Interpretations of aliens and what it would mean for Christians

Faith & Science Conversation
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As someone with an interest in astronomy, there has always been one question that has bugged me: what would aliens mean for our faith? I know C.S. Lewis once wrote a story about aliens in Mars and Venus who had heard of Christ (or so I’ve heard. I would love to read this story). But, do you think if we ever made contact with another intelligent species like ourselves, would they have met Christ too? I guess my big thought here is that alien opinions on faith would make or break what we know about reality: if they share the same beliefs about some religion on Earth, than the chances are that it is likely true. If they have their own beliefs, then we all have some interpretation to do. I think this is another one of those impossible questions on reality to answer (even if the aliens believed, does that prove that God exists or that a potential simulation just made a god like the rest of us?).

I also know that there are a lot of theories about aliens (anyone who has heard of UAPs or Skinwalker Ranch would concur). I’ve heard theories that aliens are demons. I’ve heard theories that aliens send their tech to improve our lives (my old history teacher had told me a theory of a supposed found ship that had no seams like planes are built together and then a few years later we have 3D printing technology). I’ve heard theories that aliens are living among us or breeding among humans or whatever. I’ve heard portal theories and animal mutation theories and abduction theories and everything in between. I’ve heard theories in government cover-ups (actually in the news a bunch of UFO experts have been reported missing) and attempts to discredit these theories. What are your thoughts on this? Did another species beat us to the impossible, faster than light or even worm hole technology? Do any of these theories have merit.

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You’re thinking of C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, especially Out of the Silent Planet. In that book, the main character travels to Mars and discovers intelligent beings who already know of God and live in proper relation to Him, while Earth is described as the “silent planet” because of its rebellion.

Lewis isn’t trying to do science fiction in the modern technical sense. He’s exploring what Christianity would look like on a cosmic scale—beyond just Earth. The second book, Perelandra, goes even further and reimagines a kind of Eden story on another world.

They show that encountering new ideas or a bigger universe doesn’t have to weaken belief—it can actually deepen how you think about it.

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Also check out “Religion and rocketry”, an essay by C S Lewis in which he gives a detailed reflection on that subject: would the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe invalidate Christian belief?

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As someone with an interest in astronomy, there has always been one question that has bugged me: what would aliens mean for our faith? I know C.S. Lewis once wrote a story about aliens in Mars and Venus who had heard of Christ (or so I’ve heard. I would love to read this story). But, do you think if we ever made contact with another intelligent species like ourselves, would they have met Christ too? I guess my big thought here is that alien opinions on faith would make or break what we know about reality: if they share the same beliefs about some religion on Earth, than the chances are that it is likely true. If they have their own beliefs, then we all have some interpretation to do. I think this is another one of those impossible questions on reality to answer (even if the aliens believed, does that prove that God exists or that a potential simulation just made a god like the rest of us?).

I started writing a story about humans reaching out to new, Earth-like planets, with a clear ending in mind.

The last surviving human is placed in a casket designed to save their life, when an alien leans over and asks, “You mean you come from a planet like ours? Why did you leave?’

“We thought,” answers the human, “that it was our destiny to travel between the stars.”

“How misguided you are!” says the astonished alien. “You have wasted lives and energy reaching this planet when you could have used them to make your own planet sustainable.”

“Our sun is expected to expand into a red giant and then become a white dwarf,” replies the human.

“How many years is that in the future?” asks the alien.

“In roughly five billion years,” answers the human.

Suddenly, the human watched the aliens start laughing infectiously, spreading from one to another until the whole planet seemed to be laughing.

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The idea of aliens certainly seems to be a problem for some young-earth creationists. Ken Ham has said aliens don’t exist, but if they did they’d go to hell.

I don’t spend much time worrying about it, but I do have sort of a passive curiosity about whether there’s anyone else out there. I can see why some people might be scared by the idea that whatever faith we have here is just one small part of a much larger picture. But at this point I believe that if God is out there, aliens aren’t a problem for him, so there’s no reason for them to be a problem for me (unless they’re hostile…). It seems to me that to believe otherwise is basically saying that aliens cause problems for God, and in that case God wouldn’t seem very powerful at all.

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Good Grief
Good Grief1600×1475 147 KB

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Ken Ham: Aliens don’t exist.

Yoda: Wrong, you are.

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ET: Am I chopped liver to you?

