That first step Neil Armstrong took on the Moon, might well be considered the most remarkable achievement in the history of the human species. It was the first step in a human odyssey to go beyond the bounds of our own small blue planet and explore the immense universe we find ourselves in. Perhaps with some future step and on a day not so far off, we humans will experience the most extraordinary of realities, that we are not alone in the universe.
But maybe some other human, four hundred and a few years ago, already took the first step on that odyssey to the stars, and perhaps through revisiting his story we can gain a perspective as to just how profound the implications stemming from the discovery of any other life forms beyond those manifest on Earth would be. He was a Franciscan monk named Giordano Bruno who subscribed to Copernicus’s notion of a heliocentric universe. But Bruno went far beyond anything Copernicus had ever thought of, having the audacity to suggest that the stars in the night sky were suns like our own, encircled by planets perhaps not so different from the one we find ourselves on. And on such planets, Giordano speculated that there was likely intelligent life, beings like we. He was the first human ever to ponder such notions.
To the Christian church, including Catholic and Protestant factions of it, Giordano Bruno’s assertions were preposterous. All men of the day new that God had created the Earth and exclusively put Adam and Eve, the very essence of his own incarnation on it. How could there possibly be other worlds, other places with creatures like us. Utter nonsense, absurd ludicrous notions was the cry of the consistory. But if Giordano was right, the rug was about to be pulled out from under monotheistic belief. There was no blasphemy more treacherous, no heresy so blatant. From a theocratic perspective, even Darwin’s notion that human and ape evolved from common ancestry pales in comparison to what Bruno was proposing.
It is without any sense of amazement, we find out that this gentle man was excommunicated, not only by the Catholics, but by Lutherans and Calvinists alike. What this man was proposing was so egregious that the church could no longer stand by and allow him to spew his venomous lies. And so, Geordano Bruno was brought before the inquisition to allow him to recant the untruths he had spoken, but for 8 longs years, subjected to the most brutal of torture techniques, this enlightened individual refused to nullify a single word of what he had said.
On a February morning in the year of our lord 1600, Giordano Bruno was bound naked and upside down to a post and dragged into the middle of the Campo de’ Fiori plaza. His tong was tied with a gag symbolic of the blasphemous nature of his mutterings and to preclude any further testament on his part. Then he was roasted over hot coals symbolic of an ushering into hell where such demonic souls would live out their eternity. It was a fate certainly fitting for anyone contemplating such sacrilege. God had created man and given him dominion over all other, and to suggest otherwise was to call God and his designated representatives here on earth liers.
Nine years later, peering through his telescope at Jupiter, Galileo Galilei would come across the proof positive that Copernicus, and perhaps even Bruno, were right. It was by no surprise that Galileo was brought before the same inquisition Bruno had faced and in the very same room, knowing the fate of Giordano Bruno, recanted his own pronouncements and belief in heliocentric theory. As it was, Galileo’s life was spared, but he would spend the rest of it under house arrest.
Perhaps the issue most relevant to this article with respect to Bruno’s ordeal would not come to light until just a few years ago, when a group of mostly scientist sought to recognize Bruno’s accomplishments by erecting a statuary of him at the very spot where he was burned at the stake. Surprisingly, they met fierce resistance from within the Vatican and had to work through secular civil authorities to get approval for the monument. It would seem, that the church is not yet ready to embrace the idea of extraterrestrial life, and form many of the same reasons it attempted to discard such notions 400 years ago. You see, if life beyond earth is ever discovered, the church and its creationist doctrine is going to come under intense scrutiny. If life is evolving elsewhere in the universe it likely evolved here on earth too, and it’s a realization the church is not going to consider, indeed, one it can not consider, or allow to be considered.
Can you think of anything so profound, as for the vast majority of humans since the beginning of recorded history, to find out that the creationist doctrines they have and do subscribe to turned out to be ludicrous notions, and that life is evolving throughout the universe as a natural aspect of an ongoing universal chemical evolution? It would be a realization that would mark the beginning of a whole new age of human awareness, the dawning of entirely new dimensions of human intellectual understanding. It would quite simply result in the next evolutionary step with respect to human cognitive development.
The monotheist creationists are safe for the moment, the threat to their belief the discovery of an extra terrestrial presence will surely raise, having yet to be realized. The idea that there is life elsewhere in the universe, remains only as an idea in the minds of humans, not unlike the absurd and ludicrous notions pondered by a Franciscan monk 400 years ago. But here is an interesting dilemma to be pondered. If next week, next year or a hundred years from now, when that signal is received from outer space denoting the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth, will the names of Jesus, Mohammad, Moses and others of monotheist trademark fade into obscurity, replaced by the name of the prophet Giordano Bruno? And you want to talk about potential social effect of SETI’s success? Can you think of anything more profound than that?
