: if we have definitely assured knowledge, it must be grounded in reason itself.
+
+==== Arthur Schopenhauer ====
+Schopenhauer's views on the independence of spatially separated systems influenced Einstein, who called him a genius. In their view it was a necessary assumption that the mere difference in location suffices to make two systems different, with each having its own real physical state, independent of the state of the other.
+In Einstein's Berlin study three figures hung on the wall: Faraday, Maxwell and Schopenhauer. Einstein described, concerning the personal importance of Schopenhauer for him, Schopenhauer's words as "a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance." Although Schopenhauer's works are known for their pessimism, Konrad Wachsmann remembered, "He often sat with one of the well-worn Schopenhauer volumes, and as he sat there, he seemed so pleased, as if he were engaged with a serene and cheerful work."
+
+==== Ernst Mach ====
+Einstein liked Ernst Mach's scientific work, though not his philosophical work. He said "Mach was as good a scholar of mechanics as he was a deplorable philosopher". However, Einstein's early epistemological views were deeply influenced by Mach. In his "Autobiographical Notes," he writes: "I see Mach's greatness in his incorruptible skepticism and independence; in my younger years, however, Mach's epistemological position also influenced me very greatly, a position which today appears to me to be essentially untenable."

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_interpretations_of_the_Big_Bang_theory-0.md

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+---
+title: "Religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory"
+chunk: 1/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_interpretations_of_the_Big_Bang_theory"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:54.549734+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Since the emergence of the Big Bang theory as the dominant physical cosmological paradigm, there have been a variety of reactions by religious groups regarding its implications for religious cosmologies. Some accept the scientific evidence at face value, some seek to harmonize the Big Bang with their religious tenets, and some reject or ignore the evidence for the Big Bang theory.
+The core tenet of most major monotheistic religions such as is that there is one God who created the universe and bestowed his blessings upon it. These faiths are generally in agreement with contemporary scientific cosmological thought as they believe the Big Bang theory generally reinforces the idea of one supreme God. However, this viewpoint is not universal amongst practicers of these faiths, resulting in a spectrum of opinions about how religious cosmology and the Big Bang theory truly support one another.
+
+== Background ==
+The Big Bang itself is a scientific theory, and as such, stands or falls by its agreement with observations. However, as a theory which addresses the nature of the universe since its earliest discernible existence, the Big Bang carries possible theological implications regarding the concept of creation out of nothing. Many atheist philosophers have argued against the idea of the Universe having a beginning – the universe might simply have existed for all eternity, but with the emerging evidence of the Big Bang theory, both physicists and theistic philosophers have viewed it as capable of being explained by theism; a popular philosophical argument for the existence of God known as the Kalam cosmological argument rests in the concepts of the Big Bang. In the 1920s and 1930s, almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the steady-state theory, who rejected the implication that the universe had a beginning.
+
+== Hinduism ==
+The view from the Hindu Puranas is that of an eternal universe cosmology in which time has no absolute beginning, but rather is infinite and cyclic, as opposed to a universe which originated from a Big Bang. However, the Encyclopædia of Hinduism, referencing Katha Upanishad 2:20, states that the Big Bang theory reminds humanity that everything came from the Brahman which is "subtler than the atom, greater than the greatest." It consists of several "Big Bangs" and "Big Crunches" following each other in a cyclical manner.
+The Nasadiya Sukta, the Hymn of Creation in the Rigveda (10:129), mentions the world beginning from nothing through the power of heat. This can be seen as corresponding to the Big Bang theory.
+
+THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
+What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
+Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
+That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever
+Several prominent modern scientists have remarked that Hinduism (and also Buddhism and Jainism by extension as all three faiths share most of these philosophies) is the only religion (or civilization) in all of recorded history, that has timescales and theories in astronomy (cosmology), that appear to correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology, e.g. Carl Sagan, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Robert Oppenheimer, George Sudarshan, Fritjof Capra etc. Sir Roger Penrose is among the present-day physicists that believe in a cyclical model for the Universe, wherein there are alternating cycles consisting of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, and he describes this model to be "a bit more like Hindu philosophy" as compared to the Abrahamic faiths.
+
+== Christianity ==
+
+Similarly to creatio ex nihilo, the Genesis creation narrative opens with the Hebrew phrase bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz, which can be interpreted in at least three ways:
+
+As a statement that the cosmos had an absolute beginning (In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth).
+As a statement describing the condition of the world when God began creating (When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was untamed and shapeless).
+As background information (When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth being untamed and shapeless, God said, Let there be light!).
+Though option 1 has been the historic and predominant view, it has been suggested since the Middle Ages that it cannot be the preferred translation based on strictly linguistic and exegetical grounds. Whereas our modern societies see the origin of matter as a question of crucial importance, this may not have been the case for ancient cultures. Some scholars assert that when the author(s) of Genesis wrote the creation account, they were more concerned with God bringing the cosmos into operation by assigning roles and functions.
+The Big Bang theory was partly developed by a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître, who believed that there was neither a connection nor a conflict between his religion and his science. At the November 22, 1951, opening meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope Pius XII declared that the Big Bang theory does not conflict with the Catholic concept of creation.
+Some Conservative Protestant Christian denominations have also welcomed the Big Bang theory as supporting a historical interpretation of the doctrine of creation; however, adherents of Young Earth creationism, who advocate a very literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, tend to reject the theory.

