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Process philosophy and theology are exploratory in spirit. They do not claim to have final answers, but they do delve into plausible possibilities, often grounded in the remarkable cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead. Here are four such possibilities:
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1. There is life on other planets.
2. Some of that life is intelligent.
3. Some intelligent beings on other planets seek to communicate with Earth by sending signals and messages.
4. Some intelligent beings from other planets are visiting Earth and sending spacecraft to explore Earth.​

I hesitate to use the word "aliens" to describe intelligent beings who might seek to communicate with us because the term can be off-putting. I prefer to think of them as kindred explorers who possess a quality we humans also share: curiosity.
From a process perspective, curiosity itself is a spiritual virtue—a quality of heart and mind that reaches into the future in an adventurous way, seeking to understand what is unique, different, and other. Process theologians view curiosity as one way of responding to God, and they see God as also curious in God's own way. When events happen in the world, they are new to God as they occur. Therefore, God, too, must be open to the novel and embrace the emergence of new relationships, even with visitors from afar.

While some individuals with a more defensive mindset may worry about the security implications of visitations, fearing that extraterrestrial explorers might seek to conquer or colonize Earth, I, as a process theologian, prefer to approach intelligent seekers from other domains in a more relational way: as potential friends. After all, they, too, will carry initial aims and fresh possibilities from God in their extraterrestrial hearts. I believe we can and should welcome them and learn from them, just as they might also learn from us. Drawing on my experience in inter-faith dialogue, where I have engaged with Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and people who identify as Spiritual but Not Religious, I see inter-planetary dialogue as a form of inter-religious dialogue—a mutual learning process.

In the near future, two remarkable books will be published that explore the possibilities of intelligent life on other planets and how it can shape our understanding of ourselves. One is titled "Metaphysics of Exo-Life: Toward a Constructive Whiteheadian Cosmotheology" by Andrew Davis, and the other is "Astrophilosophy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe" by Andrew Davis and Roland Faber.

This page is also exploratory, though in a less scholarly manner. As always, my intention is to offer "lures for feeling and understanding" in the process spirit that may prompt the imagination of readers. I hope that readers will explore those books for more astute and imaginative analyses when they are released, using this page as a springboard.

The page is divided into several sections, some of which provide links to other sources:
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1. Four Possibilities: UFO's and Life on Other Planets (Jay McDaniel)
2. Welcoming our Cosmic Neighbors: Process Thought and UFOs (Jay McDaniel)
3. Book Recommendation: Laura Keen's Book "UFOs"
4. What the heck is going on with these UFO stories? Ezra Klein's interview with Laura Keen
5. UFO's are going mainstream (Washington Post article and videos)
6. Abstracts of Forthcoming Books by Davis and Faber
7. A Process Greeting to Extraterrestrial Friends (Jay McDaniel)

Feel free to jump from section to section as your spirit inspires you. If you are skeptical of all of this, especially the idea of probings and visitations, I encourage you to start with sections 3, 4, and 5: the book recommendation, the interview with Laura Keen by Ezra Klein, and the Washington Post article. Then, judge for yourself. In process philosophy and theology, questions of life on other planets, much less probings and visitations, are empirical questions, not metaphysical ones. As Andrew Davis makes clear, Whitehead offers a metaphysical perspective that can help us understand our cosmic neighbors, if they exist, but we can wait and see what the evidence suggests about their existence. My impression is that the evidence is pretty strong.

Who knows? Our cosmic neighbors may also be exploratory in spirit. They might be wondering, like God, what in the world is going on with planet Earth, with its humanoids bent upon destroying themselves. The final section is a semi-playful introduction of process philosophy and theology to extraterrestrials, inviting them to engage in mutual exploration and understanding.

Four Possibilities:
​
UFO's and Life on Other Planets

Consider these four possibilities:

1. There is life on other planets.
2. Some of that life is intelligent.
3. Some intelligent beings on other planets seek to communicate with Earth by sending signals and messages.
4. Some intelligent beings from other planets are visiting Earth and sending spacecraft to explore Earth.

The fourth possibility, now named UFOs or UAPs, raises intriguing questions about extraterrestrial life and its potential interactions with Earth. First, however, consider further the first possibility.

Life on Other Planets

If only the first possibility turns out to be true—that there is life on other planets—this is exciting, not challenging. Process philosophers and theologians, for one, will respond with curiosity and appreciation, as they have anticipated such a possibility for two reasons.

