Would space aliens need redemption

[archistrage]

Exactly, it is OUR salvation. Because if they are capable of choosing God, then that means they have a soul, and in that case they would be no different from you, me, or the angels. And remember, we’re all in this together.

Archistrage

 

[LilyM]

No. When Adam and Eve bit the apple, it broke the entire created universe (including whatever planet the space aliens come from) - not just the Earth. The notion that each planet gets it’s own Adam and Eve comes from the Urantia Book; not from Christian thought.

True, but it doesn’t mean aliens have souls or, that if they did they would need redemption as a result - they would, presumably, require freewill to sin, and unlike Adam and Eve and we who are descended from them, they could presumably exert that freewill not to sin.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that aliens DO sin and DO need redemption. But that doesn’t mean their salvation has to occur in the same way as ours. We know this when we look at the angels, for Christ’s death redeemed none of them, their eternal fate has been worked out in an entirely different way. So, I imagine, would the fate of the souls of any morally-aware aliens.

Mind you, we’ve had another recent thread on this where I’ve said the same thing, so I apologise to anyone who may find me repetitive.

 

[archistrage]

Mind you, we’ve had another recent thread on this where I’ve said the same thing, so I apologise to anyone who may find me repetitive.

Hey, if they don’t get it the first time, keep pounding it into their skulls, until either they see it, or prove you wrong.

Archistrage

 

[Reuben_J]

Thought I would lighten the conversation a little.

Found this little article and it started me thinking.

Pardon me if this is the wrong forum to ask this question.

Now when I was a wee young 'un and listened to pastor Perry F. Rockwood and the People’s Gospel Hour I learned of course there was not such thing as space aliens.

Would space aliens need redemption?

Only if they are humans; that is, if they are men or women. That’s what the Bible says. Zibber the great does not count even though it was quite intelligent!

 

[bpbasilphx]

Since we don’t even know for sure if there are intelligent physical beings on other planets capable of moral and spiritual life analogous to ourselves, this is useless speculation.

It is fruitless to wonder about God’s plan for beings that may not even exist.

Some Christian writers, such as C. S. Lewis, have opined that our planet has been quarantined so we don’t infect other worlds.

 

[Guyonthestreet]

Some Christian writers, such as C. S. Lewis, have opined that our planet has been quarantined so we don’t infect other worlds.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

C.S. Lewis wrote his Space Trilogy with questions like this in mind.

Some articles on related subjects…

“The Catholic Church and the Little Green Man” by Justine Schmiesing
“Can E.T.'s be? Do they fit in with the O.T. and the N.T.?” by John R. Holmes
“How hobbits and company might really exist” by Michael Healy
etc.

He also dealt with it in his essay “Religion and Rocketry”.

Basically …

1. We don’t know if there are space aliens.
2. Assuming similar intelligence, then …

a. If they’re fallen, it will be a race to see who can mistreat, exploit and enslave the other first. And they’d need a redeemer.

b. If they’re not fallen, we would try to exploit their naivete. If they were weaker than us, we’d do to them what we’ve done to animals, and more primitive societies. If they were stronger than us, they’d soon wake up to our tendency to evil and with perfect unamity, they’d destroy us.

Like CS Lewis, I think the question can wait till we know there are any space aliens. If we do come in contact, the answer will be clear enough. If they need a redeemer, and are more powerful than us, we’re finished.

 

[AmateurPianist]

One thing that came to me.

When I read Revelation amongst other books it deals with heaven, hell, earth, and men.

There is no mention of life on other planets in either heaven or hell.

In Revelation 21;1 the old heaven and the old earth pass (presumably at the same time) and there is a new heaven and new earth where God dwells amongst his people (men).

I dunno if this is proof positive against intelligent and moral life on other planets, but some would think that it is I am sure.

 

[Reuben_J]

One thing that came to me.

When I read Revelation amongst other books it deals with heaven, hell, earth, and men.

There is no mention of life on other planets in either heaven or hell.

In Revelation 21;1 the old heaven and the old earth pass (presumably at the same time) and there is a new heaven and new earth where God dwells amongst his people (men).

I dunno if this is proof positive against intelligent and moral life on other planets, but some would think that it is I am sure.

