If Aliens exist, should we evangelize to them?

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DiesMikael

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I do recall seeing a thread like this somewhere before but I can’t seem to find it.

Apart from being an interesting question I would very much care for your thoughts, I have a debate competition coming up and this happens to be the topic we will be debating.

I, if course, will be pro-If Aliens exist, should we evangelize to them?

So any thoughts or other sources discussing this topic would be most welcome. 🙂

God bless.
 
The point of evangelization is to tell all people the good news and baptize them, as Jesus commanded His Apostles. Only a creature with a soul may be baptized. Aliens wouldn’t have souls, since, according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, only human beings have souls (only humans are matter-spirit creatures), so, evangelizing aliens would be pointless.
 
If we assume (and we must) that the aliens were created by our God (which they would have been) then we can also extrapolate that to believe that the aliens may have a religious tradition similar to ours or the Jewish religion. IF that is the case then the aliens may have their own “Bible” or “Torah” they very well could be like the Jewish religion and just waiting for the messiah, which we could teach them about. This of course is all just my opinion.

Does any of that go against the Catholic faith?

Steve
 
Eucharisted said:
The point of evangelization is to tell all people the good news and baptize them, as Jesus commanded His Apostles. Only a creature with a soul may be baptized. Aliens wouldn’t have souls, since, according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, only human beings have souls (only humans are matter-spirit creatures), so, evangelizing aliens would be pointless.
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Interesting, good point.

But could you perhaps elaborate a bit more? According to what I have been reading there is nothing in Holy Scripture that could confirm or contradict the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Is it possible the CCC was perhaps only referring to life on earth? Or perhaps not specifically ruling that if aliens exist they would 100% not have a soul.

Nevertheless, I don’t think the CCC will be considered a valid argument in the competition since it is not "should the Catholic church evangelize aliens’’ .

Of course I am not dismissing the CCC but for the sake of argument I think I am going to have to go a little bit to the dark side (sola scriptura) for the competition. 🙂
 
I don’t see any reason to believe that Aliens couldn’t have souls. If they do, then I would say yes, since we are called to evangelize to all people. All rational beings seek the Truth, why not share it with them?
 
DiesMikael said:
Interesting, good point.

But could you perhaps elaborate a bit more? According to what I have been reading there is nothing in Holy Scripture that could confirm or contradict the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Is it possible the CCC was perhaps only referring to life on earth? Or perhaps not specifically ruling that if aliens exist they would 100% not have a soul.

Nevertheless, I don’t think the CCC will be considered a valid argument in the competition since it is not "should the Catholic church evangelize aliens’’ .

Of course I am not dismissing the CCC but for the sake of argument I think I am going to have to go a little bit to the dark side (sola scriptura) for the competition. 🙂
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Regarding alien life, the Church has said nothing. Regarding souls, it is Catholic dogma that humans and only humans possess both mortal, physical bodies and immortal, rational souls. Hence, only humans may be baptized (after all, you need a body and a soul to be Temples of the Lord; the body is the temple, the soul is the altar).
 
Eucharisted said:
Aliens wouldn’t have souls, since, according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, only human beings have souls
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How do you know aliens are not human beings. Is it because most alien movies indicate they are animals which do not possess a soul of a man?

Regarding evangilizing to alien…sure! if somebody gives me the shuttle Alantis. 😃
 
Thank you all for your thoughts so far.

“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
  • Mark 16:15
Funny how it says ,all the world’’ and also the use of the term "creature’’.
 
Hmmmm.

This topic reminds me, and parallels, St. Paul evangelizing and converting the Gentiles. Many Christian-Jews at the time thought the gentiles were not worthy, not being circumcised, & not following Mosiac law. Acts 15:1-12.
 
DiesMikael said:
Thank you all for your thoughts so far.

“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
  • Mark 16:15
Funny how it says ,all the world’’ and also the use of the term "creature’’.
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Isn’t this what St. Francis of Assisi did? One of the reasons why I love him so much. 🙂
 
GodIsGracious said:
Isn’t this what St. Francis of Assisi did? One of the reasons why I love him so much. 🙂
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Thats true!

“To use St Francis’s words, if we consider earthly creatures as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’, why can’t we also speak of an ‘extra-terrestrial brother’?”

catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000287.shtml
It seems from a religious perspective the answer to this question is either just a simple “yes” or a simple “no” but I do fear my debate combatants will try to approach this subject from a more secular point of view.

Though it does help that almost nothing stands in the way of interstellar-evangelization (Google finds no mention of this term so I call dips :)) from a religious point of view.

Aliens no having a soul though being the strongest “con” argument so far.
 
My answer is simply NO. There is no reason to preach aliens about Jesus because Jesus came to us, and “buy” us from sin. So if we look at the sin (especially East sin) it self, we see that is bounded to Earth, or better sad to humans.

However, since everything is possible to God, if they exist they may have other revelation (of God).
 
berno said:
My answer is simply NO. There is no reason to preach aliens about Jesus because Jesus came to us, and “buy” us from sin. So if we look at the sin (especially East sin) it self, we see that is bounded to Earth, or better sad to humans.

However, since everything is possible to God, if they exist they may have other revelation (of God).
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Maybe God created Aliens for us to go preach the Gospel to.

Since we don’t know anything about real aliens we could try to picture every possible scenario, perhaps Aliens don’t have a soul, but maybe they do.

But in any given scenario would it be a good idea to evangelize them?
 
Eucharisted said:
Regarding alien life, the Church has said nothing. Regarding souls, it is Catholic dogma that humans and only humans possess both mortal, physical bodies and immortal, rational souls. Hence, only humans may be baptized (after all, you need a body and a soul to be Temples of the Lord; the body is the temple, the soul is the altar).
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How funny would it be if the Catholic dogma was “only humans (and possibly creatures from other planets of which there is no evidence) possess souls”. If aliens exist and have intelligent society equal to or better than our own, then we would have to assume the existence of souls.

Early missionaries to Africa, in the shockingly racist fashion of their time, debated whether ‘primitive’ Africans had souls. They decided that Black Africans were humans of equal dignity to white Westerners because of their ability to accept the Gospel. The same logic must apply to aliens?
(I know this point appears to have horribly racist undertones, please forgive me).
 
I’m no theologian, but I think it is a pretty simple question. The answer is - it depends on the aliens. Let’s presume THEY come to US since we’re a looonnnggg way from getting to them. Thus, they must be intelligent and advanced in technology.

If they appear to be AWARE of the existence of both good and evil, AND they exhibit concupiscence (difficulty refraining from sin), then it would be fair to conclude that they have committed original sin and need a savior as much as we do. Seems crazy to think God would have created other sentient life and not given them a shot at salvation. Thus, catholic principles say: preach and evangelize 'em.

If on the other hand, a close evaluation of them shows that they still possess original innocence, God have mercy on them. We (humanity) will forever be remembered in their culture as the serpent that gives them the apple to bite. 😦 Once we ruin 'em, we’d BETTER at least share the Savior with them!
 
Maybe aliens wouldn’t need to be evangelized, because maybe their race never experienced a Fall and still have perfect communion with God.

But I think I will worry about that once this planet has been thoroughly evangelized.
 
Well, before we do try to evangelize them, first we need to learn about them, and their culture. The last thing we all need is to make a race of aliens who’s technologies puts us to shame angry. The bible could be meant only for humans, to teach us what we lack. And the aliens could have their own version that covers what they lack. Everything requires a slow start, if you don’t want a disaster to happen. God, probably did not need to give the same exact directions to other creatures, those directions just need to have the same distenation.
 
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