When and if we come across aliens - and don't be obtuse OaE - there will be a lot of rethinking. First we'll have to recognize that they are alive and intelligent. There's a good chance that we won't at first glance. Consider Astronomer Fred Hoyle's Black Cloud as an example of a really alien intelligence.
If we do, there will be a variety of opinions.
Some will say "They are alive, but they don't have souls the way we do. Look to their own beliefs if any for answers about them."
The more xenophobic and bigoted among us have trouble recognizing women and people with slightly different skin color to be sentient beings with souls and human dignity. As a plus the Stormfront, BJP, Wahabi, National Front, Shas and Shinto Nationalist crowds will magnanimously decide that ethnic and gender differences within our species no longer count. They will no doubt refuse to extend such considerations to an intelligent swarm of insects, a cloud of interstellar gas, a constructed machine intelligence, something with fivefold radial symmetry and tentacles or a self-perpetuating data-processing plasma.
There will be a few who will howl and gibber that the [
bad word which will inevitably be used redacted on second thought] - are spawn of the Devil and need to be wiped out. The more frightened we are of them the bigger that crowd.
A portion will assume that whatever religion or philosophy the aliens have must be superior to ours in the same way that a lot of people tossed away boxing, wrestling and Western combatives for the Mystic Wisdom of the Exotic Orient some decades back.
The majority of the Faithful will decide that their beliefs are fundamentally correct but need to be fine tuned. It will probably be couched in language like "The revelation we received needs to be reinterpreted. It is true and always will be, but we need to see it in a larger context." Look for furious backfilling as the theologians try to prove that their sacred texts predicted this all along. Religions like Buddhism will have the least trouble. Sentient beings of all sorts are old hat to them.
Some will abandon religion entirely. Lots of people claim a religion but aren't all that attached to it. They will find breaking with it much easier.
Many new religions and philosophies will come into being, some of which we can not even imagine.
Science fiction fans and writers will be unavailable for comment. They will have entered a terminal orgasmic trance
