Alien Life And Jesus

Star Trek III has the greatest line of course, Scotty’s reply to the elevator.

Well thank you for that. I haven’t followed all the movies but thank you google:

But “sons of God” usually refers to angelic/divine beings. See Job.

So Cain was afraid of women? Seriously?

Genetic compatibility would not have concerned the ancients who told this story. And the human/angelic hybridization does have parallels in pagan mythology.

No one said he was. “The daughters of men” are part of the already preexisting human population. The same human population Cain was afraid would kill him.

No, but Israel was really concerned about preserving the ethnic purity of the national and familial lines. And since Genesis functions as the historical prologue to the covenant law. So a story warning against the dangers of ‘mixing’ would fit.

But hay, we are likely never going to square the circle this side of the New Creation. So whilst, I am not personally convinced by the pagan mythology theory. It could be right. Whose to say?

Never said they wouldn’t, in fact, I think this is completely plausible. Taking it further, (and borrowing an analogy from Kurzgesagt) an alien race may be so much more advanced than us that we simply appear to them like squirrels in the woods. This might mean that our planet is so pointlessly insignificant that no one cares about it, or that a visiting race might asset stripe the planet with as much concern for us as a logging company has for squirrels.

Whilst I don’t doubt it was disturbing for missionaries (or whoever) to witness cannibalistic practices, they had a framework within Christianity to process it. Name, the doctrines of sin and the fall. My point, which perhaps I am not doing a very good job of explaining, is that we have no theological categories for dealing with the social ills of a super-advanced space-faring race. The bible after all is silent about whether the effects of fall and sin extend beyond our planet for obvious reasons. Neither can we assume that an alien race would (or even should) care about human virtues and ethics (see above point about squirrels).

On this, we do agree.

I fear that your rationality disallows any attribute of the omnitemporal God (who actually does providentially intervene when and where he wills) to be inscrutable and less than humbly set your emperor and idol of rationality and its presuppositions on a par with or even above his.

A post was merged into an existing topic: Faith and Reason

‘the … interpretation (sons of angels or other divine beings) is nonexistent in modern Judaism’, source? Guess. You don’t like it.

This thread needs more aliens. Jesus too. But definitely aliens. :wink:

1 Like

AiG would agree.

Are Aliens Real?

Is Belief in Alien Life Harmless?

The Evidence Is In: We’re Alone in the Universe

Of course, AiG does not speak for all Christians. The Jesus People rocker Larry Norman sang

And if there’s life on other planets
Then I’m sure that He must know
And He’s been there once already
And has died to save their souls

He’s an unidentified flying object
You will see Him in the air
He’s an unidentified flying object
You will drop your hands and stare

You have my vote. The Earth may not be unique, but I think it rare. The cosmos can be a rough neighborhood. After all, life has been close to the brink even on Earth at times.

2 Likes

And then there’s this, recently:

“There may be far fewer galaxies further out in the universe then might be expected”, for those among us who are prone to unwarranted extrapolation.

https://research.msu.edu/the-universe-may-be-smaller-than-we-think/

1 Like

So let’s assume [the worst case by their computer model] that there are 10^2 less galaxies. That’s after the Hubble found [by observation] that 200,000,000,000 was 10x too low. So, we have 2 x 10^11 x 10 / 10^2 = only 2 x 10^10! Only twenty billion galaxies!! Oh no!!! Only OOM 10^21 stars, 10^22 planets, 10^24 moons, 10^25 asteroids.

1 Like

And how much radiation everywhere that we are protected from by our special place in our special galaxy.

Please try to write a better sentence so I can tell just what you are saying. “Sons of God” means divine beings according to the Harper Study Bible, which is from the Society of Biblical Literature. And we are talking about ancient biblical Hebrew.

C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy has an interesting take on such topics. (Earth being fallen, but other worlds not).

About the only conclusions on intelligent alien life we have enough data to reliably make are: they might exist; they are not common in our own solar system; they have not visited earth in any way that would make detectable traces; they did not tell Hindus about eliminating the dinosaurs with advanced nuclear weapons (the radioactive bones are Jurassic, not Maastrichtian, and nuclear bombs do not produce microtektites or iridium clay layers, gods fighting multi-headed snakes with fire-orbs is not the same thing as aliens nuking dinosaurs); they did not give Solomon a laser pointer to create smooth blocks for the temple (lasers do not work to cut rocks, unless they vaporize them, in which case it’s not a clean cut; a piece of harder rock is all you need to smooth out limestone blocks); they did not build a spaceport at Teotihuacan that had a giant electrical device (big temple) blow up (mica is an insulator, but so is the rock the temple is made of; pyrite is not a great conductor, neither is mercury).

1 Like

They didn’t :scream:

:upside_down_face:

Yep, this is certainly the best outcome traditional Christianity can hope for.

Yeah, I’m unique, just like everyone else. And what does your singular single sentence corollary follow from by the way? And can you you substantiate your claim that Earth is uniquely magically protected from universal wicked radiation - that actually had a part in evolution of course - please? And by what magical intervention apart from the magical evolution of a magical atmosphere from an already magically protecting magical ocean? I feel like I’m the central character in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.

That false dichotomy does not apply. All infinite worlds where shared intentionality has evolved are in the same existential ark. The best that Christianity can hope for was hoped by Jesus-Paul-Barth, even Lewis on a good day. That all is well for the eternity of all who have gone before thanks to the faithfulness of the Son in, as each world’s Messiah.

So are the Jews. None of whom interpret it as xenophilia.

The sons of God are always used to refer to God’s chosen people such as the Israelites

Deuternomy 14:1 “You are the sons of the Lord your God; you shall not cut yourselves nor shave your forehead for the sake of the dead. 2 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.

Psalm 82:6 I said, “You are gods, And all of you are sons of the Most High.
Could this be talking to angels? Not according to Jesus in John 10:34.

The New Testament makes it clear that angels are servants and it is human beings saved in Christ who are to be the sons of God: Matthew 5:9, Luke 20:36, Romans 8:14-19, Galatians 3:26

What about Job? The sons of God are spoken of but it never says that these are angels it is talking about.

No the obvious meaning of “sons of God” in Genesis 6, consistent with the rest of the Bible, is the descendants of Adam and Eve, saying they took their wives not from sisters never mentioned but from the daughters of all those other people who filled the earth, so much that Cain was afraid they would kill him if they wandered about.

2 Likes