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thistle
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No and no!
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Polak
Guest
thistle - never asked any questions - never had any doubts.
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Chistian-ity
Guest
There’s so many articles about it on the internet, they are probably much more helpful than anything here.
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Gorgias
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Kinda gives a renewed perspective on the value of human life in the “image and likeness of God”, doesn’t it?
From a historical perspective, your question proceeds from an interesting dynamic. Before science knew about the cosmos in the way it does now, people naturally assumed that human life had intrinsic value; in a certain way, we really were the “center of God’s universe”. Then, when science made its discoveries, it shook some peoples’ faith, causing them to ask – as you are asking – “if I’m so small on the scale of the universe, can there really be a God who imbues my life with value and importance?”
It doesn’t matter how big or small the universe is: God created you, with the purpose of attaining to eternal life with Him in heaven. Compared to that, the number of galaxies in the universe is small potatoes…
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tafan2
Guest
C.C.Lewis had a name for such beings in his space trilogy, which I do not rrcall. It was a Martain word, which makes sense because there were three such species on Mars.
But Lewis certainly did not toy with any such theological idea of changing the nature of Christ. If you want to do that type of speculation, have at it. There are limits to such things in my mind.
But Lewis certainly did not toy with any such theological idea of changing the nature of Christ. If you want to do that type of speculation, have at it. There are limits to such things in my mind.
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thistle
Guest
Never asked what’s it’s like to be God!
Never asked where God came from!
Since becoming Catholic in 1992 I have NEVER had any doubts about God and the Catholic Church (the Church established by God).
Never had any doubts about any Church teachings.
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Gorgias
Guest
Hang on a second, though: that presumes that the ‘little green men’ were created in the image and likeness of God, doesn’t it?
And if that’s the case, then you’re going to need to account for their need for a Savior. Did they have an “original sin”, too? Did Christ come to their planet and sacrifice his ‘little green’ life for their sins? We’re not just talking about ‘human nature’ here – we’re talking about actual, physical existence! So, wouldn’t we think of Christ as a homo sapiens being a different divine+human person than Christ as a little green man?
No… I don’t think you can merely abstract out “rational, ensouled, incarnate” as such and think that you’ve taken care of the theological problem!
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Jen7
Guest
God’s creation shows his own order, beauty, and power. I think he created the vastness of the universe because… he could. Like one might paint a beautiful mural if they were a great artist - only the universe isn’t just a painting. Whether there is other life - what stops me from thinking in this direction for long is that I’ve read the Church teaches this: if there is other life, it fell in our Fall and was redeemed when Jesus died on the cross 2,000 years ago in Asia. It’s more plausible to me that there’s no other life (or at least intelligent life) elsewhere than that Jesus picked our planet to visit over someone else’s.
Well, that is just how we see it. Almighty God can do anything He wants to, for any reason He wants to, even if that “reason” is simply that He wanted to do it.
I’m not seeking to “change” the nature of Christ. It is possible that his “human” nature has aspects of which we are not aware. Do we not grow in our understanding of the deposit of faith, and what it entails? If little green men from the planet Zxcvbnm land on the football field at the next Super Bowl, it’s going to raise some theological questions.
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tafan2
Guest
It certainly would raise some questions. The two nature’s of Christ is not one of them. He is fully man, Son of Man. We are not the little green men. Therefore Christ is not.
But, from a theological standpoint, are those little green men “human”? That’s all I was saying. I can’t answer that question.
A better way to cast it might be "does ‘being human’ absolutely require that a rational, ensouled, intelligent physical entity be descended from Adam and Eve? And is that creature not part of God’s creation?
Are there, then, “humans” on other planets — forget about what they look like, what their bodies are made of, what they breathe (assuming they do “breathe”) — and if so, might Christ share their nature?
These theological questions are way, way “out there” (no pun intended).
Don’t forget that when the European explorers first encountered the aboriginal Americans, they had the same questions — “are they human?” — “do they have souls?” — “can they be baptized?”. Horribly insulting based upon what we know now, but at the time, it was tantamount to landing on another planet and finding rational beings there.
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tafan2
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Yes, from a theological standpoint those are the two things exactly required to define man. That is clearly the Churches reaching.
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IWantGod
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Well given that God, in the first place, created the principle of a natural process that unravels it’s potentiality through the activity of it’s forms, it would make better sense, to me at least, if life was an actualised potential of a natural process since it fits the creative narrative in more coherent manner than divine intervention.
Of course, it could have happened another way and the moon could have been made of cheese if that were God’s will…
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tommy37
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Great picture! Great point!
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Sundiver
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The more we know about the grandeur and complexity of the universe the easier it is to believe in God.
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Dan_Defender
Guest
Yet if there were only earth in a vast empty universe, the atheists would be telling me: ‘your God’s power is so small’. The vastness of the universe and the abundance of planets, stars, etc. point to the power and infinity of God.
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tafan2
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The problem with abiogenesis , is we have little or no evidence that it ever occurred. All we have are several competing theories of how it might have occurred. ( Side bar: this is vastly different than evolution of existing life, of which we have ample evidence. ) So it only seems to fit the creative narrative if one is assuming the materialists are correct about everything. It actually doesn’t seem to fit at all. How did the first animated cells, which are quite complex physically, come into being and actually begin to live (ensouled one could say)? And why is it not happening all the time? Why is that the one phase of the history of life that never repeats? It fits no purely natural narrative at all.
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adamhovey1988
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I don’t know which Bible you’re reading, I’ve read it cover-to-cover twice, and that’s an oversimplification. God isn’t up there, God is active in our universe, we are not deists, and the God of the Bible is not a deist God, he’s The Great I Am, the creator of the universe, he’s just as active now as he was when he created the universe, he’s active in the hearts of Believers, he’s active in the hearts of unbelievers to bring them to repentance to believe. You don’t have to believe that, but it’s the truth.
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IWantGod
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That’s fine. I’m just saying it makes more sense to me if abiogenesis was the way that God intended life to begin since it is consistent with way that God has allowed the rest of physical reality to proceed.
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IWantGod
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I am puzzled by this statement? What is abiogenesis got to do with materialism? And if they were right about abiogenesis, then so what?
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