The Peters ETI Religious Crisis Survey - Introduction

Abstract

The Peters ETI Religious Crisis Survey was constructed to test the following hypothesis: upon confirmation of contact between earth and an extraterrestrial civilization of intelligent beings, the long established religious traditions of earth would confront a crisis of belief and perhaps even collapse. Responses from individuals self-identifying with seven religious traditions - Roman Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, evangelical Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, Mormonism, Judaism, and Buddhism - indicate widespread acceptance of the existence of ETI and incorporation of ETI into their existing belief systems. Religious persons, for the most part, do not fear contact. Forecasts regarding imminent collapse of earth’s religious belief systems were found to be more prevalent among non-religious respondents than among religious respondents. This survey provides evidence that tends to disconfirm the hypothesis.

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Ted Peters

Principal Investigator, Professor of Systematic Theology,
Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary [Institute for Theology and Ethics]
and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences
at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley CA

Julie Froehlig

Research Assistant
Science Teacher, St. John’s School, San Francisco CA

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