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_interpretations_of_the_Big_Bang_theory-1.md

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+---
+title: "Religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory"
+chunk: 2/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_interpretations_of_the_Big_Bang_theory"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:54.549734+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Bakongo Spirituality ==
+In Kongo spiritual tradition, the Bakongo people of the Congo River basin believe that in the beginning there was only a circular void, which they refer to as Mbungi. The Supreme god Nzambi (female counterpart: Nzambici) then summoned a spark of fire, called Kalûnga, which filled the void and burned and grew and hardened. The heat created so much energy that pieces of burning mbungi were cast far and wide. When the fires eventually burned out, the hardened pieces cooled and became planets, forming the universe. They also believe that the earth underwent four stages of creation that included: the emergence of fire, the burning, the cooling, and the emergence of life. Philosopher Molefi Kete Asante and theologist Kiatezua Lubanzadio Luyaluka both cited these similarities that they believe show a compatibility between Bakongo cosmology and the Big Bang theory.
+
+== Baháʼí Faith ==
+
+Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, has taught that the universe has "neither beginning nor ending". In the Tablet of Wisdom ("Lawh-i-Hikmat", written 1873–1874). Bahá'u'lláh states: "That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today. The world of existence came into being through the heat generated from the interaction between the active force and that which is its recipient. These two are the same, yet they are different." The terminology used here refers to ancient Greek and Islamic philosophy (al-Kindi, Avicenna, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Shaykh Ahmad). In an early text, Bahá’u’lláh describes the successive creation of the four natures heat and cold (the active force), dryness and moisture (the recipients), and the four elements fire, air, water and earth. About the phrase "That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today," 'Abdu'l-Bahá has stated that it means that the universe is evolving. He also states that "the substance and primary matter of contingent beings is the ethereal power, which is invisible and only known through its effects... Ethereal matter is itself both the active force and the recipient... it is the sign of the Primal Will in the phenomenal world... The ethereal matter is, therefore, the cause, since light, heat, and electricity appear from it. It is also the effect, for as vibrations take place in it, they become visible...".
+Jean-Marc Lepain, Robin Mihrshahi, Dale E. Lehman and Julio Savi suggest a possible relation of this statement with the Big Bang theory.
+
+== Islam ==
+
+Writing for the Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies, Haslin Hasan and Ab. Hafiz Mat Tuah wrote that modern scientific ideas on cosmology are creating new ideas on how to interpret the Quran's cosmogonical terms. In particular, some modern-day Muslim groups have advocated for interpreting the term al-sama, traditionally believed to be a reference to both the sky and the seven heavens, as instead referring to the universe as a whole.
+Mirza Tahir Ahmad, head of the Ahmadiyya community, asserted in his book Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth that the Big Bang theory was foretold in the Quran. He referenced the verse 30 of the Sūrat al-Anbiyāʼ, which says that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity:
+
+ Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?
+ 
+This view that the Qu'ran references the initial singularity of the Big Bang is also accepted by many Muslim scholars outside of the Ahmadiyya community such as Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, who is a Sufi scholar, and Muhammad Asad, who was a nondenominational Muslim scholar. Further, some scholars such as Faheem Ashraf of the Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc. and Sheikh Omar Suleiman of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research argue that the scientific theory of an expanding universe is described in Sūrat adh-Dhāriyāt:
+
+ And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander.
+ However, not all Muslim scholars agree that the Qu'ran supports the Big Bang theory. Using a different interpretation of the Qur'an 21:30, physicist Abdul Mabud asserts that there was no gap between Earth's joint separation from the heavens and Earth's subsequent formation. Therefore, Mabud rejects the notion that Earth was formed from cosmic dust which spawned from the Big Bang.
+
+== Judaism ==
+"That the universe had a definite starting point" was addressed in a 2014 article with the title "New Big Bang evidence supports Biblical creation, says Orthodox physicist." Harvard's John Kovac called it a "smoking-gun signature."
+BBC asked and answered "Is the Big Bang theory compatible with Judaism." Chabad/Lubavitch's website writes that it is science that caught up to the Torah's teachings regarding what today is called the Big Bang.
+A Jewish doctor named David W. Weiss believes that the Big Bang theory is compatible with traditional Jewish cosmology given that repeatable experiments cannot be applied to materials far out of reach. Therefore, Weiss believes that a true scientist should  be of the belief that a Creator was responsible for the Big Bang.
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Leeming, David Adams, and Margaret Adams Leeming, A Dictionary of Creation Myths. Oxford University Press (1995), ISBN 0-19-510275-4.
+Pius XII (1952), "Modern Science and the Existence of God," The Catholic Mind 49:182–192.
+Ahmad, Mirza Tahir, Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth Islam International Publications Ltd (1987), ISBN 1-85372-640-0. The Quran and Cosmology
+Wickman, Leslie, "God of the Big Bang: How Modern Science Affirms the Creator," Worthy Publishing (2015), ISBN 978-1617954252.
+
+== External links ==
+God and the Big Bang: featuring Professors Peter Bussey, Gerald Gabrielse, Owen Gingerich, Nick Saunders, and Jennifer Wiseman. It discusses the connection between the Big Bang and God from a Christian perspective
+Big Bang Theory and Religion, by Ron Kurtis, Physicist Archived 2023-03-31 at the Wayback Machine
+Cosmic Controversy: The Big Bang and Genesis 1 published by the American Scientific Affiliation, an organisation of Christians in the sciences
+Oliver, Simon. "Creation and Science". Bibledex Verses. Brady Haran for the University of Nottingham.