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We do not have any evidence of aliens but I would be surprised if Earth would be the only planet with life in the enormous universe. God has probably millions of trillions of suitable planets where He could create life. Why would He restrict the joy to this little speck in an insignificant part of the universe?

The gospel of God’s Kingdom on Earth, with Jesus as the King, is the gospel for this planet. If there is intelligent life millions of light years from this planet, it is absurd to think that what happened here would determine their life and eternity. God would probably have a special plan for their salvation.

If there are aliens very far, millions of light years from here, we probably will never know about them. The distances are simply too huge. Any ‘normal’ technology would be insufficient to reach those planets, even if we could travel close to the speed of light (not gonna happen in the near future). It would demand a radically novel way to travel long distances.

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Right? It is disturbing to me how easy it can be to simply assign a whole population to hell. Maybe it’s easier to do when it’s dealing with beings that are, up to this point, only hypothetical.

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Nothing much.

Yep: “Out of the Silent Planet” (first of a trilogy which also includes “Perelandra” and “That Hideous Strength”) Copy on my shelf and read many times.

No. I do not think Christianity is about the whole universe. It is about Earth and humanity only.

It is true that many feel threatened by other people who believe differently than they do. But I see nothing virtuous in this.

No, the existence of other people who believe differently doesn’t prove much of anything.

…and/or angels.

This is not unreasonable for 2 reasons.

  1. All the evidence has much the same character as the things of religion and other subjective beliefs.
  2. The structure of the universe makes visits by aliens extremely unlikely.

These are all pure fantasy with no more logical coherence than fairies, astrology, and Santa Clause’s workshop at the north pole.

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John N. Oswalt states in his book THE BIBLE AMONG THE MYTHS, that “there are only two worldviews, the Biblical One, or the Other One.”

Each of the scenarios you mention above fall in one or the other of these two categories.

Thus, paranormal activity comes from only one of two sources; it is either of God, or it is not of God. Jesus’ resurrection would be an example of the former, the possessed slave girl of Acts 16:16 an example of the latter.

Your questions regarding the existence of other life forms needs to be qualified as simple or complex biological life forms vs. spiritual life forms:

 Does simple, biological life exist elsewhere in the universe? Perhaps.

Empirical evidence on earth gives numerous examples of simple life existing in many varied and extreme conditions; it would not be unusual to find simple life elsewhere in the universe. Actually, the implications would be exponentially more profound if no other simple life was found elsewhere than on earth (which may be the case, but we simply can’t say one way or the other at this time).

   Does complex, biological life exist elsewhere in the universe? No.

People may theorize about this, but current scientific evidence does not support it. Dr. Henry F. Schaefer from the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, University of Georgia, agrees with contributor, Knor Kai, that we will never know if intelligent biological life exists in the universe because “the distances are just too far.”

  Does “complex,” spiritual life exist elsewhere in the universe? Yes.

Scientific and Biblical evidence describes paranormal activity at many levels. This activity can only come from one of two sources – it is either of God, or it is not. Paranormal activity is spiritual warfare. Scientists can observe that this activity exists, but they don’t have the tools to address reasons for it because science relies on our fallen, imperfect, limited laws of nature (General or natural revelation) as opposed to Yahweh’s perfect, unlimited, spiritual laws of nature (Special or supernatural revelation.)

If interested, see more details in chapters 3 and 4, FROM THE GARDEN OF MOSES TO THE GARDEN OF JOHN**,** by Janice E. Ocamb.

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If evolution of humanity is just a random process, estimates of other intelligent life like ourselves varies based on estimates of potential habitable planets etc. If God has in some way purposed our existence and guided it then it seems to me to be even more likely God would have many civilisations scatted throughout the universe.

The question is then how we see this in relation to the centrality of Christ for us and the cosmos. In his Systematic Theology Paul Tillich considered that all intelligent life with freedom of action may be prone to the same problems of estranged relationships that we have and would need a Saviour. But how can our Christ be their Saviour if that can never hear from us about Him?

Some who have thought about this have speculated multiple Incarnations of the Word, or God has some other means of salvation for them. But then if Atonement is not necessary for them why would God make it necessary here on earth? Plus the Old Orthodox argument that what has not been “assumed” (joined to the Word) cannot be saved.

It s the Incarnation. that makes Jesus most fully the Christ. I think I favour the Multiple Incarnations with the Word as the Mediator in all places. This Christ element is then Cosmic and not just earthly.

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Perhaps once we have replicator technology we can synthesize warp drive. :wink:

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Hola Max!

