Alistair Davidson

In Islam God is called ruler of the worlds, so yes, Islam can survive anything.

Bobby Webster

I'm pretty certain this one turns up in Paradise Lost as well, and there's a body of christian sci-fi which features appearances by Jesus Christ on other planets. Of course, the theological implications of space travel aren't limited to xeno-biology, particularly when taken in the context of the Cold War. On the first ever space flight, Yuri Gagarin reportedly commented that he didn't "see any God here"; in marked contrast, Gordo Cooper - one of the original US Mercury Astronauts - named his space capsule 'Faith 7'.

I think the Mormon take on this is interesting. Those good folks at the Church of Latter Day Saints believe that the retrospective (and generally post-mortem) conversion of your ancestors confers increased spiritual status, hence their obsession with genealogical research. As I understand it, your spiritual seniority is reflected by rewards in the afterlife, featuring - as number one prize - your very own planet, over which you rule as a god.

So, if you ever see one of those nice young men knocking at your door, remember to be nice.

Rupert Rupert

A theistic religion would only be compromised by this if takes a spectacularly parochial view of its deity. Christianity states that God created the World etc, and we lazily tend to interchange the world, which we think of as everything that exists, and the Earth, which is just a small planet in the nether regions of one galaxy. There is no reason for the World to merely be the Earth. If you were a Christian you would not have considered the Apollo astronauts as being beyond God's jurisdiction just because they were on the Moon - or even if they were on Mars or in another planetary system entirely. The "World" that most versions of God hold sway over is easily interpreted as the entire universe, or even universes, without stretching religious interpretations too much. And most religions would rush to confirm such an interpretation the moment they felt threatened by any such extraterrestrial discovery. But then we don't know what ET's god's opinion on the matter would be...!