Suppose we find life elsewhere, does this contradict popular Biblically based beliefs?
Suppose we find intelligent life elsewherer, does this debunk Creationism?
The discovery of extraterrestrial life, or at any rate of extraterrestrial intelligent life, would certainly contradict some people’s Biblically-based popular beliefs. A Google search on “Bible” and “extraterrestrial life” turns up a number of creationist pages confidently asserting that E.T.'s are incompatible with the Bible. This is not the same as saying that the Bible itself clearly has anything to say about extraterrestrial life one way or the other, and you can find plenty of people claiming that this or that Bible passage is in fact clear proof of E.T.'s. Some of these people are non-Christians who assert that various things in “ancient mythologies”, including the Bible, are records of past visitations to Earth by space aliens; others are Christians who accept the Bible as a true account (however interpreted). Among Christians, there is also the variant claim that E.T.'s are really angels and/or demons, not mortal non-human intelligent life-forms.
Of course, extraterrestrial intelligence, if it were ever discovered, would pose some interesting questions for classical Christian theology. Did other forms of intelligent life require a savior or not? If so, how was that handled, and what would that imply for the whole Trinity thing?
7th day advantist believe (I think) there is life on other worlds, but we were the only planet that failed the temptation test. The other worlds don’t need a savior in other words.
Suppose we find life elsewhere, does this contradict popular Biblically based beliefs?
Nope. There’s nothing in the Bible that says that we’re the only life in the universe. If God is an artist and a creator, why would He stop with just one little planet of humans? Why not make lots of them?
Suppose we find intelligent life elsewherer, does this debunk Creationism?
No, why would it? Creationism says that God made everything in 6 days, but it certainly doesn’t tell us everything He made. The creation story would never end if it went into tiny details (He made chickens, then the turkey, and then the otter, etc). It says He made the heavens and the earth: doesn’t say anything about whether or not He put people elsewhere in the heavens, I imagine because the only people we needed to know about were the people here on our planet.
If there is other life out there (I think there certainly could be), does it really matter whether we know or not? I mean, let’s say we find out somehow that yes, there are other humans out there in other galaxies. What are we gonna do about it? Nothing we CAN do!
Surely the biblical genesis accounts specified everything YHWH made in these 6 days? Certainly planetary systems outside Sol are not mentioned.
Surely the biblical genesis accounts specified everything YHWH made in these 6 days? Certainly planetary systems outside Sol are not mentioned.
I wasn’t aware that “planetary systems outside Sol” didn’t meet the criteria for being part of the heavens.
Is the Bible that ambiguous?
This likens it to the Oracle in the Matrix, not telling you anything specifically true or false, but simply what you need to hear.
It would be quite centered of whomever wrote Genesis to think that God created him, but that aliens magically appeared on Mars without God knowing about it.
centered?
yes, an inflection of self-centered, selfish, and egoistic.
Well, “whoever wrote Genesis” clearly did think that God had created him, but there’s no reason to suppose that he was aware that Mars was a planet, or that he contemplated the existence of intellligent life on it. It seems unwarranted to assume that he might have believed “aliens magically appeared on Mars without God knowing anything about it”.
He clearly beleived that God created the heavens and if the thought of Mars at all, he would have thought of it as part of the heavens. So, if the possibility (or actuality) of life on Mars (or on any other heavenly body) had been presented to him, it seems reasonable to suppose that he would have believed it to be the creation of God.
The bible is not ambiguous here. Sketchy, possibly, but not really ambiguous. Jews, as well as Christians of all denominations, have no difficulty in understanding it to mean that God created everything, and that most of what is created is not explicitly mentioned. Why should it be?
Creationism doesn’t make any falsifiable predictions, but it would probably find a way to assert that the existence of aliens is what the Bible said all along.
UBS what I was getting at is the point that the Bible is believed to be inspired writing. Inspired by God.
In a sense, you could say that those who believe in the Bible believe that God wrote it himself, in the sense that he inspired those who wrote it to write what he had to say.
From this point of view, the Bible is indeed ambiguous, only meant to tell us what we need to hear, and not an actual account of what happened.
Well, yes, but you can beleive the Bible to be the inspired word of God without believing it to be a complete statement of every possible true fact, or even of every important fact.
The extent to which the bible offers us “an actual account of what happened” is, of course, a matter of debate among Christians. But nobody believes that it is an actual account of everything that happened. Some editorial selection has been made of what to include in the text, whether divinely or otherwise. And, if particular facts are included, it is not simply because they are true but because they have some importance to the message which the Bible is trying to convey.
So, yes, the Bible is meant to tell us only what we need to hear, not everything that is factually true. But exactly the same could be said of any other text.
That does not mean that the bible is “ambiguous” (except perhaps in the sense that acceptance of the bible is consistent with more than one view on a variety of factual matters - e.g. it is possible to accept the bible and believe that no extraterrestrial life exists, and it is also possible to accept the bible and believe that extraterrestrial life may or does exist. To say tha the Bible is ambiguous on the question of extraterrestrial life is a bit like saying that a textbook on Darwinian evolution is ambiguous on the question; neither really addresses the question at all. It’s not the usual (or, I think, a useful) sense of the word “ambiguous”.
I’ve always found John 10:14-16 quite tantalising:
Probably just talking about the Gentiles though.
C.S. Lewis’ “Planets” trilogy explores this idea, the three novels are set on Mars, Venus and Earth respectively, but Mars and Venus are planets unsullied by sin (until the arrival of the protagonist). It is an interesting idea…
Personally, I used to wonder about this - if there was sin on other planets, would Jesus need to do a “cosmic roadshow”, being incarnated in each solar system, or would the earthly crucifixion suffice?
Grim
I’m sure that God, being omnipotent, could engineer things in such a way that the events of the incarnation, crucifixion, atonement, resurrection, ascension etc happened only once, universally and for all, but that all of his sentient lifeforms experienced them locally at different times and saw the events as being exclusively for their planet.
From alterego:
"UBS what I was getting at is the point that the Bible is believed to be inspired writing. Inspired by God.
In a sense, you could say that those who believe in the Bible believe that God wrote it himself, in the sense that he inspired those who wrote it to write what he had to say.
From this point of view, the Bible is indeed ambiguous, only meant to tell us what we need to hear, and not an actual account of what happened."
I LOVE this familiar copout every time the Bible is wrong. Can you picture Dr. Watson on the day that the DNA molecule is shown to actually be a cube saying, “Well, we didn’t mean that DNA was LITERALLY a double helix!”
I don’t see the correlation kflanaga.
I belive it would also. That’s why I’m asking before it happens =) Tryin’ to catch them off guard.
I am a Creationist myself, i just ascribe to my own POV (i’m not sure what it is, either)
Well if you read the bible with the conviction that aliens influenced everything thats happenned, you’d see a lot of potential.
Star of Bethlehem? UFO.
Virgin birth? Artificial insemination (after abduction where Mary passes out prior to being told she’s pregnant)
Ark of Covenant? Radio transmitter.
Or read Ezekiel’s chapter and notice how he seems to describe a UFO coming from the sky.
On a similar note, the “pillar of fire by night, cloud by day” which followed Moses as he lead the people from Egypt also could have been a UFO.
I dont know, it seems to me that alien intervention (if believed aliens exist) do certainly have some validity when applied to events in the bible. And not just the bible either, some early cultures have made crude drawings/references to lifeforms that have not existed on Earth. A good reference is Erich Von Daniken’s “Chariot of the Gods” for those that are curious about so-called alien influence in early history.