Frankly I like to agree with you but with the knowledge that we have today about space and the possibility of extra-terrestrials, we cannot rule out the possibility that there is no life out there. The only question is whether they are humans or not, that is, they are at a level of less than human, no matter how intelligent they are. And if they are not human, what God’s rule does apply to them?

The omission of mentioning anything is not equal that there is nothing; it only does not speak about it. For it to be none, it has to be mentioned as such.

 

[AmateurPianist]

Frankly I like to agree with you but with the knowledge that we have today about space and the possibility of extra-terrestrials, we cannot rule out the possibility that there is no life out there. The only question is whether they are humans or not, that is, they are at a level of less than human, no matter how intelligent they are. And if they are not human, what God’s rule does apply to them?

The omission of mentioning anything is not equal that there is nothing; it only does not speak about it. For it to be none, it has to be mentioned as such.

The other side of this of course is
(1) God allowed His word to be rewritten by those who have imperfect Scientific understanding. And sometimes this imperfect Scientific understanding is to some extent reflected in His word. I have encountered Scriptures that suggest that maybe the authors believed in a flat earth. That is not to say that the Bible teaches that there is a flat earth. But there has been those in history who insist the Bible teaches a flat earth. Same with geocentrism, except there are some Christian geocentrists today. And some would say with literal 7 day 7000 years ago very young earth creationists.

(2) New scientific understandings have historically challenged traditional understandings of God’s word (see Galileo and at the risk of being called a heretic…Darwin).

So I don’t think that God’s word completely eliminates the possibility that God is doing something totally different and unique at other locations in this big vast universe.

 

[jmcrae]

b. If they’re not fallen, we would try to exploit their naivete.

Wow.

There is so much false assumption loaded into that one little phrase.

Sorry, I’m not meaning anything against the writer as a person, but this is just really jumping out at me right now.

First, naivete is a condition of our fallen world. Perfectly moral beings would not be naive - in fact, they’d probably have more than adequate street smarts.

Second, it assumes that anyone who has never sinned is lacking something essential to self-preservation. It’s almost like saying “If you want to stay alive in this world, you are required to commit sin.”

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Wow.

There is so much false assumption loaded into that one little phrase.

Sorry, I’m not meaning anything against the writer as a person, but this is just really jumping out at me right now.

First, naivete is a condition of our fallen world. Perfectly moral beings would not be naive - in fact, they’d probably have more than adequate street smarts.

Second, it assumes that anyone who has never sinned is lacking something essential to self-preservation. It’s almost like saying “If you want to stay alive in this world, you are required to commit sin.”

You’re getting mixed up between wisdom and morality. You’re also projecting the fact YOU know what evil is by personal experience compared with a hypothetical being who has never experienced evil simply because it hasn’t happened.

Adam and Evil were un-fallen, but they were naive. So much so that the devil tricked them.

And the same thing would apply to a perfectly innocent world where evil was completely unknown and not even thought of. They would be “naive”.

Until we arrived.

 

[jmcrae]

You’re getting mixed up between wisdom and morality.

A truly moral person would be wise, too.

Adam and Evil were un-fallen, but they were naive. So much so that the devil tricked them.

If so, then they would not have been guilty. But they were guilty, which means that they were perfectly well aware of what they were doing.

And the same thing would apply to a perfectly innocent world where evil was completely unknown and not even thought of. They would be “naive”.

Actually, the only way to remain good, is to understand fully how to avoid evil - which is what Adam and Eve would have learned, if they had resisted the temptations of the Devil. They would have been stronger, if they had remained without sin - not weaker.

I’m sensitive to the subject because I am trying to train some young girls (13-15 years old) that they will not “gain” anything by hanging around “gangsta” boys - but they think they will gain some kind of “street smarts” if they allow these boys to victimize them. I am trying to teach them that No, you will already be “street smart” if you avoid them.

From this whole thing, I am learning that naivete is not a kind of innocence, and in fact naivete and innocence may well be opposite things.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

A truly moral person would be wise, too.

If so, then they would not have been guilty. But they were guilty, which means that they were perfectly well aware of what they were doing.

Actually, the only way to remain good, is to understand fully how to avoid evil - which is what Adam and Eve would have learned, if they had resisted the temptations of the Devil. They would have been stronger, if they had remained without sin - not weaker.

