Tin Foil hat question

  • Thread starter Thread starter theCardinalbird
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Also please keep in mind people that this is all speculation. So really, we all could create our own scenarios. While we know the universe is large, we don’t have definite proof that there is anything out there.

But feel free to put your speculations forward. It may become a fun book as @Alex337 said 🙂
 
on_the_hill said:
Argh! It’s aluminum foil.
Click to expand...
I thought it was tin foil that was used to create those weird hats 🙂

Wait never mind! Just found this on wiki:
Tin foil, also spelled tinfoil, is a thin foil made of tin. Actual tin foil was superseded after World War II by cheaper and more durable aluminium foil, which is still referred to as “tinfoil” in many regions.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Huh. I was born in the 80s and I’ve always known it as “tin foil”.
 
I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot, and I think I have this conclusion so far (subject to change, of course!)
  1. Imago Dei is not physical so the aliens need not look like us in any way.
  2. God is love and justice. He is rational (thinking) and living.
  3. Therefore, if an alien race is capable of understanding justice, experiencing love (wishing and working for the best of others), can reason and accept logic, and are alive, then yes. They are created, IMHO, in the image of God and especially if that race has a concept of the divine or spiritual being. Will it be someday that we will be missionaries to the stars? Taking His great love out into the UNIVERSE? I kind of like to think so.
My honest suspicion, though, is that we will find alien life throughout the whole universe, but none of it will be sentient.

Edit to add: Also, creativity. God is creator, we have creativity (ability to create and imagine things that do not exist) so I think this is part of it as well.
 
Last edited:
We know of two sentient species: humans and angels. Now, angels are apparently spirit beings. So let’s postulate a third species. These we can interact with only by rotation into a 4th spatial dimension. But in 143 years, some brilliant scientist discovers how to access that dimension.

Now we can communicate, possibly. God has created them. But they also had some test, and one third of them rebelled.

So, what would happen when we interact. Do we interact with the “good ones”, or the fallen ones? How would we know? Would the angels, being a different species, know how to interact? Or does being spiritual beings imply access to any arbitrary spatial dimensions?

Inquiring minds want to know.
 
StephieNorthCo said:
We know of two sentient species: humans and angels. Now, angels are apparently spirit beings. So let’s postulate a third species. These we can interact with only by rotation into a 4th spatial dimension. But in 143 years, some brilliant scientist discovers how to access that dimension.

Now we can communicate, possibly. God has created them. But they also had some test, and one third of them rebelled.

So, what would happen when we interact. Do we interact with the “good ones”, or the fallen ones? How would we know? Would the angels, being a different species, know how to interact? Or does being spiritual beings imply access to any arbitrary spatial dimensions?

Inquiring minds want to know.
Click to expand...
Interesting ideas Stephie 🙂
 
I enjoy the image of a priest nervously stepping foot onto an alien world, wondering to himself whether the beings he’ll meet will be terrifying or violent, considering how he could possibly begin to explain to them the concept of God and how he could make it make sense to them. He’s there to cater to the human colonists but he wonders to himself whether the word of God should (can?) be shown to these strange new beings too.

Only to find that they look at him with what could almost be termed as kind amusement, though it looks so different on inhuman beings, as they explain that they had their own visits from messengers and formed their own covenant with the creator of the universe.
 
Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead touches on this. The primary setting is a Catholic world settled by people of Portuguese descent. There’s a native intelligent species there that, at the end of the book and into the sequels, basically accept the Catholic faith.

Then they get a crazy prophet amongst themselves who distort the story and who Jesus was and all that.

It’s been awhile since I read the books.
 
Antepodeanism, the theory that there are other races of rational animals unrelated to Adam and Eve, is a condemned heresy (Giordano Bruno was condemned for this among other things, and St. Augustine* explicitly addresses this question in City of God).

Obviously, had God created other species of rational animals, they would be made in His image and likeness. Presumably though, they would have their own path of salvation separate from ours.

*“But whoever is anywhere born a man, that is, a rational, mortal animal, no matter what unusual appearance he presents in color, movement, sound, nor how peculiar he is in some power, part, or quality of his nature, no Christian can doubt that he springs from that one protoplast.” - Book XVI Chapter VIII
 
theCardinalbird said:
If aliens were real and sentient beings, including that they have a different anatomy, would they also be made in the image and likeness of God, and would the Church accept these aliens?
Click to expand...
It would be necessary to show a connection to Adam and Eve.
 
angel12 said:
40.png
Vico:
It would be necessary to show a connection to Adam and Eve.
Click to expand...
No, we’re talking about aliens here. By definition, not human.
Click to expand...
I mean to be consistent with what Pope Pius XII wrote that "For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. "

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x...nts/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html
 
The key words there being “on this earth.” So that wouldn’t apply to this discussion of intelligent life from elsewhere.
 
angel12 said:
The key words there being “on this earth.” So that wouldn’t apply to this discussion of intelligent life from elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Exactly, you asked: “would they also be made in the image and likeness of God” so the answer is that the Church would not include them.
 
Vico said:
Exactly, you asked: “would they also be made in the image and likeness of God” so the answer is that the Church would not include them.
Click to expand...
Well, no, I didn’t.

But until/unless they show up, there’s no way to know if the Church would include them. Again, His Holiness said “on this earth.”
 
Last edited:
Alex337 said:
I figure “in God’s image” is a bit more about being in His design rather than literally looking like Him.
Click to expand...
Pretty sure it refers to the human capacity to reason and to make free decisions. If aliens had these properties then they could be said to posses immortal souls.
 
angel12 said:
40.png
Vico:
Exactly, you asked: “would they also be made in the image and likeness of God” so the answer is that the Church would not include them.
Click to expand...
Well, no, I didn’t.

But until/unless they show up, there’s no way to know if the Church would include them. Again, His Holiness said “on this earth.”
Click to expand...
Sorry, I mean the OP asked that. One cannot assume that they would be included based upon what we believe and teach about mankind.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top