I would believe that you would benefit from this podcast episode from Biologos’ own Language of God podcast:

“Description:

In the last couple of decades, we have solved the question of whether there are other earth-like planets in the universe by finding evidence of billions of them. But while we don’t know whether there could be life on those planets—or what it would be like if there was—we can still explore the theological questions that might arise if we did find life. These questions might seem like they don’t have much relevance for us, but besides being fun to think about, they help us to refine the theology of things like the incarnation and what it means for us here on earth.”

It’s one of my favorite that Biologos have put out. The guest mainly references from his book that discusses many of the themes that you are inquiring about.

Also just a my 2 cents on the alien and Christianity:

-For me, aliens pose little threat to Christianity as a whole. I think there’s a lot of mystery and waiting to be discovered mechanisms for us to truly understand the origin of life (but everything so far points to life being a very rare phenomenon)

-If the origin of life truly came as a naturalistic process, then I would not be surprised where instances of life coming into existence would be found elsewhere in the universe in considerable rarity ( and of that life, I would suspect very very few intelligent self aware species like ours. Microbial life I would guess be the good chunk of the aliens out there)

- To me, I simply see any hypothetical aliens as a necessary product of God’s design of the universe to allow for a naturalistic origin of life. Since those mechanism were baked in the world, while it is a rare phenomenon and we humans may be one of the few self-conscious/with “minds” species out there, God allowed/understood that process could/would produce life elsewhere. [An example in case one wants to complain why would God even allow any other life to exist or why He would allowed microbial populations to go extinct in worlds that lose their atmospheres]

I personally kinda hope aliens are real but it’s gonna be a real challenge to find em.

-Liam

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Since I don’t believe in any form of intelligent design not from evolution or abiogenesis or how the universe came to be I also presume there is life somewhere else out here and maybe even life far more intelligent than us. I’m under the impression that intelligent life near us or meeting us anytime soon is highly unlikely given how far away they would have to be traveling and how long ago they would have had to leave and so on.

But let’s say they do show up and let’s say they even have a whole range of religious beliefs. I think all religions are essentially the same and just different reflections of the same being, including Judaism is just an example of this greater being. So I would presume this being also reached out to those in other planets too in ways to accommodate them.

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Use of imagination is fine and recommendable. The reality is a bit more challenging.

I have read lots of science fiction with space travel. In almost all of them, the crucial step to space travel happens when people get FTL (faster than light) drives. Without FTL, we are limited to our backyard. In most stories, a FTL drive originates from an alien culture, because inventing FTL is not a trivial matter. If humans invent the drive, it is usually the Alcubierre warp drive.

The method of the FTL travel in the scifi stories varies. Alcubierre warp drive is basic stuff, in most stories the first step. The longer space journeys start when the Alcubierre drive is replaced with something more efficient, usually moving through speculative other dimensions of space/time or between speculative layers in the structure of the space/spacetime. Wormholes are also fairly common solutions, although wormholes may be associated with devastating physical forces.

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Of course Star Trek were doing that decades earlier, and they were far from the first.

Though that “usually” jars me. What about hyperspace, wormholes, Alderson drives, infinite improbability[1] and cheddite?

  1. ok, this wasn’t invented by humans. ↩︎

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There are a multitude of alternatives. Many scifi stories do not go into details, they just have some sort of FTL drive. Some writers attempt to describe the FTL technology in more details. The set of stories I have read (tens, possibly >100 books) is somewhat biased but in the set, Alcubierre drive is mentioned in more than half of the stories where the writer goes into technical details. The theoretical idea behind the speculative Alcubierre warp drive has been described in a published paper, so it offers an easy starting point to those writers who try to write semi-credible stories.

Hyperspace, wormholes and some sort of tramlines/FTL lanes are mentioned in many books but these books seldom go into a detailed description of the technology behind the FTL. In addition, in most stories these technologies have an alien origin.

The technical descriptions in the scifi books are interesting in the sense that any aliens trying to reach Earth need to have some sort of FTL drive. If there is no credible way to build a FTL drive, then the stories of aliens coming from the distant space to Earth are practically impossible (excluding the stories of generation ships that travel thousands of years at a fraction of light speed).

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The set I have read doesn’t include any that mention the Alcubierre drive.

Probably because it’s biased towards works produced last century, and maybe towards those that are less credible (but more fun).

P.S. Add spindizzies and bistromathics to the list of FTL drive technologies.

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