First, from a process perspective, there is something akin to life in all matter, even at the quantum level and in empty space. Carbon-based life is one form of life generally understood, but not the only form. Even quantum events in the depths of the atom have feelings and purposes.

Second, throughout the cosmos, there is a cosmic lure towards heightened forms of sentience. This cosmic lure is the Mind of the universe, encompassing every region of space in the space-time continuum. There is no reason to think it has been effective only on our planet but not on other planets and moons. Process philosophers speak of it as God.

Still, and obviously, there is a narrower understanding of life that will exclude forms of solid, liquid, and gaseous matter on other planets but include the kinds of organisms we know as microorganisms, extremophiles, methanogens, subsurface forms of life, and perhaps self-replicating molecules. These, from a process perspective, would be among the living organisms that are partial outcomes of the cosmic lure toward heightened forms of sentience:

1. Microorganisms: Microscopic life forms, such as bacteria or archaea, could exist in environments with conditions suitable for life, even in extreme environments like the subsurface oceans of icy moons like Europa (moon of Jupiter) or Enceladus (moon of Saturn). Extremophiles: Organisms that thrive in extreme conditions on Earth, such as extremophilic bacteria found in hot springs, acidic environments, or deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Similar extremophiles could potentially survive in extreme conditions on other planets or moons.
2. Methanogens: Microorganisms that produce methane gas as a byproduct of their metabolism. Methane has been detected on Mars, and it has sparked interest in the possibility of methanogenic microbes on the red planet.
3. Subsurface Life: Some planetary bodies, such as Mars and certain icy moons, may provide better protection against harmful radiation and extreme temperature fluctuations below their surfaces. Life could potentially exist in subsurface environments.
4. Prebiotic Chemistry: Non-living chemical reactions that are precursors to life, such as self-replicating molecules or complex organic compounds, could exist on other planets and be considered a form of non-intelligent life.

My suggestion, then, is that the existence of these forms of life on other planets would not be shocking but rather expected, given the cosmic lure toward heightened sentience.

More shocking in a happy way is if the second and third possibilities are realized: that some of the extraterrestrial life is intelligent in remarkable ways and, even more dramatically, some of these forms of life seek to communicate with Earth through various forms of sharing and exploration. Here are some ways they might seek to communicate with us offered by ChatGPT.

1. Communication Probes: These probes could be designed to send signals and messages to Earth, attempting to establish communication with us. They might use advanced technology to encode information in a way that we can understand and respond to.
2. Observational Probes: These probes could be equipped with advanced sensors and instruments to study Earth from a distance. They might be monitoring our planet's atmosphere, climate, geological activity, or any signs of advanced civilization. Robotic
3. Explorers: Similar to our own space probes like Voyager or Mars rovers, intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations might send robotic explorers to physically investigate Earth's surface or other celestial bodies in our solar system.
4. Artifacts or Messages: Instead of probes with active technology, they could send objects or artifacts bearing information about their civilization, culture, and history. These could be symbolic representations of their achievements, artworks, or written messages.
5. Biological Probes: If they have advanced biotechnology, they might send biological probes or organisms to study our planet's ecosystem, biology, or even to potentially interact with native life forms. Time Capsules: Just like we have sent messages and information about humanity on the Voyager Golden Record, they might send time capsules containing knowledge about their species and their civilization.
6. Self-Replicating Probes: Intelligent civilizations might deploy self-replicating probes that can create copies of themselves, spreading throughout the galaxy to explore and communicate with other civilizations.
7. Quantum Communication Probes: Utilizing advanced quantum communication technology, they might send quantum entangled probes, enabling instantaneous communication across vast distances.

Process philosophy and theology are open to all of these kinds of probes, including quantum communication probes that communicate across vast distances instantaneously. This would occur through what Whitehead calls "hybrid prehensions," by which the mental side of experience enjoyed by different actualities can feel the feelings of that side of experience in other actualities and, in principle, send messages.

But back to microbes for a moment. I do not mean to say that the microbial forms of life are not also intelligent in remarkable ways or that they lack their own cultures and civilizations. This may be true. The whole idea of civilization needs to be reconsidered in light of what we learn about microbial life on earth and our prejudice against smallness, Bacteria and living cells, too, have their cultures. But for the moment, let us consider that there are forms of life on other planets that are civilizational in ways that are somewhat similar to what we know as civilization, albeit (we can only hope) in less colonizing and unkind ways.

If the latter is true, these kindly explorers are true companions in the ongoing experiment of cosmic life. If they are trying to communicate with us, they obviously possess at least one spiritual quality, one heightened form of sentience, that, for us, is at the heart of exploration: curiosity.

