Sea Speed said:
If the aliens are real and we exist at the pleasure of some other species of beings, I think humanity will fall off a cliff. Imagine if overnight every religion was proven to be false. What would people have to live for or strive for? Eternal life? Gone. Where do our morals come from? What reason will so many people have to do the right thing? Overnight you go from seeking a close relationship with god and caring for your fellow man to the only real purpose in life to make your existence as pleasurable as possible. What will the value of life be in places that already value it very little? I don't think we will like the world after 'disclosure' very much.
I also said this would be bad for humanity but I don't think this particular concern is warranted. Most religions aren't really incompatible with the idea of other life and in fact around 1900 there were a whole lot of people who just "knew" that the canals on Mars were real and that it was inhabited, and it didn't have any notable effect on religion or cause any panic in any way. I don't think even the genuine discovery of an unambiguous intelligent signal from another star system now would have an effect on religion either.
I'm not religious, not that I have any hostility to it, but I've never noticed any discernible difference in morality or lack of purpose and drive whether people are religious or not. There's almost no correlation watching closely throughout my life. I've got a very strong sense of right and wrong, I don't think most people behave the way they do based on the promise of reward or the threat of punishment. In fact, it always seemed to me that if you're only behaving the way you do because of threats or rewards then it's completely disingenuous anyway, isn't it? "I'm going to bring you this gift because if I don't I'm going to burn for eternity"? No thanks. Anyway, that's a whole other topic, but keeping it to this topic, I really don't think that would be the concern in general. I admit, the whole idea that no one would be kind or nice if they didn't think they were being watched and judged is bizarre to me.