…with the James Web Telescope looking for sources of artificial light to identify potential intelligent life, and the news this week of Perseverance searching for microbial life on Mars it feels like we are getting closer to a major discovery. But what - if anything - would it mean for the religions on Earth if life is proven to exist out there?
Sorry to disappoint you, but the only thing it disproves is that their creation myths aren’t to be taken literally.
Actually, in the case of Judaism and Christianity, not even that. An accurate translation of the very first sentence in Genesis is in the perfect tense: “In the beginning, God had created the Heavens and the Earth.” Only starting from the third verse does it switch into the narrative tense. As such, the Big Bang by itself wouldn’t be sufficient evidence against taking the Judeo-Christian creation myth literally (obviously, other advances in science take over from there).