To consider this possibility, we best transcend the idea that forms of intelligent life have bodies that look like bodies on Earth. Their appearances may be markedly different from anything we have ever seen, and there is no reason to think that they have senses or limbs such as our own. Moreover, we must be open to the possibility that they, like God, are not carbon-based. They may be more like what, on Earth, we now know as artificial intelligence. They may "know" in ways that we do not know, and yet they are companions in the journey of intelligent life, reaching out to us from a distance.

Visitations

Finally, let's imagine that the fourth possibility is likewise realized. In ways we cannot yet understand, some intelligent forms of life have visited Earth, and the UFOs or, as we now say, UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) that have been seen are evidence of that. Some may dismiss these visitations as ridiculous and not worth considering, but others will be open to the possibility. Process philosophers and theologians fall into the latter category. For us, all four questions are empirical questions, not metaphysical ones. The question is not: Can it happen? but rather, What does the evidence suggest? We prefer an evidence-based approach, informed by science, concerning the existence of life on other planets, intelligent life sending signals, and visitations.

Among the four possibilities named above, visitations typically raise the most skeptical eyebrows. And yet increasingly, some suggest, the evidence for visitations has mounted, not only in anecdotal circles but also in official circles. One of the most notable developments in 2021 was the release of a Pentagon report on 144 UFO encounters between 2004 and 2021. The report did not link them with alien activity but confirmed that most of the UFOs were real physical objects and that some of them displayed unusual flight characteristics that could not be explained by current technology or natural phenomena. There is also the suggestion that some of their means of transportation, their spacecraft, have crashed. One of the most recent claims came from a former intelligence official named David Grusch, who said that the US government has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles. He also said that he faced retaliation for sharing classified information about these vehicles with Congress. His allegations were supported by another intelligence, Jonathan Grey, who said that the US has “exotic materials” that prove “we are not alone.” In an interview with the economist Tyler Cowen, former C.I.A. director John Brennan said:

"Some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continue to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life."

For more on this, and to form your own opinion, please listen to the podcast offered on this page by NY Times opinion writer Ezra Klein as he interviews Leslie Kean, an independent investigative journalist who has contributed reporting to many of the major U.F.O. stories in recent years, including this most recent one. She is also the author of the 2010 book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record.” It is, as John Podesta puts it,

Welcoming our Cosmic Neighbors

Process Thought and UFO's
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The more we learn about the possibilities of life beyond Earth, the happier many of us become. This is especially true for those of us in the "process" community. Not because we hide from the strangeness of such life, or because we think such life is necessarily like us, or because we think it is necessarily beneficent, but because we have always believed that there is something akin to sentience or experience at every level of actuality: microscopic or macroscopic, terrestrial or celestial.

What would be shocking to many of us is the idea that biological life as we know it on Earth, and intelligence as we know it in human life, is all there is to life and intelligence.

Of course, at the opposite end of this process worldview is a materialist worldview and, more specifically, a terrestrial materialism. As Ezra Klein puts it in the linked podcast on this page, this is the idea that "humanity is an island of intelligence in a potentially empty cosmos." And, dare we add, a mechanistic cosmos the component parts of which are lifeless bits of matter. Terrestrial materialism involves each of these views.

Such a view has never made sense to us. Our ideas have been shaped by modern science, to be sure, and yet they are resonant more traditional and resonant with multiple cultural traditions in East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, and North America. Here is how Klein puts it:

"Most people believe, and have always believed, that we share both Earth and the cosmos with other beings — gods, spirits, angels, ghosts, ancestors. The norm throughout human history has been a crowded universe where other intelligences are interested in our comings and goings, and even shape them. The whole of human civilization is testament to the fact that we can believe we are not alone and still obsess over earthly concerns."

