Humanity's special relationship with God will be undermined by aliens

The argument

Most religions focus on prophetic revelations which are given specifically to humankind. In the biblical creation story, Mankind is a reflection of God's image, and man is the highest form of life, given lordship over all other beings. The Koran also has many passages which seem to award man dominion over creation. If there are other intelligent life forms, especially if they are more advanced than humans, scripture it calls scripture into question. Religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam argue that God reveals himself through events in human history. Suppose there are many worlds with many civilizations, we may ask the question why God would choose to act specifically on our planet and why he speaks to humans in particular. Many religions are vulnerable to some version of this scrutiny. Why would Jesus only save human beings? Why is Mecca so important to Islam if the earth is one of millions of worlds? Unless aliens have identical religious stories to us, religious myths will appear to be cultural constructs, which privilege human beings out of ignorance, not revelation. In the Christian tradition, Christ died to save mankind specifically. Other worlds would have to have their own version of the crucifixion to seem credible. Even if religions attempt to shoehorn aliens into their dogma, their credibility will be irreparably damaged because mankind will no longer seem special. Earthly religions focus on humans, and the discovery of new species will take the spotlight from them.

Context

Humanity's belief that we are special and have been given knowledge of God will prove to be a construct of human culture.

Premises

Counter-arguments

For people, there’s a separation between gods and God. This distinction isn’t because of a matter of importance or difference in power but from a sense of personal connection. It is the difference between someone else’s god and your own God. Despite this differentiation, it does not diminish their importance nor a person’s faith. It’s just another religion that co-exists alongside another. Different faiths and beliefs do not have to be at war with one another. The same can be said for humans dealing with the alien existence. Neither side has to give in to the other belief system and convert due to these new revelations. God’s existence has never been measured in proof but through belief and faith. With the existence of aliens changing everything we know about the universe, the faithful would likely remain so. Even with these new questions, people will find a way to rationalize and continue to have faith in their God.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise generalises from a small number of traditions. Many religions do not centre on a unique revelation to humanity, and Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies already describe innumerable worlds and non-human intelligences without strain. Even within the Abrahamic traditions, scripture is not generally read as an inventory of everything that exists. [Rejecting P2] The question has been asked and answered inside these traditions for centuries. Particularity is already their standard form — revelation is described as given at a particular time and place, in a particular language, to particular people — and theologians from Nicholas of Cusa onward have discussed a plurality of inhabited worlds without concluding that it defeats the doctrine. [Rejecting P3] The final step demands something no religion claims: that its story be universal in expression as well as in scope. The inference also runs the wrong way, since a story is not shown to be a cultural construct by the discovery that other beings tell different ones, any more than the diversity of human religions has settled that question. As the counter observes, faith has not historically rested on a proof that alien life would remove, and these traditions have absorbed heliocentrism, deep time and common descent — each of which displaced humanity in a comparable way.