Religion would get in the way of this. Mainstream religious people in the USA disbelieve in the possibility of aliens specifically because they think god made life on Earth special (with humanity on top) and the rest of the universe is just fluff. So they would call any aliens freaks and start a war with them. And if humanity loses that war the majority would choose extermination over subjugation.
Religion would get in the way of this. Mainstream religious people in the USA disbelieve in the possibility of aliens specifically because they think god made life on Earth special (with humanity on top) and the rest of the universe is just fluff. So they would call any aliens freaks and start a war with them. And if humanity loses that war the majority would choose extermination over subjugation.
Which is funny, right?
what central Christian belief would be lost if aliens were found to exist? Let's just think this through and kind of ponder this issue for a minute. Would we lose God's existence? No. Some think that a discovery of life on other planets would disprove god's existence? No.
Would it disprove the doctrine of the trinity or is somehow in question? No. Would it disprove the death and resurrection of Christ? No. Jesus's death and resurrection is not dependent on the lack of alien life in the universe. Would it undo the doctrines of forgiveness through faith, being saved by grace through faith would that be undone by the existence of aliens? No. Would God's future plan of resurrection for mankind that we're gonna be united to him in glorious resurrection forever is that threatened by the existence of aliens and again the answer is no. So my short is would aliens disprove Christianity, no. But I have a lot of other questions that immediately start piling up when you ask questions about aliens in the Bible and so I'm gonna take a couple of extra minutes answering this question to get into these things that I think are very interesting. The next question I have related to this is does the Bible say that aliens exist? That's a simple onerous the Bible actually say anything about aliens? And I would answer no. It speaks of God creating all things, the emphasis on scripture is gonna be in the realm of the human world, the human experience talking about human lives and things like that. It doesn't however say anything about the existence of aliens in space, it also doesn't say they don't exist. We just sort of have like a generic and he made all the hosts of the skis, so he just made all that stuff. We don't have any sort of limits on what could be out there in the text of scripture. So the christian should be (in theory) in a unique position in that we are open to the idea of aliens although we don't have an affirmation, there's non-Biblical reason why you're supposed to believe in aliens. But we all should be able to let the evidence go where it goes. Like I could look at evidence for alien life and I could say I'll just follow the evidence where it leads that should be our attitude I think on this issue. Now if aliens do exist, I'm gonna give you a whole bunch of what if's, this is like a thought tree of if this then that. Let's work through the eventuality of what if we discovered highly intelligent life, not just bacteria which to me is interesting but not actually very important. But if we discovered highly intelligent life off of the earth and I'm not speaking of angels, demons these are in a sense they're extraterrestrial beings I mean they're not from the earth but at any rate we're talking about physical beings from other planets. What if they're highly intelligent, cause if they're not there's really less questions to ask. It's just like saying what if in a far away place there's animals that I don't know about? Like thats not really that interesting to me, theologically speaking, but if they're highly intelligent then I have to ask some other questions. Because now we're worried about do they have salvation, how do they attain that salvation, does Jesus's sacrifice somehow apply to them, do they have a different sacrifice, does Jesus become incarnate in a different realm, does Jesus die and rise again for a different group or does something else happen? What is going on here? And I'm gonna answer these questions right now. Okay, so if they're intelligent, the next question is are they eternal? And if they're not eternal if they are highly intelligent but they live and then they cease to exist then there aren't really anymore questions to ask about their salvation or their eternal state. So we have less questions, less issues to bring up. If they're not eternal. But lets suppose that they are. Hypothetically there's aliens, they're hyper intelligent and they're eternal beings they have the same kind of eternal potential that we do that also angels do. So the next question I have is are they sinless? Have they sinned? Are they in need of salvation the way that we are? And if you say yes then are they like un-fallen angels in that they have a place in God's plan but they're just not part of bride so then those people have a decision to make but there's no salvation that is offered to them. They're more like the angels. Adam and Eve were given a choice then all the rest of us are born into sin, we then need to be saved so we start in a place of condemnation and need to be saved. They might be coming in the opposite. They might start a place like the angels of acceptance then individually choosing to reject and then thats a final decision. So perhaps there is a salvation offered to them. This is all just hypothetical, this is total conjecture, this is just what if scenarios. So perhaps they are like angels in that sense or perhaps another option maybe they just lack freewill? Maybe they're sinless because they just lack freewill, they're highly intelligent but they don't have that freewill capability that we have. And perhaps God just has a purpose and a plan for them in that regard. But if you say that they are actually sinful then the question is are they redeemable? If not, then that may be sad but that means that they are more like the angelic rebels against God and less like the human ones in that sense of freewill and choice making. If they are redeemable it brings up other questions. How are they redeemable? Is it by virtue of their own works or their own sacrifices? If yes, if they're beings out that have freewill, that sin and can redeem themselves bat seems to be a challenge to the very nature of the cross. Okay, so that I have a challenge with, that I'm going wait a minute, if there was any other way let this cut past for me. If they're like us sinful yet redeemable then it makes no sense that they can be redeemed in the very way that it's impossible for us to be redeemed. Because