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Growing up a "Star Trek" fanatic, not quite a Trekkie but close, the fear of the existence of aliens or life on other planets has always stumped me. After many years of being told, "there's no proof", "there's only one earth", "forget your fantasies of ever meeting E.T.", there most certainly now is proof there are other planets like ours orbiting stars in our galaxy, forget even the entire universe. Moreover, a new study completed using a sophisticated, super-computer powered, galaxy simulation program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, "…concluded that based on what they saw, at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in the Milky Way since its creation, and as many as 38,000 may have formed." Therefore, it seems all the more clear and logical that there are many, many intelligent planets out there.
This comes as very unwelcome news, however, to many on our current planet. And one has to wonder, "Why the fear?". The answer, it seems, however lies not so much in their possible existence but in the possibility that time-held religious beliefs are simply inaccurate. What would happen if Aliens landed tomorrow and said, "Sorry, we populated this planet with humanoid life 1 million years ago as a great social experiment to see what would happen. There is no 'God created the planet in 7 days and made Adam and Eve from his rib.'"? It would prove that hundreds of millions of people on earth have beliefs rooted in a tale no less mythical or historically accurate than the Lord of the Rings. That would be pretty ground-shaking news.
Well, the sadder news, unfortunately, is that the great religious texts are probably more mythical and mythology-based than any of the deeply religious want to admit in the first place. The facts of science do not tend to support much of the mythology nor the history. People cannot even actually prove, though many have tried, that Jesus Christ, for example, ever lived. That's heresy to some, but it's an historical fact. There is much evidence to support his existence and yet there is remarkable similarity in both name and what he supposedly did to other mythological beings in other cultures. You can research if online if you doubt this, it's astonishing. But, in Catholic School 3rd grade, they're not going to teach you about a east-Asian being similar to Jesus in virtually every way including the ability to walk on water, are they? Regardless, nobody wants to have his foundation shaken, and proof of aliens would shake many religious beliefs to their roots. The very idea that we may not even be from this planet, that maybe we evolved elsewhere and migrated when we destroyed our world, that we are the children of civilizations from ancient times as in the "Stargate" mythology, or even that we used to be the Martians, frightens people who want to take the great religious texts literally and use them to justify their way of life and their pathway to an afterlife. It doesn't have to be that way, however. These people could accept that the great religious texts are meant to be a teaching tool toward living your life better. They could, in fact, accept that maybe humans are incapable of understanding the true greatness of God, and that God created the universe rather than just earth. They could accept that God would want us to understand His creation via science rather than shunning it, home schooling children to repress their true knowledge of the world, and imposing hocus pocus as the answers to all the great questions. Going along as they are now requires a great leap of faith that the future won't reveal, at last, unequivocal proof that the great religious texts' version of our origin simply isn't true and reducing the value of everything they think they know.
See:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/02/25/galaxy.planets.kepler/index.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-450467/Found-20-light-years-away-New-Earth.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/08/26/new.planet/