The vastness of the universe and the recent discovery of planets point to the probability of intelligent extraterrestrials. Since 1995 -- less than 20 years ago -- more than 750 planets have been discovered outside of our solar system. New telescopes in the United States as well as around the globe are searching for life on what are now called "exoplanets." There are billions of suns in one galaxy, and recently astronomers concluded there may be five times as many stars in the universe as had previously been thought. With so many galaxies, each with billions of suns, it is likely that there are other civilizations.
Some years ago a group of scientists produced an exercise in probability: the Drake equation. It looks at the percentage of galaxies with the right kinds of stars, the percentage of stars forming planets, the percentage of planets hospitable to life, to intelligence, and to intelligence adequate to communicate out into space. Some scientists then estimate the number of intelligent civilizations just in the Milky Way to be between one thousand and one million.
A theologian would not presume to decide whether there are other intelligent beings in the universe. Does the Christian faith insist that only one salvation-history exists, that on Earth? The one recorded in the Bible? Is Jesus so central a figure that only he and his Middle Eastern religious world can reveal God?
To be involved with the divine, a being needs to be intelligent and free, an intelligent being in our material universe owning some form of body, some matter, some corporeality. They are not spirits traditionally called "angels." There might be countless forms of animal and vegetable life in the universe: "extraterrestrial" refers to those with mind and freedom.
A Christian approach to this possibility begins with the themes basic to the Christian faith (and to most religions): the knowing person, the person's relationship to God, sin and evil. In light of the vast universe, what does Christian faith tell us of God? Is God generous or stingy? Powerful or limited? What would a wider universe say about a godly God? Christian theologians tend to see God as free and limitless. Generosity moves God to have special contact with other beings, and Thomas Aquinas wrote that God is "most generous to the highest degree." Love carries the divine plans into external realizations, cosmos and human beings and their destinies.
What is most basic in religion is some contact by God within and yet beyond the forms of nature, a presence of what religion calls "revelation," "grace" or "salvation." Does this or that intelligent creature receive some special life and information from God? The ways in which supernatural life touches sensate intellect and will, the modes of contact in revelation may be quite diverse. It is a mistake to think that our understanding of "covenant," the "reign of God" or "redemption" exhausts the modes by which divine power shares something of its life. Distant creatures might be without grace and revelation, and they might be without evil, suffering and sin.
Toward kinds and degrees of evil, too, we must have an open mind. Evil does not exist necessarily, and, if it exists elsewhere, it might be of various kinds. The actions and contagion of sin, as we see in daily life and learn from the Bible, can have an individual and a collective form. Another race, however, might be free of both.
Does faith in Jesus cast doubt on other galactic races? Christians believe that Jesus is a human being with a special presence of the Word God. Incarnation involves one creature as the object of that one special divine relationship: it hardly presents all that God can do and is doing. Is not incarnation a cosmic form of divine love? Can there not be other incarnations? The power of a divine person is infinite and cannot be limited to anything created. Could the Word of God could be incarnate in creatures other than Jesus of Nazareth?
In past centuries a few theologians have pondered this topic. Origen in the third century saw the biblical life and work of Jesus in a dynamic cosmic framework where the Word of God moved through spheres of other intelligences becoming like them. A Franciscan university professor Guillaume de Vaurouillon taught in the 15th century that God could create an infinite number of worlds. Other planets would not have contracted sin just as their humanity is not from Adam, and Jesus would not travel to alien worlds to reveal to them. In the late 20th century Karl Rahner advised a theological openness about persons on distant worlds. He thought that Christian revelation's assertion of God's power, plurality and incarnation supported seeing goodness and intelligence throughout the cosmos.
Christian revelation has as its goal the salvation of the human race. And yet, Christianity suggests not a terrestrial elite behaving itself before a strict God but a universe aiming successfully at intelligence and at the presence of forms of divine love. The universe and its source invite these reflections. Religious faith encourages rather than fears reflection on our universe.
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The Holy Books are 100% anthropocentric, they are based on human experience here on Earth long ago. The Bible portrays God as a "king," but the concept of "king" is a very human concept, that would be totally irrelevant to an Infinite Being of Infinite Power who simply thinks universes into existence and cannot not exist.
Religion, theology, is entirely speculative, speculating about what we cannot see, hear, touch, feel, smell, taste, based on the stories told by unknown men long since dead. And the Bible has only to do with the experiences of a few hundred people who lived two to three thousand years ago in a tiny part of the Middle East we now call Israel, and Palestine, a bit in Egypt and Iraq.
It isn't 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of the history of this world, and has nothing to do with anything anywhere else in the universe. NASA estimates 600 sextillion stars. If one in a billion has a planet with intelligent life, there are some 600 trillion other planets with intelligent life in this universe alone.
Humans aren't angels. Humans aren't demons. How can we know there are no other beings in the universe who are neither angels nor demons?
Read the story of the broken ankle healing in Mutant Message Down Under.
Just because we've been bombarded with messages that we are a mere accident of sinful life doesn't mean it's true. That only serves those who wish to continue to control us and keep us separate from our power and who we really are.
