Inspired by another recent thread on a narrower topic.
Is there a general consensus among Christians on the subject of intelligent races on other planets?
Do they feel that extraterrestrials are impossible because the Bible doesn’t mention them?
Do they feel that God created other intelligent races on other planets in the same way he created humans on Earth?
If extraterrestrials exist, do they have the same relationship with God that humans have?
Do other intelligent races have their equivalents of Adam and Eve?
Are there extraterrestrials who didn’t fall the way humans did? Are some extraterrestrials still living in their equivalent of Eden?
If extraterrestrials fell, did Jesus appear to them to save them? Was it the same Jesus as appeared on Earth or does each planet get its own separate savior?
Pope Saint John Paul II: When asked by a child if aliens exist, he replied simply that they are children of God just as humans are.
Vatican Observatory: Directors of the Vatican Observatory, such as Father José Funes, have noted that if aliens exist, they could be considered part of creation and even “brothers” in a broad sense.
You can stop right there. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of Christian denominations, and they’ve never had a consensus about anything. You have to ask for each of them separately.
I feel there is a consensus among Christians on issues like the following:
Is there a God?
Is God omniscient?
Did God create the universe?
Was Jesus a divine figure?
Does the Bible contain a message from God?
Is there an afterlife?
Are there sinful acts?
I think you’d find most people who call themselves Christians would agree on the answers to these questions.
Arthur C Clarke had an interesting take on extraterrestrials in his short story called The Star (link to PDF text). In it, a Jesuit astrophysicist who is a member of the crew of an interstellar mission determines that the Star of Bethlehem was a supernova that destroyed an advanced alien civilization. This shakes his belief in God.
There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh
God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?
When I was still in the church, the opinion of Christians was split, with many arguing there is no ET life because the Bible never mentioned it, some saying ET life might exist but is irrelevant because God only cares about us humans, but nobody really saying that ET life exists and is just as important as us.
As a Catholic who grew up going to Catholic school in the 80s, this sounds exactly like what the nuns who taught at my school and the local parish priest said.
When I was a Christian Teen in the 1980s, I asked about this to a few learned men who I thought would be knowledgeable about the topic. The responses I got were in one of three categories:
It’s possible, and if there are aliens, it doesn’t change anything. Christ died for the aliens, too.
It’s possible, but the implications are too deep to think about right now. Besides, we needn’t worry about it anyway because [mumble mumble God’s plan].
What a silly and absurd question. Ask something else.
In a nutshell: Christian can be racists. Extraterrestrialist prejudice is the supreme racism. Either they don’t exist, because they can’t exist. O they are worthless, Godott would never love them. Not enough to sacrifice his only child for them. Only child means there can only be one race worthy of Godott. We. To be precise: the white christian race.
They probably don’t exist. But if they exist, they are demons. I have linked to this before, but there are more such arguments.
Those aliens should nuke us from orbit while they still have the upper hand.
C. S. Lewis wasn’t in a position to speak authoritatively for any religion, but he’s still respected by a lot of Christians. In his Space Trilogy, Mars and Venus are also inhabited by “hnau”, his word for sapient, free-willed people (left unanswered is the question of whether angels count as hnau). The peoples of Mars (three separate species of them) had their own Fall, but it was a comparatively minor one. They’re mostly disgusted by fallen Earthlings, but are in awe that God became one of us.
In the book about Venus, meanwhile, the “Adam and Eve” of Venus are on the verge of their own Garden of Eden original-sin choice. They end up choosing correctly (by Christian standards, of course), but if they had Fallen, it would have been even worse than our Fall. But it’s also made clear that, even if they had Fallen, God would have done something accordingly greater to redeem them as well.
Also, the three species of Mars, which predated us, all look completely alien (different from both us and each other), but since the hnau of Venus came after Jesus, they convergently evolved to a form nigh-identical to humans, because that’s the form that Jesus came in.
I think I’ve read that aliens play a role in the theology of the Latter-Day Saints, but I’ll let others more familiar with that church speak to that.
Many years ago I worked in the same building with a guy who was Born Again. (You know what they say about people who are Born Again: They’re a bigger pain in the ass the second time around!)
Well anyway, he had this fervent belief that spaceships would someday arrive (piloted by who I don’t know) and all Born Again Christians would be transported up and whisked away to some kind of paradise where Jesus was waiting to give them their reward.
I never heard this particular story from anyone else, despite running into several B-A types over the years. He may have just been his own kind of nut and came up with it all by himself. I don’t know if this had anything to do with it, but he was HUGE “Star Wars” fan.
We already mentioned the multitude of Christian beliefs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a cult that calls themselves Christian with the belief that the second coming/end times/rapture, whatever, involves aliens and spaceships.
Here’s something I heard about from a Catholic priest, and doing a search I see it covered by writers from other Christian denominations.
There’s a line in the Gospel of John that’s been interpreted as a reference to aliens. In John 10:16, Jesus says “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”