Are all other worlds deprived of God?

[Khalid]

God is infinite.

 

[tonyrey]

God is infinite.

So?

 

[Khalid]

The universe isn’t.

 

[Khalid]

And, I don’t believe in intelligent alien life because of the combination of Drake’s equation and Fermi’s paradox.

 

[tonyrey]

As to “others”, well that is our imaginative flight of fancy, as such has never been revealed to man. The concept of life on other planets seems to have accelerated mainly during the 1950s, with the advent of science fiction film.

Scientific inventions and discoveries have fulfilled what were universally assumed to be imaginative flights of fancy a hundred years ago!

 

[MrZosimus]

This is from Thomas Aquinas in a commentary on the Gospel of John:
dhspriory.org/thomas/SSJohn.htm Not sure how to properly cite this, but it’s in Chapter 3, Lecture 6, towards the end of note 544
"From what has been said, it is clear that the grace of Christ which is called capital grace, insofar as he is head of the Church, is infinite in its influence. For from the fact that he possessed that from which the gifts of the Spirit could flow out without measure, he received the power to pour them out without measure, so that the grace of Christ is sufficient not merely for the salvation of some men, but for all the people of the entire world: “He is the offering for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the entire world” ( 1 Jn 2:2), and even for many worlds, if they existed. "

So Christ’s sacrifice could be sufficient for the salvation of alien life, and if God didn’t reveal Himself to them somehow, alien intelligence on a distant planet would probably be the best example of invincible ignorance that one would ever find.

 

[puzzleannie]

I have been thinking lately and pondering this one question:

If God sent his one and only son to earth to die for the sins of man, what would happen to life on other planets?

I

the Church is way ahead of you
the entire universe was disordered by the sin of Adam and Eve, and Jesus’ salvific act saved not only the human race and the earth from the eternal effects of sin, but redeemed the entire universe.

for a sci fi rendering of how that might play out on other inhabited planets try the Perelandra space trilogy by CS Lewis

 

[Heuchler]

Heuchler;8698466:

The time factor is the main problem! It would take far more than one lifetime to travel to the most distant and constantly receding ends of the universe…

Maybe one or many but not** the entire species**

!
Thanks for letting us know.

Well with time we will probably gain greater control over worm holes taking out time/distance problems. And since we actually can beat the speed of light (if the results of the neutrinio are right) there may be other ways to get places faster

And I would disagree. If Adam and Eve had rejected Satan in the garden, I think that would have closed off the deal and we would have original purity. The sin was not in eating of the apple itself and learning of good and evil (that would have probably come later) it was the fact that we simply disobeyed God. If our world was built upon the foundation of obeying God, we would instead be built with a great ability to resist sin unless we truly chose to oppose God. So, I would think that nearer to the entire species would be pure if there was not a garden of Eden moment. I think there would be a little disobedience but that probably wouldn’t spread original sin to the whole rest of the species and we would find species that were on the majority completely good.

 

[mdgspencer]

This involves two questions. First, are they deprived of God? However, Saint Paul said that what can be known about God is plain; His invisible nature, His eternal power and deity, is clearly perceived in the things that have been made (Romans 1:19-20)
Second, are they deprived of redemption, and the grace brought by Christ? Catholicism teaches something relevant about this. The Church teaches that even those who have never even heard of Christ can be saved by Christ. They can receive what is called baptism by desire. That is they can have what baptism gives even though they are not baptized by water, and even if they know nothing about Christ. I would presume this would be the case of aliens too. God would love them as He loves men.
If there are aliens, though, I presume that men will go to them some time, and they will learn about Christ then. There would be those of good will just as there are men of good will.

 

[tonyrey]

Christ’s sacrifice could be sufficient for the salvation of alien life, and if God didn’t reveal Himself to them somehow, alien intelligence on a distant planet would probably be the best example of invincible ignorance that one would ever find.