I’m sensitive to the subject because I am trying to train some young girls (13-15 years old) that they will not “gain” anything by hanging around “gangsta” boys - but they think they will gain some kind of “street smarts” if they allow these boys to victimize them. I am trying to teach them that No, you will already be “street smart” if you avoid them.

From this whole thing, I am learning that naivete is not a kind of innocence, and in fact naivete and innocence may well be opposite things.

WIth all due respect to your very worthy work, the girls do not live in an un-fallen world. They’d have some idea of the things that can happen because they’re surrounded by it. But if they lived in some sort of Shangri-la, where “gangsta” boys were totally unheard of, and there were no pre-existing stories of woe about fallen girls, since there never had been any, then they would be “naive”. Then one day, a bus-load of “gangsta” boys arrive. What’s going to happen in this Shangri-la?

I wish you well with your work. I think you’ve got your job cut out for you though. You may succeed with some of them, but I’d be surprised if you succeed with the lot.

I’m afraid your situation reminds me of a question I asked a pastor who worked with a street mission over here some years ago. My question was “How many street kids are there because they haven’t got a choice, and how many are there because they want to be?” His reply was about fifty / fifty. In other words, no matter how much various state and religious authorities, parents etc. tried to get through the message of the pitfalls of living o the street, about half of them were there because they wanted to be there.

Some of them came from quite good families. And they weren’t naive either.

They just didn’t want the discipline of school, daily living at home, parental control, and they saw some sort of “glamour” in living on the street.

We’ve got several young Australians on death row in Indonesia for smuggling drugs. Yet they knew even before they left that the penalty for drug smuggling into Bali was death. And I don’t think they were all addicts themselves either. Nor were they naive.

All the best anyway.

 

[jmcrae]

WIth all due respect to your very worthy work, the girls do not live in an un-fallen world. They’d have some idea of the things that can happen because they’re surrounded by it. But if they lived in some sort of Shangri-la, where “gangsta” boys were totally unheard of, and there were no pre-existing stories of woe about fallen girls, since there never had been any, then they would be “naive”. Then one day, a bus-load of “gangsta” boys arrive. What’s going to happen in this Shangri-la?

You are assuming that they are moral because they know no differently, and yet, we all know what a child’s first word is. (It isn’t “Mama.”)

They are perfectly moral for the same reason that Elijah was, and John the Baptist was, and that Mary was - because they knew themselves extremely well, and learned self-control at an early age.

I think that any world that achieves “Shangri-la” would have the necessary tools to deal with a bus-load of “gangsta” boys, and it would be the boys who were in for a shock, rather than the natives.

I wish you well with your work. I think you’ve got your job cut out for you though. You may succeed with some of them, but I’d be surprised if you succeed with the lot.

Yes, I know.

They just didn’t want the discipline of school, daily living at home, parental control, and they saw some sort of “glamour” in living on the street.

Right. They have read some kind of romantic stories or heard some kind of romantic songs that glorify this lifestyle as being in some way noble and meaningful. (I am all in favor of banning “Beauty and the Beast” and every romance novel based on it, for that very reason, since too many girls read that or hear it and then think they can be the heroine of their own romance novel and “reform” a bad boy, while having all sorts of exciting and romantic adventures along the way - meanwhile, the good boys that they should be associating with are written off as “boring.”

 

[archistrage]

Since we don’t even know for sure if there are intelligent physical beings on other planets capable of moral and spiritual life analogous to ourselves, this is useless speculation.

It is fruitless to wonder about God’s plan for beings that may not even exist.

Some Christian writers, such as C. S. Lewis, have opined that our planet has been quarantined so we don’t infect other worlds.

But then, by that same logic, all the studies of science are completely trivial.

Physics- The atom theory is based on something we can’t even see.
Chemistry- Same as the atom, we can’t even see it.
Biology- Well, seeing as how most people I know can’t read the minds of animals, or talk to them, all study about them is pointless.
Astronomy- We’re observing phenomenon that happened many, many years ago, at distances of over a million, million miles.

All of that study is completely pointless, because we are ‘speculating’, about something we can’t directly interact with.

Speculation is only useless when person speculating is violating the laws of God. It does not hurt us to wonder about the Nature of the Universe. St. Thomas Aquinas did it. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. All of the greatest minds in the world sat down at many points in their lives and just wondered, “what if…” Are you saying that they spent their lives foolishly? That they wasted their entire lives in their pursuit of an ultimate Truth?