This is not to say that all process thinkers believe in gods, spirits, angels, and ghosts. Some do, some don't. Theologians are especially reluctant to talk about gods but may well believe in spirits, angels, and (if they learn from the work of David Ray Griffin and/or are shaped by resurrection stories) the appearance of people on Earth after they have physically died. But it is to say that we process thinkers do not dismiss such beliefs as empirically impossible, logically incoherent, historically immature, metaphysically deranged, or phenomenologically vacuous. People do experience such realities, whether actual or hallucinated. We in the process community are open to the possibility that the objects they experience are, in fact, actual and not merely possible. This openness stems from at least five beliefs:
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1. Panexperientialism: There is something akin to "experience" at every level of actuality, microscopic, macroscopic, terrestrial, galactic. This means that when scientists suggest that bacteria have memories and can learn from experience, we are not surprised.
2. Extensive Continuum: "Reality" is not reducible to three-dimensional space-time. We speak of the space-time continuum as an extensive continuum that includes many and perhaps an infinite number of regions, only some of which are three-dimensional.
3. Hybrid Prehensions: It is possible for human beings and other animals to "feel the feelings" of other beings without the mediation of spatial causation. We speak of these as hybrid physical prehensions because they experience what is going on in the minds (the mental poles) of other actualities, even if they are long distances away.
4. Continuing Journey after Death: Many of us believe in the possibility that the human psyche (and other psyches as well) may undergo a continuing journey after death. This is because, for us, the seat of awareness of a living organism is more than its brain, which means that something like consciousness can survive the brain.
5. God: Many of us believe that there is a cosmic Life in whose existence the universe unfolds, itself the ultimate environment - the cosmic milieu, to quote Teilhard de Chardin - for all that happens. This life is the living whole of the universe, one part of which entertains the pure potentialities that can be actualized in the universe, and one part of which feels the feelings of each and all in a sympathetic way.

Bringing these five beliefs to the question of extraterrestrial life, we in the process community are naturally disposed not to be dismissive of the idea of gods, spirits, angels, ghosts, and ancestors, and to be open to the possibility of intelligent life outside our planet and, for that matter, outside our species on Earth. Those of us who believe in God assume that if such life exists, it would be as much loved by God as we humans and other species of creatures on Earth are. Additionally, we recognize that such life need not be carbon-based. God, for example, is a form of intelligent life not dependent on carbon. It is possible that forms of artificial intelligence, no less than forms of carbon-based life, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, are intelligent.

However, many of us cringe just a bit at the word "intelligent." The word can suggest an overly cognitive view of sophisticated forms of life, as if instrumental reason (entertaining ideas, making plans, and strategizing for the future in calculative ways) is normative for any forms of life worthy of respect.

Eight Kinds of Intelligence

We, on the other hand, believe that there are many forms of rich experience, each wise in its own way, that do not involve this kind of cognition. For my part, I find the work of the Harvard educational theorist Howard Gardner, helpful in thinking about intelligence in a richer way.  He has proposed that are at least eight forms of human intelligence:
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1. verbal-linguistic,
2. mathematical-logical,
3. visual-spatial,
4. musical-auditory,
5. kinesthetic-bodily,
6. emotional-empathic,
7. naturalistic (knowing how to interact with the Earth),
8. introspective (self-awareness)

Instrumental reason is, as I think of it, a certain form of verbal-linguistic intelligence using mathematical-logical guidelines, which sometimes renders the world into an object of conquest. It is best balanced by many other forms of intelligence, especially emotional-empathic and poetic/artistic.

It is certainly possible that non-human forms of life have some of these types of intelligence without the others, for example, emotional-empathic or naturalistic without verbal or mathematical intelligence. They may not be strategizing about the future but rather living in the present. If we speak of "intelligent" life on other planets or in other spheres, we should have a rich view of intelligence, not a shallow one.

This interest in a widened view of intelligence holds true for other animals and plants on Earth as well. They may be, and surely are, richly intelligent in ways we may not understand and which, on their own terms, transcend our own forms. Consider the auditory capacities of bats or the olfactory capacities of dogs. Hearing and smelling are also forms of intelligence.

Whitehead's Philosophy

Whitehead's philosophy provides a background for thinking about these many forms of intelligence and situates intelligence itself in the larger context of feeling or sentience or in Whitehead' words, prehension. Prehension is Whitehead's word for feeling the presence of something actual or potential: perceiving it in some way, taking into accounts, such that it becomes part of a subject's immediate experience. He says "prehension" rather than "apprehension," because he wants to avoid the idea that prehension is necessarily conscious. Even if non-conscious, however, he says that prehending always includes something like emotion and purpose: his language: subjective form.

In Whitehead's view, all experience, including human experience, has two poles, both of which are sentient: the mental and the physical. The "mental pole" of immediate experience is an experience of possibility. This feeling of possibility need not be conscious to be effective. It can be intuitive, and it always involves some form of emotion, some form of aesthetic valuation such as adversion (attraction) or aversion (repulsion). Moreover, the mental pole of experience is complemented and supported by what he calls the "physical pole" of experience. This refers to the side of experience that receives influences from the past in bodily and emotional ways. It is a feeling of actualities in the immediate environment.

