So, number 2. I go up and ask them, if God is love, and our Jesus and your Jesus are love, how come so many babies die in floods and earthquakes and tsunamis.
The I run as they start to go critical, just like Nomad in “The Changeling” episode of ST:TOS.
Or, even more fun, we take a page from Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade, hijack the starship, with plenty of weapons, and go to other planets in the guise of missionaries and steal all their gold. Hell, it worked for the Spaniards.
I’m feeling a bit nitpicky, but why do the aliens always land in the US?
This scenario, where they land in the US and speak the words ‘Christ Jesus’ as part of their opening statement, is making me even more nitpicky!
But to answer your question, I’d be asking why they’ve come to spread the word if the word supposedly started here, and why didn’t they go to Jerusalem to walk the ground where it all started?
I’d call it a coincidence and move on. I’m sorry, but the OP has just as many contradictory errors as does the “holy book” and it’s only 7 paragraphs.
But I’ll bite. Welcoming them to Earth, as a (hopefully) decent human, would be the best course of action for the Ewok-xtians. It’s immediately assumed, however, that they observed us, started their own cult-like course of faith, and, through constant observance of those humans who are televised, run for office, etc., that wealth, respect, and self-aggrandizing may be a successful attitude to live happily on planet Earth, especially America, as long as you preach pie-in-the-sky dreams, and you do it loudly.
A space reality show like you suggest is even more possible IMHO. But it would entirely be believable that just by observation a profitable and political society could easily be achieved by starting a new religious sect, one from out of this world, literally.
I also think that the Return Of the Jedi questions would outnumber the religious ones.
What do the aliens taste like? Are they good with barbecue sauce or sweet and sour? How many servings per animal? What is the prep and cooking time for an Ewoktian anyway?
“You know how Humans, since the emergence of consciousness/self-awareness, have assumed we’re center of everything? And how, over the centuries, observation has shown, along many dimensions, that isn’t true at all. Well, what if it were true - all sentient space beings believe Earth is the divine center of the Universe?”
To me, the OP has nothing to do, really, with Christianity. It is about whether the Earth might still have some sort of “Central Primacy” in the Universe - rather than being one of a bazillion planets scattered among a gazillion stars and a quinzillion galaxies.
Look - in ANY scenario, if we found out that the Earth is, in fact, central in some form or fashion to the structure of the universe - yeah, it would be profoundly huge in our conception of ourselves.
As per the OP they’re in every capital city. CNN is only reporting from D.C. though, sorry. The highest ranked Ewoks got the right to land in Jerusalem…although they took rather a few more RPGs over there. Crazy humans!
A bit of a hijack, to be sure, but this is brilliant. Had me going there for a full minute before I realized what you were doing. Genius. [/hijack]
I feel it’s only fair that I give the OP another stab, without fighting the hypothetical.
I’d be pretty suspicious, fairly certain that the whole religious shtick had to be a put-on (or a grand hoax - Adrian Veidt to the Nth power), and further suspicious as to why choose Christianity. Presuming I had enough access to information about them without being filtered by CNN (the streets are so filled with people you’d think aliens had landed or something!), I’d be pretty obsessed with learning all I could about them.
I’d be hugely interested in what we could learn about where they came from and what their technology was like (which we’d have to glean from observation, since they aren’t being honest and forthcoming about that). I’d also be waiting for the other shoe to drop - at the very least, expecting that they would soon reveal that their religion was only similar to Christianity, but that they served the True Light of Truth, and if we wanted to do the same, we just needed to make a few little changes…
Eventually, presuming these Ewokian missionaries remained consistent and sincere, I’d want to know how they reconcile their beliefs with, well, everything else. I’d want to get as close to the source as possible on that kind of information, because you know most of the analysis and discussion that would be available would be absolutely drowning in shit from bias from all angles.
That’s going too far–many are atheists because they’ve sat and thought about it (although more than would like to admit just had an emotional reaction). But I do think it odd how many atheists seem to be unable to not fight the hypothetical.
I would genuinely want to find out how they received divine revelation. Many here assume radio waves or something like that, but that’s unlikely, as they don’t really survive the way some science fiction implies they do.
Of course you have to watch out for nefariousness, but that’s a reason to scrutinize any proposals they make, not a reason to freak out and kill yourself, assuming the worst. That’s being just as irrational as those people claim the religionists are. Wait until there’s actual evidence, not just your assumptions.
You’ve gotten new evidence, so you need to break down your entire belief structure and see if the evidence changes things. The weight you give to Christianity being true should increase with this new evidence. Maybe not enough to convince you, but it should change.
Other than that, I don’t know what I would do, because there’s paltry little information in the OP. There’s not really much else to do until the aliens start doing something.
As a Christian myself, I’m open to the idea that other sentient beings exist in the Universe and that perhaps God has revealed himself* to them in ways that may be familiar, or strange, to us.
But I’d be pretty perplexed if they knew of God in the person of Jesus Christ, first century man. I mean, did they have spies down here or something?
Is trying to take this hypothetical seriously what fundies go through when they are asked to try to take reality seriously? There might be basis for some empathy here.
Lol, well okay I suppose. What do they make of the people on THIS planet who’ve never heard of Christianity? (Perhaps that goes back to Boyo Jim’s point!)
If they could offer some proof regarding their claims of an after-life and/or the existence of a deity, I would be forced to re-examine my atheism. If not, same shit, different messenger.
