Life in another planet

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Since God created us, I don’t see why He couldn’t/wouldn’t create others.
 
Crowne said:
Are there any theological issues with that?
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No.

There is certainly nothing in Catholic doctrine which requires us to believe that life exists on earth alone.
On occasion I’ve heard an atheist say “If they discover life on other planets it will disprove Christianity”. For the life of me I can’t work out why. I guess it’s just like a lot of atheists claim now that the now-overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang theory disproves Christianity. They get a shock when you inform them that the theory was invented by a devout Catholic priest, and that the term “Big Bang” was invented as a term of ridicule for the theory by atheists because they thought that it supported Christianity. (Of course it like all other true scientific theories is at least consistent with Christianity and Catholic doctrine.) They were still ridiculing it less than 40 years ago for the same reason.

As always, Catholicism in the end is the only position that makes logical sense.
 
Peggy_in_Burien said:
Since God created us, I don’t see why He couldn’t/wouldn’t create others.
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^This.

Expanding on that a little, for us to think that humanity, with all our flaws and limitations, is the only possible “in-His-image” creation of a perfect, infinite God smack to me of arrogance.

Edit: Actually, I answered from my own opinion, rather than actually addressing the OP’s question. Petergee has it right. This question has been discussed in depth on other threads, and the bottom line is that there is no Catholic theological teaching opposing the possibility of life on other planets.
 
It more so proves God, in the infiinitieness of, Space the Universe, and yet in it is the earth, created by a big bang where once their was nothing, coprehended by the scientific explanation it all came from a basic nothing to this…

Composed out of a basic over a mere hundred different elements, their is , LIFE on this rock that is and From God, alone… the Omnicient of the Harmony, Clarity, and Intergrity of Life alone, in sciences recognition if it ALL started out slightly altered, NOTHING would be as it is today… the Hand of God in Creation…

Life itself and the Human brain, the most complex, fasinatiing thing known to man in the Universe, proves their is a God , beside all the rest of the awe and wonder…
and God gave us the Universal Church to guide us that we might be part of that awe at the end of this all, amazing, if we were only worthy of such…amazing…
 
I’ll believe in it when I see it; until then I couldn’t care less.
 
GEddie said:
I’ll believe in it when I see it; until then I couldn’t care less.
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Yeah, I sort of fall into this category. Altho ET life is a great subject for stories, it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about (except when writing fiction).
 
That God created man in His Own Image doesn’t mean He wouldn’t create other sentient races in His Thought of what they should look like. This is certainly true for the animals, and we should note that angels, like humans, have rational souls, even though God did not create them in His Own Image as He created humans. So it’s possible for extraterrestrial beings to have rational souls but be created not in God’s Own Image. Intriguing thought either way.

FWIW, a Jewish friend told me that Gn 1:27, in the original Hebrew, reads as an incomplete transitive verb, ie "God created man in the image of … " with the implication that morphologically (the forms of the words themselves) the verse could mean “God’s image of man” or “God’s image of what man should be”. So we could extend that to “God can create extraterrestrial beings in the image of how God thinks extraterrestrial beings should be”.

Note that the passage DOES read that God creates man in His Own Image, but we get that meaning from the reflexive structure of the Hebrew. Note the transcription here:

biblos.com/genesis/1-27.htm

The literal structure of the sentence is:
“[Thus] Created God, man image, the image of God created”

The reflexive sentence structure is what gives us the meaning “Created in His Own Image”, rather than the morphology itself.
 
In one of the Marian apparitions a child asked St. Mary if there was life on other worlds.
St. Mary’s reply was “that is not for you to know”.

It would take no more effort for the Eternal God to fill space full of habited worlds than it would to make it all empty. We’ll know when the time is right.

On a practical note, if there are neighbors out there, how do you propose to interact with them? It’s 3.9 light years to the nearest star.
 
It is possible that there is non-intelligent life on other planets.
 
Glomung said:
In one of the Marian apparitions a child asked St. Mary if there was life on other worlds.
St. Mary’s reply was “that is not for you to know”.

It would take no more effort for the Eternal God to fill space full of habited worlds than it would to make it all empty. We’ll know when the time is right.

On a practical note, if there are neighbors out there, how do you propose to interact with them? It’s 3.9 light years to the nearest star.
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4.3?
 
Glomung said:
In one of the Marian apparitions a child asked St. Mary if there was life on other worlds.
St. Mary’s reply was “that is not for you to know”.

It would take no more effort for the Eternal God to fill space full of habited worlds than it would to make it all empty. We’ll know when the time is right.

On a practical note, if there are neighbors out there, how do you propose to interact with them? It’s 3.9 light years to the nearest star.
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Which apparition are you referring to here?

Also, the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years. And there are no planets, habitable or not, detected orbiting it. The nearest star with a planet in the habitable zone is Tau Ceti and is about 12 light years away.
 
Thank you all for answering, but if I may add a precision to my original question…
What about intelligent life in another planet?
As in, would it be possible for other species other than humans to have souls as well? 😮
 
Crowne said:
Thank you all for answering, but if I may add a precision to my original question…
What about intelligent life in another planet?
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I see no reason why it’s not possible. (Although personally I think it’s very unlikely, and that even if it does exist it would be very likely to be at such a great distance from Earth that any contact with it would very likely always remain impossible.)
As in, would it be possible for other species other than humans to have souls as well? 😮
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They do. Animals have souls (the very word comes from the Latin anima = soul) but I presume you mean rational immortal souls as humans have. Angels certainly have souls (in fact they are entirely souls) and they are not humans. So I don’t see why in theory at least another type of life form could not have an immortal soul.

Speaking of animals, I find it amusing when people talk about mounting vast projects to search for other intelligent life or other species like us, countless light years away. Even if such species do exist, the chance is virtually zero that they will be more like us than the species right under our noses which are in fact even physically related to us and share much the same basic body chemistry and physiology etc - the higher animals like apes, dogs, dolphins and so on. If you want to communicate with an alien species, try it with your dog!
 
Angels don’t have souls, they are spirits. Humans have souls that are also spirits. Lower animals and plants have souls that are not spirits.

I think souls are best though of that which makes matter living. With no matter to animate, there can’t be a soul
 
It might be interesting to note that in Jewish mysticism God created multiple worlds, with our world being the absolute lowest!
 
God created two types of intelligent creatures. These are angels and humans. They’re aren’t any others.
 
devoutchristian said:
God created two types of intelligent creatures. These are angels and humans. They’re aren’t any others.
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You are certainly entitled to this private opinion. However the dogmatic way you say this seems to imply that you think that this is Christian doctrine of some kind. If so please provide a source for your claim.
 
Robert_Sock said:
It might be interesting to note that in Jewish mysticism God created multiple worlds, with our world being the absolute lowest!
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I’m studying that, but I’ve never heard that anything resembling “space aliens” occupy the upper levels.

ICXC NIKA
 
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