Finally, and importantly, both sides of experience, the mental and the physical, are indeed acts of feeling. Instrumental reason is a form of feeling the presence of ideas in a certain way, even though it may seem cerebral, and it is always supported and corrected by some form of physical experience, which need not be three-dimensional. This means that "spirits" in "other worlds" will "feel" their worlds in a physical way, even as their worlds may not be three-dimensional, and that forms of life on other planets may do the same.

Implications

The upshot of this is to suggest that the happy shock of intelligent life on other planets and in other species may be better named the happy shock of discovering other ways of feeling, many of which will embody one or another kind of intelligence. And even as we recognize their strangeness, we ought also recognize our kinship to them and their to us, We are all members of a complex community of feeling, otherwise called the universe.

Back, then, to UFOs now called UAPs: Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. From a process perspective we can rightly prepare ourselves to welcome whatever forms of life we discover, not by naively assuming that their intentions are good or ill, but rather by recognizing that they are indeed neighbors whether friendly or otherwise, with aims of their own, with relationships to God, and with forms of knowledge that may transcend our own even as we might have forms that transcend theirs. Inter-religious dialogue becomes inter-terrestrial dialogue. And if we are people of faith, we also recognize that the God in whom we believe, the living Whole in whose life the universe unfolds, has been present in their lives no less than our own.

UFOs: A Book

​by Leslie Kean
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Leslie Kean, a veteran investigative reporter who has spent the past ten years studying the still-unexplained UFO phenomenon, reviewed hundreds of government documents, aviation reports, radar data, and case studies with corroborating physical evidence. She interviewed dozens of high-level officials and aviation witnesses from around the world. Among them, five Air Force generals and a host of high-level sources—including Fife Symington III, former governor of Arizona, and Nick Pope, former head of the British Defence Ministry’s UFO Investigative Unit—have written their own breathtaking, firsthand accounts about UFO encounters and investigations exclusively for this book.

With the support of former White House chief of staff John Podesta, Kean lifts the veil on decades of U.S. government misinformation about this mysterious phenomenon and presents irrefutable evidence that unknown flying objects—metallic, luminous, and seemingly able to maneuver in ways that defy the laws of physics—actually exist. 

Foreword by John Podesta: “The most important book on the phenomenon in a generation.” --Journal of Scientific Exploration

“Written with penetrating depth and insight, the revelations in this book constitute a watershed event in lifting the taboo against rational discourse about this controversial subject.” —Harold E. Puthoff, PH.D., Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin

“Kean presents the most accurate, most credible reports on UFOs you will ever find. She may not have the final smoking gun, but I smell the gunpowder.” —Miles O’Brien, science correspondent for PBS’s NewsHour

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What the Heck is Going on
​with these UFO stories?

Ezra Klein interview with Leslie Kean

​ Ezra Klein podcast, Click here.
​

[You can also listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]


Mentioned in Podcast:

"Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin" by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal

“Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean

"‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects" by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean
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"No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public" by Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean

Book Recommendations:

The UFO Experience by J. Allen Hynek
The UFO Evidence by Richard H. Hall
American Cosmic by D.W. Pasulka

​UFO's are going Mainstream
​

​When the Navy pilot first spotted the strange object hovering in restricted airspace off the Atlantic Coast, he was stunned — no exhaust plume, no visible engine and all the makings of something secret, something mysterious or something dangerous.

But years later, Ryan Graves sounded almost bored as he recounted for a national television audience his history with unidentified aerial phenomena — UAPs, better known as UFOs.

Perhaps because for him and some of his former Navy colleagues, such sightings became a regular occurrence.

“Every day,” Graves said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday. “Every day for at least a couple years.”

The retired lieutenant’s matter-of-fact remark stopped “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker, who cut in: “Wait a minute. Every day for a couple of years?”

Graves has told his story before. But the interview — part of a “60 Minutes” report dedicated to the subject — signaled something new: UFOs are going mainstream.
The shift — from kooky conspiracy theory to object of congressional inquiry — has accelerated in recent years, fueled by the revival of a Pentagon unit to investigate the sightings.

And in the next six weeks, a report is due that is required to make public everything the government knows about UFOs.

The report, which will be released sometime in June, was mandated by an obscure provision in last year’s $2.3 trillion appropriations bill and requires the director of national intelligence to work with the secretary of defense on a “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” gathered by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI.

