'Most significant discovery in human history'

@OP:

It seems to me that in the atheistic paradigm, one would just assume that the spontaneous generation of life seemingly can happen anywhere...

So what's the big deal? Why would finding life there be the most significant discovery of human history?

But isn't it pretty much what you'd expect the spokesperson for a corporation that just spent incredible amounts of money and lost their entire crew to say? It's not like the movie itself, via some overarching narrator, said it.

I have a question. If our Universe is only "so old" (like around 13-15 billion years old), and it took billions of years for life to form on our planet, wouldn't that be proof that it takes a huge amount of time for life to even start and get to the point of being a space faring species? Could it be possible that Earth is the "first" planet where a space faring species formed and is the reason why we don't hear from anyone else out there? Not to mention that our planet has had a few major extinctions (which should also be true for all planets in the Universe.) For all we know, WE are the only lucky ones, so far, to have gotten as far as we have. We are in the infancy of our birth and we will be the ones to populate the Universe in the future (hopefully.) If the Universe was full of alien life that were space faring, we should already know about it! Not unless there's a space police (like in South Park) that keeps us at bay...

You've missed my point. The relevance of the discovery is the weight that it would give all of those existential and scientific questions. There's no need to suppose there is or isn't a God. We know that there are those who believe in God and those who don't, but their arguments are mostly limited to the empirical evidence they have access to on earth. First-hand knowledge and interaction with alien life would introduce an entirely new, massive piece of information into our worldview. It's hardly hypothetical to assert that it would cause an enormous ripple effect.

The Biblical god is perhaps the most anthropocentric deity ever. Created by humans for humans. More specifically even, created by ancient male Jews for ancient male Jews.

The Bible describes only the creation of land and sky, and describes the sun and moon as "lights". It describes the Earth as having four corners. It does not mention anything else. No Mars, no Jupiter, no other stellar systems, no galaxies, and most certainly not Europa. And only lands known by Jews are described. No China, no Americas, no Australia (something which was used later to justify slavery, arguing that Africans are soul-less animals).

The original sin and salvation as well, would be concepts that would hold no meaning for an alien species. They aren't supposed descendants of Adam and Eve. Neither would the entire Bible (or Quran or Tanakh) even make sense to them. Most of its "teachings" deal with things that in all likelihood will be unique to humans - eating prohibitions, clothing prohibitions, sexual prohibitions, etc. Would you expect an alien to eat a host wafer? What if they do not have sexes? Or have more than two? Even if there are only two, which would be male and female? What if they are immortal? What if they don't have religions at all?

Unless of course, you are implying that they were given their own scriptures, their own prophets, and their own rituals. In which case, how would you even recognize them as kindred? Abrahamic religions conquered and converted half the world, deposing "false" prophets and scriptures and deities. Even now, wars are still raging on whose prophet is real and whose isn't. And you expect Christians to just look at an alien religion and say "ah, what they believe now is perfectly fine. Because that's what Jesus told them."

Abrahamic religions are not known for tolerance. Even very minor differences is enough for followers to declare heresy and usually end up with someone dying. If Catholics can't even accept Protestants, if Christians can't even accept Muslims, if Abrahamic religions can't even accept polytheistic religions, what makes you think it can accept the religion(s) of a (for example) multitentacled chemosynthetic monster the size of an ocean liner that reproduces through fragmentation and have a hive mind?

An infinite pantheistic or panentheistic god(s), sure, he/she/it/they could do that. Highly advanced alien being(s) as well may be capable of that. But not the Abrahamic god. A god, which for all intents and purposes, is truly a god of men and solely of men because it was created by men.

Remember, humans were supposedly created in his image. Thus the opposite is also true. The Biblical god is also in your image. And that is reflected clearly in the scriptures where the Abrahamic god is almost always described as having human motivations. That is not an infinite being.

You'd be better off using ultimate deities or philosophies from say, Hinduism or Buddhism, which are easier to interpret as referring to universal non-human and infinite beings. Though again, only if you treat it all as metaphorical rather than literal.

If cures for all cancer diseases were discovered it would no doubt be a big discovery. Especially if it happened at once, with a major shift in knowledge, instead of a long series of small improvements.

But I think 100 years or 200 years after that discovery, it wouldn't seem too significant either way. It would blur in with all the other many discoveries we've made. Especially because there's so many other significant diseases we've come to cure over time.

Discovering extraterrestrial life matters in a wide range of subjects because it will have influence on major core understandings about how life-forms work, which can help lead to other discoveries, like curing diseases such as cancer.

Curing cancer is kind of a selfish discovery. It's only about improving our lives and fighting against one of many causes of death. ET life will have impact on so many branches of sciences.

But in order to determine which discoveries are more important than others, you'd have to setup some criteria, otherwise it would just be what you feel is more important (and that will no-doubt change with culture over time).

I think the primary reason that cancer matters a lot today is because it's so expressed in the Western culture nowadays. I can't imagine we could know if it's really significant 500 years from now (if we're even alive then), but judging from the history of cultural values, I imagine it would have changed significantly.

Sorry, Maxim, but while your personal interpretation of the Bible allows the concept of aliens to fit into the structure of God's creations (as, frankly, it should), the great bulk of fundamentalists who see the Bible as literal and unalterable truth consider everything in it in literal terms. Angels are angels, not aliens. Watchers are watchers, not aliens. Demons are demons, not aliens. Ezekiel's wheel is literally a wheel, a flaming sword is literally a sword on fire, etc. NONE of these fundamentalists can see life in space simply because it is not literally described to them in the Bible as life in space. Even the true universe itself in it's tens of billions of light years of expanse is not something they can grasp by reading the Bible the way they do. Remember, people believed in the Bible for centuries even though they did not believe that the earth orbited the sun, or that the stars in the sky were other suns like our own many light years away. Galileo was persecuted by the CHURCH, for daring to suggest otherwise.

I have to deal with fundamentalist beliefs all the time, and they are astoundingly ignorant of the real universe they live in...BECAUSE they see the Bible as the only source of knowledge they need. In a purely literal sense, of course. And when they take the Bible literally, that source doesn't tell them any of the things you find in it, Maxim. Personally, I find the Bible to be as open to interpretation as you do, but the fundamentalists I witness would consider such interpretations to be heresy. So yes, the proof of extraterrestrial life would be profoundly disturbing to them. If they were even willing to accept the proof of it. In my opinion, they would violently oppose any acceptance of such proof.

What do you think angels, watchers, and demons are?

Except, people who are well-versed in the Bible and believe it to be true, believed in the existence of alien life all along.

People have gotten complacent about the concept of extraterrestrial life, due most definitely to how often it is speculated upon in so many narrative films, as well as other sources in mass media. But the difference between speculating on the possibility of extraterrestrial life and KNOWING IT AS A FACT is so enormous, some people appear to be in denial of it's impact. We may think we understand our place in the universe, but once we KNOW we are not alone, it will completely change how we think about ourselves, individually and as a group. It's like the difference between understanding that some day you will die, and actually facing the cold hard reality of your mortality. You may think you're prepared for that, but you're just kidding yourself.