if they're like us, if they're so similar to us it seems like that same path of works for righteousness is gonna be barred to them. The standard of God's holiness would be the same because God doesn't change whether he's interacting with people on this planet or some other. Interesting topic. So that would seem very strange, I would reject that, the idea that they could save themselves through their own works or sacrifice. So if they're redeemable and they don't save themselves then how are they saved? Is by Jesus or something other than Jesus? So here's a conjecture warning, could they be saved by Jesus? Now this is considering an idea that you don't believe in order to process through the hypothetical consequences of that idea, that's all we're doing right now. So if they were saved by Jesus I think I would reject one scenario of this. Which is that Jesus becomes incarnate on that other planet, he takes on the form of those other people, of those other beings and then he dies in there place so its kind of like a mirror image of earth and then Jesus becomes incarnate the second person in the trinity becomes incarnate again, dies again I think this a very weird thing but I'm not rejecting it because its weird, I'm rejecting it because scripture seems to indicate that Jesus did it once and he'll never do it again and I'll share some scripture with you on this. Lets look at Romans 6:9. "Knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him." Jesus is not gonna die again. Not just his physical body wont die again, this is one of the verses that proves wrong the Mother God cult that believe that Jesus came back in the last century, he had his second coming was in a new body that died again. But Jesus doesn't die again, it's just he will not die again. So the idea that Christ will die again for some other beings or the idea that he died before he died, he died once, once for all that's verse 10. "He died to sin once forever." So he dies once and he lives forever. So any theoretical hypothetical idea of salvation for hypothetical beings that may not exist should not involve a second incarnation, death & resurrection of the Son of God. I think thats barred by the clear teaching of scripture. Not only that, to add to this, to add weight to this is the idea that Jesus's death and resurrection in scripture is not just an earthly victory, it's a cosmic victory its across the universe. He has victory over principalities of powers, he claims not just the title deed to the earth, he'a really claiming all things, all things are being redeemed. All of creation Romans 8, groans being subject to the bondage of corruption that is connected to Adam's sin and we'll all of creation be delivered when we are delivered into that glory and so the point here is that you can't limit Jesus's work to the earth. It would spread out to the universe. And that might be our next possibility. a mirror image of us? That they're made themselves in the image of Adam, not the image of directly of God but the image of Adam. So you could have these other beings that were made in the likeness of Adam so that they share in that fall through the correspondence of their creation. Now then you could extend the death and resurrection of Christ to those other beings without brining up any questions about how Jesus is the second Adam and he's uniquely representing mankind. You would actually be saying these aliens are another type of mankind. They're us, so to speak. I'm out on a limb, I admit it. But I'm not off a cliff. So I'm just talking about these issues here. So thats how you could theorize that Jesus's death & resurrection could potentially offer salvation, if the aliens happen to be highly intelligent and potentially eternal and they're sinful and they can be redeemed and it could be through Jesus. That would be your scenario. That's my thinking on that topic. I hope that it stirs up your mind to think not creatively but theologically about different issues.
Now it is possible, let me just talk real quick about UFO's. There's UFO's out there and there's a lot of accounts of different people saying they've confirmed UFO's. Do you the Christian world view, we have multiple explanations for these UFO sightings? I haven't looked into them so I don't know how valid they are or how well verified they are. But again I'm hypothesizing. Let's suppose that there are really credible accounts of UFO's. I know many people who think there are. I don't really have an opinion on the topic. But let's suppose that there are. The Christian world view has more than one way of explaining these things. So the secular world view tends to say they're aliens or its the government. Like these are kind of the two options. Aliens or the government or maybe its like secret organizations in the world, rich people controlling things. Something like that. There's a third option that Christians have that is to recognize that angels and demons are highly intelligent, powerful beings and there are lots of things going on in the universe beyond the human world. Beyond just the realm of human experience. And so we do have these things going on. And they have places in scripture where occasionally people are given insight the ability to see or experience visually even some of the stuff that goes on in the angelic experience. We're given eyes to see what we normally cannot see. And so Ezequiel talks about this when he talks about his vision of angels and some of the strange descriptions that they are. What I'm saying is this, while for Christians I don't want to say UFO sightings have to be demons or have to be some sort of maybe a deception of Satan or something but I do want to say that it could be. This is a viable option on the table. I have all these options available and I can follow the evidence where it leads. And I would even say this, given the difficulties of space travel and there are way more difficulties with space travel than most of us have realized I saw a Hugh Ross video where he's talking about some of the hardships of space travel. Like just your metabolism alone is just destroyed in trying to travel through space. The idea that even if there were beings out there that they could make it to earth even hypothetically is really a stretch. It seems its even more likely to me that these would be beings that we already know can interact with the earth and do those kinds of things like demons. It's a theological riddle but it's not a defeater for Christianity. It's kind of like knowing that the earth isn't the center of universe didn't kill Christianity. Because Christianity was never based on that.
Idk
just speculating but yeah, not a Christian presently and I do agree, most religious people would be going crazy or think it's the rapture or be up in arms.