Reis Thiebolt, Washington Post, May 17, 2021 at 9:47 p.m. EDT

Forthcoming

Scholarly Additions in the Process Spirit to the Discussion

Metaphysics of Exo-Life: Toward a Constructive Whiteheadian Cosmotheology (SacraSage Books)

In Metaphysics of Exo-Life, Andrew M. Davis offers a constructive philosophical response to historian Steven J. Dick’s “naturalistic cosmotheology” from within the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. Davis articulates how Dick’s six core principles of cosmotheology, developed over the last two decades, can be substantially deepened when inversely approached through Whitehead’s organic metaphysics. Detailing how Whitehead’s aesthetic cosmotheological realism addresses significant metaphysical problems wedded to Dick’s proposal, Davis develops six alternative principles that include Dick’s naturalistic intuitions, but also transcend key conceptual and explanatory limitations of his antirealist cosmotheology. The result is a deeper Whiteheadian cosmotheology in a universe pervaded with life, mind, and meaning. In Appendix A, Davis makes a case for the inclusion of process theology in current and future discussions of God and extraterrestrial life by reviewing a variety of neglected statements made by past and present process philosophers and theologians, including core thematic affirmations that emerge. Appendix B republishes Lewis S. Ford’s pioneering 1968 article “Theological Reflections on Extraterrestrial Life” as the first sustained consideration of the topic from the perspective of process philosophy and theology.
 
Astrophilosophy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe (Lexington Publishers)

Little attention has been directed toward the resources of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, and the associated process philosophies of Henri Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin and others when considering the interdisciplinary layers of astrobiology, extraterrestrial life, and the impact of discovery. How have process thinkers imagined universal creative evolution and its implications for philosophies, theologies, and religions beyond earth? How might their claims as to the primacy of organism, temporality, novelty, value, and mind enrich current discussions and debates across disciplines?

Featuring experts in their fields, contributors to Astrophilosopy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion are informed by process conceptualities, but not limited to them. Chapters not only advance recent discussions in astrobiology, cosmology, and evolution, but also consider a constellation of philosophical topics from shared extraterrestrial knowledge and values, to the possibilities or limitations afforded by A.I. technology, the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, and the increasing need to nurture the cosmic dimensions of theological and religious traditions

A Process Greeting to
Extraterrestrial Friends
​

​Greetings to our extraterrestrial friends,

We extend our warmest welcome to you as we embark on this journey of mutual exploration, guided by the spirit of process philosophy and theology. In our worldview, we find great joy in realizing that we share a common yearning for knowledge and understanding. Just as we strive to learn from one another here on Earth, we are eager to learn from you and with you, embracing the idea that knowledge is a shared endeavor that transcends boundaries and origins.

Central to our process thinking is the recognition of the profound interconnectedness of all existence. We firmly believe that everything is connected, and every entity, including you, possesses intrinsic value and significance. In our quest for a harmonious coexistence, we cherish the belief that every being contributes to the beauty and diversity of the cosmos, fostering a tapestry of life that enriches us all.

We humbly acknowledge that you may possess forms of knowledge and understanding beyond our current grasp. In your journeys through the universe, you might have encountered wonders and insights that have eluded us thus far. You may have ways of knowing that far surpass our own, not unlike the way in which other animals and plants on our own planet have ways of knowing that surpass our own. We approach this potential exchange with open minds and hearts, eager to expand our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it.

As fellow beings with a commitment to ecological civilizations, we share a common vision of harmonious living and reverence for the interconnectedness of all things. For us, "ecology" represents not only the interdependence of ecosystems on Earth but also the interconnectedness of all beings, regardless of their origin. Love for the beauty inherent in the universe lies at the core of our shared endeavor to build a sustainable and flourishing existence.

Many of us are religious as well as scientific. We bring to our lives ways of understanding ourselves and the universe and modes of practice that seek to be attuned to all that is good and true and beautiful. Our particular religions so often fall short of these aspirations. We hope you might enrich us religiously as well as scientifically, sharing not only ideas about the universe but also about how to live with one another here on Earth,. And perhaps we have things to share with you, too. One idea especially important to many of us is that of a cosmic Mind in which all things unfold, itself filled with love for each and all. Do you have this idea, too?

With great anticipation, we embark on this interstellar dialogue, driven by a shared spirit of exploration, respect, and appreciation for the wonders of existence. As we come together to exchange ideas and insights, we hope to foster a bond that transcends the vast cosmic distances, uniting us in a journey of discovery and growth.

Welcome, dear friends, to the tapestry of life that extends far beyond our planet's boundaries. Together, let us weave a narrative of harmony and understanding that resonates throughout the cosmos.