Sorry, considering that Thomas Aquinas has the whole ‘Saint’ thing in front of his name, I’m more willing to agree with him.

Archistrage

 

[Thoma25]

The Biblical authors were inspired by God to write not only what was within their own grasp, but also what was entirely outside their experience. Certainly, they could write on topics that they knew through natural means, and God granted them the ability to do so infallibly; but he, by the Holy Spirit, also inspired them to write what was beyond their scope, understanding, and experience by divine revelation. The Scriptures are both infallible as well as inspired, meaning that only what God desired to be written was recorded, the perfection of the end product not being dependent on its human writers; therefore, we can’t speak of the imperfection of the Sacred Scriptures, or imply that it is somehow deficient because of the frailty of mortal man, because God is the perfect author, compensating for the many defects of his human writers.

With that in mind, we can see by the Biblical narrative each aspect of creation was first mentioned in abstract (God created the heavens and the earth), then filled in with detail concerning the particular details of each; for instance, the products of both earth and heaven, in their specified chronological order. The entirety of the physical universe aside from earth is described by the blanket term “heavens,” since it includes not only the sun and moon (relatively local phenomena), but also the stars themselves. All of the living creatures of earth and heaven were mentioned in detail, according to their types and functions, but no creature was mentioned to exist in the firmament except for the birds (technically flying things, which includes bats that are technically mammals.) This would seem to exclude the possibility of extraterrestrials existing in the heavens, as either intelligent creatures of instinctual beings like animals.

If they do exist but weren’t mentioned because of their relative unimportance in the scheme of creation, then we can be certain of one thing: they definitely aren’t humans, because mankind was created through Adam with no other head. Believing that there are humans that aren’t descended from Adam is polygenism, which has already been condemned, and would render original sin and thus the need for redemption obsolete.

We can venture to speculate that they wouldn’t be rational creatures, because it is said in the Scriptures that mankind was created in the image and likeness of God, which is our ability to reason, think, and have free will. It is what separates us from animals. If extraterrestrial life also demonstrated the same capacity, then this would mean that mankind is not a unique creation, as the Scriptures suggest, but would also raise the question: how could the sin of Adam and Eve bring the entirety of physical creation into bondage, including other spiritual beings in the likeness of God in the remote regions of the universe, who did not share in their sin? Such a position is absurd at face value.

Such a complex topic certainly has many more points to be raised than just these, however.

Thoma

 

[Contarini]

Wow.

There is so much false assumption loaded into that one little phrase.

Sorry, I’m not meaning anything against the writer as a person, but this is just really jumping out at me right now.

First, naivete is a condition of our fallen world. Perfectly moral beings would not be naive - in fact, they’d probably have more than adequate street smarts.

Second, it assumes that anyone who has never sinned is lacking something essential to self-preservation. It’s almost like saying “If you want to stay alive in this world, you are required to commit sin.”

It depends. If they were unfallen like Adam and Eve, then I think they would be naive. Certainly St. Irenaeus thinks that Adam and Eve were naive (hey, that rhymes!) and that’s how Satan deceived them.

Of course, they might be unfallen beings who had successfully weathered temptation. Then they would no doubt be more than a match for us.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

From this whole thing, I am learning that naivete is not a kind of innocence, and in fact naivete and innocence may well be opposite things.

Aren’t you confusing innocence and virtue?

I would say that innocent people start out naive (everyone does, actually, even us fallen folks), but they won’t stay innocent long if they also stay naive. But one could also argue that by definition innocence does not last, but gives way either to virtue or guilt.

On the other hand, we don’t know what an unfallen race who resisted temptation would be like (well, according to Christian tradition that’s what the angels did, but our knowledge of angels is fairly limited). Maybe they would in some way still be “innocent” but not naive.

I think you do have a point that one can be very naive while being no longer innocent.

Edwin

 

[jmcrae]

It depends. If they were unfallen like Adam and Eve, then I think they would be naive. Certainly St. Irenaeus thinks that Adam and Eve were naive (hey, that rhymes!) and that’s how Satan deceived them.

Of course, they might be unfallen beings who had successfully weathered temptation. Then they would no doubt be more than a match for us.

Edwin

If the Fall had been due to the confusion that occurs because of naivety, Adam and Eve would not have been guilty of mortal sin. But since they had free will and full knowledge, they were found guilty.