Just after the end of the second world war we began seeing strange objects in the sky that we could not identify. That was the " UFO " phenomenon and many people believed the arrival of a space ship from another planet would visit Earth. The thought of an extraterrestial arriving amongst us terrified the churches and they quickly adjusted their dogma to have that fit within their teaching of the creation of life.
We have visited the Moon and within the lifetime of many we will probably set foot on Mars which we regard as a " dead " planet. Now it has been revealed that there is a massive lake of salty water under its surface. It is quite possible that this will contain basic living creatures such as we have discovered deep in the oceans of Earth.
The plan is to create a permanent base station on the moon from which a Mars probe will launch with the intent of eventually setting up a colony on that planet. It will probably be a long time before we can realistically reach that lake about 1.5 kilometres underground to determine if life exists there. If such life is found, it will probably be bacteria that has been feeding on a stew of toxic chemicals issuing from that planets magma core, scaldingly hot and under immense pressure from above.
Such a discovery will be no longer earth shattering. It will simply power newspaper headlines for a few days and generate scientific conjecture. The world population has been conditioned to expect such a discovery and they will take it in their stride.
The one thing that will not change if such a discovery is made is the worlds religions. Many of the wars and much of the friction between peoples over the centuries has religion at its core. The human psyche has one common objective - and that is an after life. The various religions simply offer their solution of how that objective can be obtained. In many ways it resembles a giant Ponzi scheme. Do what the church tells you - and after you die that reward will be yours.
Every one of those many religions has suffered schism - and the resulting sub-orders have divided into sects. It seems that humankind has an inbuilt urge to find something to worship, just as those hunter gatherers chose to worship the signs of power they could observe, thunder and lightning, the moon and the sun.
Common sense and the reality of scientific discovery should have coalesced into a simple singular world religion by now but exactly the opposite has occurred. Religion seems ever divisive, because religion delivers both power and money to those who serve as its commanders.
We are building the expertise to colonise deep space from our home planet and we have yet to learn to live in peace within ourselves. No doubt if we discover living organisms elsewhere we will send missionaries to convert them to our religions - at the point of a sword.
Once the discovery of life on Mars would have been mind blowing. Today it will compete with the stock exchange quotes for world attention !
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