For Sean. Something I wrote a fair number of years ago:

Extraterrestrial observers beyond the dark side of our moon must be shaking with laughter at we silly Earth people, seemingly obsessed with religion. They - with their far superior intellect - will have kicked gods into touch many eons ago. So too would we Earthlings, given half a chance.

Imagine for one moment that we discover intelligent life on another planet far away in our galaxy. It isn’t too much of a stretch of our imagination, after all, we’ve been imagining far more ludicrous ethereal beings. They might well take the form of a large brained dolphin with arms, legs and three opposable digits on each limb.

Imagine conversing over the eons of space-time and ether with that intelligent life form and learning about its life history that draws many parallels with our own.

Imagine learning that despite them successfully forming a very advanced society - much BETTER than ours in many respects - that they have absolutely NO concept of gods or religion.

Do we gasp in amazement? Are they then to be regarded as inferior beings? Do we try to educate them to accept that there IS God?, for that is what happens here on Earth, where incidentally, we are the only species that worships and pays homage to gods.