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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.

This document and the appendices are also available in Adobe PDF format. To access these files, please see the Full Report Documents and Appendices topic.

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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The Peters ETI Religious Crisis Survey - Introduction

The Scientific Warrant for this Survey
Previous Relevant Surveys
Survey Design
Subject Recruitment
Analysis of Responses to Questions 3-5
Analysis of Responses to Questions 6-10
Conclusion
Sources Cited
Full Report Documents and Appendices

Source:

Ted Peters Ted Peters
Dr. Ted Peters
and Julie Froehlig

See also:

AstroTheology: Religious Reflections on Extraterrestrial Life Forms
Evangelical Atheism Today: A Response to Richard Dawkins
Theistic Evolution: A Christian alternative to atheism, creationism and intelligent design
Does God Exist?
Does God Act?
Theology
Controversy
Opinions
The Relation of Science & Religion