human space flight 92 Spaceflight Vol 59 March 2017 T he idea of colonising Mars in the near future is an excellent starting point for developing various theories about not only technical and medical issues. One of them is the issue of containing criminals and criminal behaviour in colonies beyond Earth (C. S. Cockell, JBIS 2016) [1]. This article is offering a discussion on another cultural issue: the question of an imposed Martian religion as a spur to ethical and socially equitable conduct. Religion and religious beliefs have played various and meaningful roles in the evolution of humans on Earth. It is worth considering their possible impact on a future Mars colony. It seems that in such speciic and dificult environments religious beliefs could invoke a tendency to altruism and self-sacriice, limiting the number of “free-riders” (also possibly criminals), or provide psychological support and the feeling of a grander sense and purpose. There are commonly known plans to colonise Mars in the following twenty years. As has been suggested in earlier papers [2], it is now appropriate to outline cultural and ethical frameworks that could be applied 92 Spaceflight Vol 59 March 2017 Religion in a future Mars colony? By Konrad Szocik University of Information Technology and Management, Rzeszow, Poland to a future Martian colony. Humans are not machine-like entities, and technological and medical solutions alone are insuficient to correctly prepare human beings to live in such a new and dificult environment. Deinition One of the most common phenomena of cultural evolution in human history have been religions and religious beliefs. They have played various functions. Some have said that these phenomena were necessary for humanity but is this truly so? Their undoubted common presence is explained in different ways by different viewpoints. Orthodox approach suggests that the human being is “capax Dei” – the mind is the image of God, according to Augustine in De Trinitate – in that the cross-cultural presence of the same, or very similar, religious beliefs is an argument for the existence of God. Other approaches point out that people share religious beliefs because they have cognitive predispositions, or because religious phenomena have an adaptive nature. Independently, as a possible explanation, religious phenomena were considered beneicial for individuals and groups. The question arises whether cultural evolution would have been possible from the end of the Pleistocene 12,000 years ago to the present Holocene without religious beliefs. This paper discusses the possible utilisation of some kind of religion and/ or religious belief in a future Mars colony. If religious phenomena were commonly shared on Earth and were seen to be beneicial for an ordered society, perhaps it is worth considering whether an opportunity exists, or should be contrived, for their application in a future Mars colony. This proposition is proposed on the basis of knowledge about the possible roles that could have been played out by religion and religious beliefs in human evolution on Earth. The current secularization that is limited almost exclusively to Western Europe is more a type of singularity than a regular feature in human history [3]. There is no doubt that religious beliefs are a cross- cultural shared phenomena that deeply affect human behaviour. Consequently, it can be said that these beliefs have affected human cultural evolution too. Today two scientiic approaches to the study of religion are trying to explain the origin and common presence of religious beliefs in humanity. It is worth briely outlining the key ideas of these two approaches. Cognitive explanation Scholars of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) explain the origin and acquisition of religious beliefs in terms of their possible compatibility with cognition [4]. They assume that human cognition favours religious or supernatural content [5]. Cognition itself is a content-blind structure. However, according to CSR, cognition contains some modules and mechanisms that are very attractive ground in which religious beliefs can lourish. The key idea of this cognitive story is as follows: some cognitive modules/ mechanisms have evolved in since the Ice Age because they served to increase Early Mars colonists will require a motivational ethos which may copy belief systems on Earth, despite most space-faring societies favouring an atheistic or secular structure. NASA