Which has very significant implications which overcome the objections by sceptics to the “particularity” of the Incarnation! It reminds me of the absurdity of limbo…

 

[tonyrey]

This involves two questions. First, are they deprived of God? However, Saint Paul said that what can be known about God is plain; His invisible nature, His eternal power and deity, is clearly perceived in the things that have been made (Romans 1:19-20)
Second, are they deprived of redemption, and the grace brought by Christ? Catholicism teaches something relevant about this. The Church teaches that even those who have never even heard of Christ can be saved by Christ. They can receive what is called baptism by desire. That is they can have what baptism gives even though they are not baptized by water, and even if they know nothing about Christ. I would presume this would be the case of aliens too. God would love them as He loves men.
If there are aliens, though, I presume that men will go to them some time, and they will learn about Christ then. There would be those of good will just as there are men of good will.

No one is beyond God’s love or redemption…

 

[martininthefiel]

I believe God is the creator of the universe, and loves everything He has created. If we accept the Nicene Creed, this must be so for it says that He created all things, visible and invisible. If there are other world’s with intelligent life, God has provided those beings with the means of Grace that are appropriate to their circumstance.

Their redemption story may be very different from ours. Whilst they may be superficially similar to us in some ways, they are not necessarily identical to us. Perhaps they do not have the stain of original sin. We do not, and cannot know, although it is fun to speculate.

 

[LayingHands]

Anything is logically possible but we are concerned with reality. The laws of probability apply to the entire universe because it is subject to the same physical laws. For example, it is highly improbable that out of an immense number of conditions every condition is satisfied so perfectly that two planets are identical in every respect (except their position of course!) This is an example of how an estimate of probability can be valid even though it has no precise mathematical basis.

The principle of induction is evidence of how successful estimates can be because there is no absolute guarantee that the universe will continue to be orderly or that the future will always be understood in terms of the past. Bishop Butler said that probability is the very guide of life - and I don’t see why that should exclude life elsewhere!

Stephen Hawking is no fool and he ventured to say that intelligent life is unlikely to survive for long on any planet because of the overwhelming odds against it. It seems miraculous that it has lasted so long on this planet after having coming so close to extinction several times…

:clapping::extrahappy: GOD’s evolving divine plan includes all the Cosmic Universe until the Annihilation…

God says;
“Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence, and false-ego–altogether these eight comprise My separate material energies. Besides this inferior nature, there is a superior energy of Mine which is, all living entities who are struggling with material nature and sustaining the Universe”

“From the highest planet in the material world, down to the lowest (planet), all are places of misery, where repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, Never takes birth again”

“Envious, mischievous, the lowest of mankind, these do I ever put back into the ocean of material existence, into various demoniac species of life”

“It should be understood that all species of life, are made possible by birth in this material nature, and I am the seed-giving Father”

“There is no work prescribed for Me within all the three planetary systems. Neither am I in want of anything, nor have I need to obtain anything–and yet I am engaged in work”

“I am the source of everything: from Me the entire creation flows. Knowing this, the wise worship Me with all their hearts”

“But what need is there for all this detailed knowledge? With a single fragment of Myself I pervade and support these entire Universes”

“You should understand that I am also the knower in all bodies, and to understand this body and its owner is called Knowledge.”

“To those who are constantly devoted and worship Me with Love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me”.

Yes, I believe all living entities who have GOD’s conscience of created life in birth and death, have been made aware of their Creator, His Absolute Truth and His message of promise for Eternal Life.

 

[po18guy]

Scientific inventions and discoveries have fulfilled what were universally assumed to be imaginative flights of fancy a hundred years ago!

But extra-terrestrial life has never been revealed, and revelation, even to primitive man, is still inexplicable by science.

 

[roselily]

There is possible beings on other Cosmic Universe , but no human,

that human is only at earth, that we call human, and God produced human on earth, only at this atmosphere.

but it is possible life on other Universe, - that Scientists found Methane CH4 in far away like Saturn’s moon Titan,…also Mars

methane only life can produce, but the lifes in other places in Cosmic Universe not human, and I knew not whether the lifes in there are source of light or not…

 

[LumenGent]

How do you know this?

If you are looking for a document that says specifically “There is no human life on other planets” I don’t know if I can find one. Anyway, I always understood that human Life and Earth go hand in hand. Just as there aren’t any animals somewhere in outer space, you most definately won’t find a human out there. Keep in mind that Life implies a Soul and body, and clearly that is restricted to the Earth and as we know in the case of Our Lord and Our Lady, Heaven.