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_on_genetically_modified_foods-0.md

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+---
+title: "Religious views on genetically modified foods"
+chunk: 1/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_on_genetically_modified_foods"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:55.971162+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Religious views on genetically modified foods have been mixed, although as yet, no genetically modified foods ("GM" foods) have been designated as unacceptable by religious authorities.
+
+== Background and history ==
+Genetic engineering is a laboratory process that alters the DNA make-up of an organism. This may include deleting or adding a segment of DNA.
+Genetically Modified Organisms typically refers to food products that have been altered using genetic engineering. This is done by adding DNA to a single cell, that will later be present in the rest of the organism due to cell reproduction.
+Around 8000 BCE, humans used agricultural techniques such as Cross breeding to breed animals and plants with preferred traits.
+In 1982, the FDA approved the first genetically modified product, insulin, for public use in the United States. In 1994, a genetically modified tomato was approved for public use by the FDA in the United States.
+Common genetically modified foods include corn, soybeans, potatoes, and squash.
+
+== Judaism ==
+There is no consensus in the views of Jewish religious leaders, scholars and commentators on whether Jews can eat GM food products or engage in research in the area of GM food technology.
+One perspective emphasizes that humanity was created in God's image and this means that humanity can "partner with God in the perfection of everything in the world," and therefore Jewish law accepts genetic engineering to save and prolong human life as well as increase the quality or quantity of the world's food supply.
+Other perspectives hold that GM food technology is a violation of Kil'ayim, the mixed breeding of crops or livestock, and that because God made "distinctions in the natural world", Jews must honor them.
+
+=== Kashrut ===
+Kashrut laws state that all plants are considered Kosher.
+Many Rabbinic authorities believe that genetic material separated from the parent organism is "inert," or separate from the parent organism. Thus, genetic material that is transferred from a non-kosher species is no longer considered food, as it does not have taste and is considered separate from the non-kosher species. Rabbinic authorities generally assert that genetic material from non-kosher species is not in itself non-kosher and does not render the new organism non-kosher.
+Some may argue, however, that food made with genes from pigs or other non-kosher animals would likely be non-kosher.
+Genetic engineering also poses Kashrut concerns regarding the changing of physical characteristics of animals. Kashrut only permits eating animals with split hooves that chews their cud. However, genetic engineering may permit a traditionally non-Kosher animal to attain these characteristics. This has a difficult response, according to Halakha.
+
+== Islam ==
+Islam too forbids eating of pork, and Islamic scholars have also raised concern about the theoretical production of foods with genes from pigs.
+And there are varying perspectives.   A seminar of Islamic scholars in Kuwait on genetics and genetic engineering in October 1998 concluded that although there are fears about the possibility of the harmful effects of GM food technology and GM food products on human beings and the environment, there are no laws within Islam which stop the genetic modification of food crops and animals.   And in 2003, the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) approved the importation and consumption of genetically modified food products by Indonesian Muslims.  Others have written that while there are Quranic verses forbidding humanity from defacing God's creation, these "cannot be invoked as a total and radical ban on genetic engineering ... If carried too far, it would conflict with many forms of curative surgery that also entail some change in God's creation".
+Voices in opposition to GMOs argue that there is no need for genetic modification of food crops because God created everything perfectly and man does not have any right to manipulate anything that God has created.
+
+== Christianity ==
+
+=== Roman Catholic Church ===
+Views of Rome on genetic engineering
+In 1999, after two years of discussions,  the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life stated that modifying the genes of plants and animals is theologically acceptable.  The Guardian reported that "Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice- president of the pontifical academy, said: 'We are increasingly encouraged that the advantages of genetic engineering of plants and animals are greater than the risks. The risks should be carefully followed through openness, analysis and controls, but without a sense of alarm.'   Referring to genetically modified products such as corn and soya, Sgreccia added: 'We give it a prudent 'yes' We cannot agree with the position of some groups that say it is against the will of God to meddle with the genetic make-up of plants and animals.'"
+In 2000 as part of the Great Jubilee Pope John Paul II gave an address concerning agriculture, at which he said: The "famous words of Genesis entrust the earth to man's use, not abuse. They do not make man the absolute arbiter of the earth's governance, but the Creator's "co-worker":  a stupendous mission, but one which is also marked by precise boundaries that can never be transgressed with impunity. This is a principle to be remembered in agricultural production itself, whenever there is a question of its advance through the application of biotechnologies, which cannot be evaluated solely on the basis of immediate economic interests. They must be submitted beforehand to rigorous scientific and ethical examination, to prevent them from becoming disastrous for human health and the future of the earth."