Call it prayer, good thoughts, mind over matter....call it Fred if you want. We are more powerful than you can imagine.
The Adam and Eve as used today is a metaphor. It's not as if the actual first two humans were named Adam and Eve.
The human form was originally created off planet. Present earth humans represent an upgraded version of this.
All this will eventually come out in the open.
It seems that either of your two possible answers blame God for your imperfections. Man-up! Take responsibility for your own actions. You have a moral compass which points you in the right direction. You know, instinctively, some things are absolutely "right" and some things are absolutely "wrong".
Maybe, you missed the story in Genesis of "how" man and woman were created perfect. Their free-will made the wrong choice. You have the control by the nature of your free-will to over-ride any action prior to it being taken.
I'm sure he didn't miss it. He just doesn't believe that it happened, like any rational person.
Where is the evidence of Adam and Eve?
I'm sure he didn't miss it--he just doesn't believe it, like any rational person.
Within a story, an author is omnipotent because he has the ability to change anything that happens within the universe he has created. However, outside the story, the author has about as much control over the universe he lives in as anyone else.
Using the author analogy, I don't see many books where characters aren't flawed. And if the characters actually have "free will" then the story basically writes itself.
Just saying that the only way I can comprehend someone being omnipotent in this universe is if they don't actually exist within it.
I just have never seen anything of the kind.I too have 2 friends who say they saw a UFO and those odd "grays" or whatever they are( a kind of extraterrestrial, reportedly, that appear a certain way).But I have never seen a ship or anything I knew to be an extra-terrestrail.
There is only one God who created all of the universe. Life on this planet is all there is throughout the universe. Atheists would sooner believe in aliens than in God. The reason for this is they think they are not under any control by an outside force. Good luck with that!
What evidence are you basing that claim on?
"There is only one God who created all of the universe."
How can you be so sure? What evidence do you have to back up your claim?
"Atheists would sooner believe in aliens than in God."
Only if there was evidence of aliens. Gotta keep an open mind!
"The reason for this is they think they are not under any control by an outside force."
Well, there IS gravity.
"Good luck with that!"
Thanks so much. Actually, though, we don't need luck when we have evidence.
But who knows if there are other worlds with intelligent life?I don't assue anything one way or the other.If there are--maybe they're wiser and benevolent..maybe they're not in the slightest!Maybe there are both highly intelligent and benevolent types as well as cruel, or, sentient, but nonethless low-level intelligence on other planets.
Anyway, the article wasn't my favorite, either, truthfully.But, it is just that authors thoughts; it's not claiming scientific proof of life on Mars or something.
His only point was...if God exists doesn't He, wouldn't He be so for all in existance, no matter whether they're human or some other thing.
What's wrong with that thought?..which, btw, is all he was saying--he's *asking* us to think about it.He's a religious man himself as I understand it.
C.S. Lewis explores somewhat this concept in his books on "Perelandra". However I do not see where you can say with any authority what Jesus would, or would not, do.
I agree that we can't say for sure what Jesus can or will do at all.I had the idea however, that O'Meara was suggesting the idea not stating it as definite fact.
Some do, some don't.
I personally, do not believe in the Christian faith, but speaking hypothetically that even if it were true, I tend to agree with the story. I don't think that aliens would need "redemption" or "salvation" since the concept of sin usually boils down to a failing of human nature; keyword "human."
But that's only true if we take the Christian faith simplistically and literally..
Maybe (if there are other types of intelligent life), there might still be some form of failings or mistakes,of their own, couldn't that be?
I liked Ray Bradbury's stories very much myself, by the way.:-) I can't seem to remember that story, though--which group of stories was it included in? I wonder why it was suggested in the story, that if the beings on Mars were kind to one another, they were without sin?
Witness a human being performing an act of kindness for another's benefit--does it necessarily follow that we are all perfect or "without sin"?
I may've oversimplified both the story's message and my own opinion; it's not so much the altruism of the aliens that makes them without redemption as much as it is that they're so very different from humans in general, being what looks like floating spheres of light. Perhaps they do have their own equivalent of "sins" but their sins may not resemble or have true analogs to human sins, and it is possible that they have no sin at all, although that would be nearly impossible for a human to determine.
Most Christians would say that non-human creatures on Earth are without sin. Perhaps because they didn't partake from the Forbidden Fruit if you take that origin of sin literally, or if you don't, perhaps simply by virtue of not being capable of understanding the morality of actions being either right or wrong. One might argue that animals are simply innocent of sin because they lack intelligence and self-awareness, but if that IS the case, what about chimpanzees, dolphins, and certain whales that all seem to have intelligence and self-awareness comparable to that of humans? (It even seems possible that in the near future we may even be able to verbally communicate with dolphins via a translating computer...) Do they need salvation? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most would reject the idea of sending missionaries underwater to spread the Good News to cetaceans.
Even if
LOL!!! Now THAT is funny!
And so, the religious proselytisation of the Universe lays its groundwork.
Bring on the holy hand grenade!
But even so.. what has that to do with war or hand grenades?
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