Another way to look at it, is a) Revelation makes no reference to life outisde the Earth and b) Science is yet to prove anything substantial.

 

[joshvanrad]

I agree that the human race is ONLY native to Earth. But I also believe that somewhere in this vast universe that there are more than likely other planets that can and do sustain life. To think that among the millions of planets that we can and can’t see that there are no others that sustain life seems more farfetched than to think that this one planet is the only planet that can sustain intelligent life.

But if God created the entire universe (which I believe he did) then what of the creations in “a galaxy far, far away…”?

Obviously I can’t say if there are beings similar to the human race, but is it really so hard to believe that there could be? We haven’t discovered but even a fraction of our own galaxy. What about all of the other far reaching galaxies within the universe?

 

[Crux_Sancta]

If theistic evolution is true, and I do not know that it is, but I suspect that it is so–then there are two possibilities:

• God specifically chose this Earth as a place within an otherwise dead cosmos to produce life, and did not guide the natural processes anywhere else in the universe. Since highly complex life is very unlikely to arise by itself, it is possible that while there could be primitive life on other planets, human beings are the only intelligent creatures in the universe.
• God also uses theistic evolution to produce complex life on other planets.

If God did provide intelligent life on other planets, he may have done so in a manner whereby the lifeforms would not have acquired Original Sin, and thus have no need for salvation. If they did acquire Original Sin, then who knows.

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

And, I don’t believe in intelligent alien life because of the combination of Drake’s equation and Fermi’s paradox.

And there are “Axis of Evil” issues in cosmos. The anisotropies of cosmic background radition seem to be arranged to coincide with the eclipitc of our solar system, the equinoxes of Earth and the rotational axis. Simply, large-scale features of the background radition sky appear to be correlated with both the motion and the orientation of the solar system. The chances of this particular conjunction occurring randomly is 1 in 100 billion. Further, there more oddities…

• The polarization of light from quasars is ordered around the “axis of evil”
• The rotation of most galaxies appear to line up with the “axis of evil”

The clearly shows that the solar system is unique and that somehow, we appear at the centre of it all. If that is the case, I doubt intelligent life exists anywhere as we seem to be the focus of this Universe.

 

[empther]

This interesting subject has come up on the catholic.org forums. Here are my comments when it came up again not long ago.

This was discussed on these forums many years ago. I made a lot of claims which were not seriously contested. Here they are.

First, while the Son of God is co-eternal with the Father and Holy Spirit, Jesus the man, body and soul, was created by God two thousands years ago.

Could intelligent beings on other planets also have their own Messiahs? Why not?
God makes the rules. If he chooses to have every civilization have its own salvation plan with its own Redeemer, he is free to do so. I see no reason why the Son of God could not take up more than one civilization’s Redeemer onto himself. One, or many, it violates no rules. If God chooses, each Redeemer has responsibility for his own civilization, although there is only one Son of God for all.

Our Redeemer, Jesus, may be aware of other civilizations but would not need to have detailed knowledge of their histories.

God may choose to keep intelligent civilizations forever separate from each other, for reasons we can’t know ( although it would be interesting to speculate why! ). He can maintain this separation in two ways: distance and time.

There can be no communications between galaxies because light and radio waves are scattered by dust. ( Presumably, an extremely advanced civilization might make its entire galaxy blink Morse code, but we haven’t seen it yet. ) Traveling between galaxies is similarly impossible because of the millions of years needed to do this. It’s been said no spaceship could travel more than ten percent of the speed of light because of the need to get space debris out of the way. It would take twenty million years to travel from Andromeda to the Milky Way one way.

God can separate civilizations from each other by time. One civilzation has its five million years on one world, then another has its five million years elsewhere, but not at the same time. In this way, there could be hundreds or thousands of civilizations in the same galaxy but at different times. Finding evildence of another long dead civilization would be extremely unlikely, because it would be necessary to visit each planet and look around, but there are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. I think this exceeds NASA’s budget. http://forum.catholic.org/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

Ah, yes. It’s a heavy burden knowing everything.