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+---
+title: "Religious views on genetically modified foods"
+chunk: 2/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_on_genetically_modified_foods"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:33:55.971162+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+==== Other studies and statements ====
+A 2002 meeting between bishops and scientists in the Philippines concluded that biotechnology could be an important stepping stone in the struggle against hunger and environmental pollution.
+A 2003 symposium gathered by Cardinal Renato T. Martino has examined the use of GMOs in modern agriculture. The symposium's study  argued that the future of humanity is at stake and that there is no room for the ideological arguments advanced by environmentalists.
+Velasio De Paolis, a professor of canon law at the Pontifical Urban University, has said that it was "easy to say no to GM food if your stomach is full".
+In 2008, Fr. Sean McDonagh, an Irish Columban priest and "well-known commentator on environmental issues", questioned whether  hosts from transgenic wheat could ever be approved by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith because of the Church's strict rules regarding sacramental bread. He specifically cited canon 924, which stipulates the bread must be wheaten only, and recently made, so that there is no danger of corruption.
+A 2009 study on genetically modified organisms sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences came to a favorable conclusion on GMOs, viewing them as praiseworthy for improving the lives of the poor.
+
+==== Philippines ====
+The Philippines is a predominantly Catholic country, and official pronouncements of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) exert a strong influence in policy making and the CBCP has not supported biotechnology, and probably will not until there is an official endorsement from the Pope. President Arroyo’s visit to Rome on September 27, 2003, she apparently consulted Pope John Paul II about the Church position on biotechnology. On the basis of that meeting, she issued a statement indicating that she felt it was important that opponents of GMOs knew that according to the Vatican, GMOs are not immoral.  The CBCP issued a statement in response stating that the Pope had not endorsed GMOs.   In 2009 Bishop Vicente Navarra of the Diocese of Bacolod in the Philippines issued a pastoral letter calling on the Negros Occidental and Bacolod City governments to continue banning the entry of GMO products.
+
+=== Anabaptist Christianity ===
+About 550 Amish farmers in Pennsylvania have adopted nicotine-free tobacco since 2001, because it pays "about $1.50 per pound for the nicotine-free tobacco, nearly double the 80-cent-per-pound rate for traditional tobacco. GMO crops do not conflict with the Amish lifestyle.
+
+=== Anglican Communion ===
+In 2004, the Church Environmental Network, representing members of the Anglican church of South Africa, spoke out against the South African government's backing of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
+Christian Aid, a British ecumenical group, released a paper in 2000 that expressed sharp concerns about the agricultural biotechnology industry, particularly with regard to its potential effects on impoverished people and economic development in the developing world.
+
+=== Rastafarian ===
+While the Rastafari Movement as a whole has no central authority, a Rastafari Code of Conduct was ratified in July–August 2008 at a meeting in Jamaica of the Nyah Binghi Order, one of the three houses of the Rastafari movement;  that Code defines GM food as not Ital.
+
+== References ==