The most recent things that have hurt religion are the web and 9/11. This will be the third.
We are talking about the greatest discovery that could be made. It is one that will make billions rethink their role in the universe. It will make them wonder about evolution, whether their God guided it and if so to what degree.
In the time since you made that comment, someone gave birth, and that made them rethink their role in the universe. Vague discoveries of space bacteria won't do it.
Why are you so certain of this? I grew up dominated by Christianity. It wasn't until 14 that I saw a UFO magazine insinuate that humans came from Mars. True or not didn't matter - what I remember from reading that was that my faith was shaken to the core. That day, I learned to never base your worldview on something so tenuous that a new discovery could topple it. That experience sent me on a journey to solidify my understanding of the world, and in the process, has made me less of a 'hardcore' Christian.
> I learned to never base your worldview on something so tenuous that a new discovery could topple it.
What? I'd just call that "learning from evidence". I believe plenty of things that a new discovery could topple and there's nothing wrong with that, so long as the new discovery hasn't already happened. You can't update on evidence that could arrive but hasn't arrived.
I'm talking about basing your worldview, not what you currently believe. Worldviews are things people attach significant identities to, and internalize to form the foundations for the rest of their beliefs.
If there's nothing you can think of that can topple you, then kudos, you may have reached enlightenment.
Just think back on when Columbus discovered the new world. Savages! Things that look like humans yet live like animals! With no clothes, no God, no sense of church or salvation. You can't even say that somehow Christianity arrived in the New World and then was lost -- it was just too isolated. (At least until the Mormons came along and solved that problem, but that's another story). As far as anybody was concerned, these were creatures that lived in an entirely alien way. Barely human, if that.
Lots more examples where that came from. Christianity adapted just fine. In fact, one of the major changes Christianity brought to the ancient world was the understanding that all bipedal hominids were equally deserving humans -- that was an unheard of concept before about 100AD. If history is a guide, there'll be a little backlash for a decade or two due to the strangeness and then somebody will be telling us how Jesus actually came to the Martians first back in 1 Billion B.C.
To say that religion will not survive wildly changing pictures of reality is to fail to understand religion's key concept: the creative group explanation for things that cannot be proven one way or another. Heck, religion is custom-designed by evolution especially for situations like dealing with E.T.
The web I sort of get, but... 9/11? You think the problem of evil was new to the world on 9/11? At least, I assume you're referencing the problem of evil since that's the only way I can make sense of that.
We are talking about the greatest discovery that could be made. It is one that will make billions rethink their role in the universe. It will make them wonder about evolution, whether their God guided it and if so to what degree.