[kulahan]

tl;dr Humans were first and most important, but if you're omnipotent and building an ant farm, it's logical to provide a nearly infinite number of things to interest and enrich your creations. If there are other creatures, and they're given a rational soul, they were also made aware of God's existence.

At the end of the day, the Catholics (at least) don't believe they were given full knowledge of the universe at some arbitrary point in the past. Instead, we were plopped into it and expected to explore and understand it. This will require us to occasionally update our teachings - just like how scientists need to update their teachings when they discover they didn't understand something before.

It's unbelievably obnoxious to simply assume everyone who doesn't scoff at religion simply isn't "smart enough". You clearly haven't taken much time to understand the topic if you can't come up with even one good argument. Even Richard Dawkins is able to connect with religious logic to a degree.

[9dev]

Note that I didn’t refer to religion as a whole, but the combination of Catholicism and sentient alien life in particular. I am definitely able to sympathise with believing in a kind of architect giving it all a sense of meaning, even if I don’t share that notion. But desperate attempts of wringing a somewhat coherent argument out of texts written for a feudal society millennia ago? That’s just coping.

[kulahan]

Oh, then sure, I won't argue with you there. It's up to you at that point to find the arguments convincing or not.

I think the idea of Imago Dei is actually the most believable part. I am absolutely convinced that we're the forerunners of this universe. The first scenario where a creation becomes aware of its creator - even if I'm imagining the wrong architect.

[wernerb]

The Catholics learned a lot during their witch-hunts regarding heliocentrism..

[kulahan]

Just how scientists learned a lot during their witch-hunts regarding Ignaz Semmelweis. I haven't trusted medicine since.