With NASA’s recent Kepler mission, we are now finding more and more exoplanets (those planets that possibly could have life on them).  Recently, a NASA scientist was quoted as saying that we are 10 years away from proving that there’s life on another planet.  Which begs the question, what does all of this life outside of Earth affect our understanding of ancient religious texts and people’s faith in them.  I’m not sure if any “scientific proof” will ever stop everyone from believing in religion or in a higher power, but it will certainly challenge many religious people’s viewpoints on the validity of certain religious texts and traditions – such as creation, Adam and Eve, etc.  Originally, the bible and other religious texts and traditions were created as a way to explain the unexplainable – it was our science before the real science.  It helped create a sense of order to a disorderly world.   But, as we have discovered in recent times, science explains everything that the bible or other texts deemed as god’s “wrath” or “will” – famine, floods, droughts, etc.  Further, certain rituals that some thought caused an event to occur (rain dance or sacrifices to gods) was proved to be coincidental.  There’s no proof of supernatural events, but there is proof of and in science.  Once life on other planets can be proven, then we will all know that we are not the center of the universe and we are no more special than a microbe living on another planet.  Humans (and all life on this planet) are a combined result of a special set of circumstances (i.e. our planet in it’s position to the sun) and certain evolutionary developments.  Proving the existence of life on other planets will have a tremendous impact on how a lot of people will view religion in the future.  We will no longer be the “center” of the universe.  Our purpose and our egotism will begin to fade until our hope and faith in something better after this life will disappear.  Which, in turn, will have a tremendous impact in religion.  And consequently, I would predict that within the next 200 years, that religion will diminish significantly in it’s popularity and impact worldwide and will continue to diminish until it will be no more.