Aliens existing in space

[Snowy]

 

[Dayton]

Aliens do not exist, God did not create beings on other planets.

 

[Karl - Liberal Backslider]

Aliens do not exist, God did not create beings on other planets.

That would be Hezekiah 35 v. 9 I take it?

 

[chud247]

lol

 

[JesseB.]

How do we know God did not create aliens? Why should we humans be the only beings in the galaxies? The universe is so huge. THERE MUST be extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe.

 

[wonderflex]

I'm not too sure that we can use the phrase, "THERE MUST be" when talking about Alien life. Simply saying that the Universe is so big that it certainly has to contain other life is much similar to saying that there are various truths that simply must not be true. It's like saying, "Surely the Lord MUST sin." But we know this to be quite untrue. It isn't saying that there may not be any other life, but it is good to keep in mind that other life may not exist for a good reason. We don't always understand why the Lord does certiain things, but we must trust that it is for our own good. It's like when the Lord takes a close family member from us - it hurts, and we may never know the reason why; but it is for the betterment of those who love the Lord. In the same way it may sound odd to have a whole universe that is filled with only us, but that may be for a very good reason; even if we don't understand it.

 

[Talcos Stormweaver]

On the other hand, I quote from John 16:12:
"I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."

The bible explains that there are many things we do not understand and know, and therefore there is room for debate on if there are aliens or other seemingly strange abnormalities in the universe. God's infinite knowledge leaves the bible scarcely enough room to fit it all, and most of that information which God does know... we are not ready to understand it. There are many things we can not comprehend, for we are not exactly capable of understanding somethings completely, like the universe itself. We know it is there, but we have a problem understanding the sheer vastness of it. God, however, being all powerful, has the ability to comprehend his own creations. What we find impossible would be like child's play to him.

In short, what I mean is that it is equally possible that there are aliens, on a biblical stance, because just because the bible does not list something does not make it so. Of course, there are equal arguments for both, although some of the debate itself stems from being close minded to the possiblity for some people.

Sorry if I interrupted your debate, I just felt my opinion could help.

 

[JesseB.]

It Did!

 

[Serapha]

Some pertinent statistics: (from Cousineau, UFOs, 179)

47% of American believe UFOs are real.

46% believe intelligent life exists in outer space.

27% believe that UFOs have actually touched down and visited Earth.

14% of Americans have seen a UFO.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Genesis 1:1 (KJV)
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.


14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.


Any other planet was created to give "light" to the earth... not to support extra-terrestrial life in their own solar system.

~malaka~

 

[wonderflex]

Those are fun statistics, but what is the purpose here? Belief in something doesn't make it true (or untrue for that matter). Even if 100% of the world belived that Aliens existed, or 100% said they saw a U.F.O; until there is physical, inhand, proof for the masses, then it means nothing.

Ever watch "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" One of their options is, 'ask the audience.' With this option the audiences is asked to vote on which of the answers is true. Usually they are right, but there is several cases where they are wrong. One person to easily plays off onto what the other persons response is. Example: if the person playing the game says, "I'm pretty sure it's answer D, but I'll ask the audience," then if the audience member doesn't know the real answer, they will assume that it must be D.

Too often we are like this in many areas. If one person says they saw a U.F.O., then a whole slew of others will too. Then, even if they haven't seen one, they will assume that there must be life out in space, simply because, "there has to be more than us."

Some things simply aren't true though, no matter how logical they seem by our understanding. Take for example The Bee Recipe. The early Romans had a formula that would allow them to create bee's for their own use. Just as spring hit they would slaughter a cow and rip it's stomach open. Inside of it they would pack mud and sticks to mix with the blood and fat. Then they would place the body in a small, outside, shed, where it could be warmed by the sun. Give it a little under a week, and, "vwaa-laa," we have bees. Woo-hoo.

Do bee's come from dead cows though? No. But by all rationality, and the knowledge of science they had then; it was a, "proven fact," that dead cows prepared in this manner spawned bees.

We have to realize that rationality and common sense is the oposite of God sense. To our understanding it stupid to think of us being so special that the Lord made just us, and then left the rest of the universe barren.

I'm not saying that there is no possible way to have life on another planet, or that the Lord didn't create them. I just think that before people simply assume that there must be; they should first think about the realization that maybe the Lord made only us for a divine reason. We may be the only ones so that we can see just even more how much God loves us. Imagine if this whole universe, this whole physical universe, was created just for the enjoyment of us - the ones He created to love Him.

I personal stance is to belive that there is no other life until proven otherwise. I love to think of God loving me so much, and caring about me so much, that He didn't created any other planet out there with life - just mine. That just shows me such a more awesome love; one greater than I ever imagined, or will ever imagine until I'm in Heaven.

Now if out of no place a space ship is captured by a government power, aliens are taken from it, and they openly admit it, and allow the public to know completely about it - so we can all verify it's truth. Then, hey, I don't have much reason not to except it. Unless it is a demonic illusion, such as Ghosts. I figure the Lord's Spirit will show me what to belive when, and if, that time comes.

 

[lucaspa]

until there is physical, inhand, proof for the masses, then it means nothing.

You do realize that you have just said that Christianity means nothing, don't you? After all, there is no "physical, inhand, proof for the masses" for the existence of God or that Jesus was the Son of God.

Too often we are like this in many areas. If one person says they saw a U.F.O., then a whole slew of others will too. Then, even if they haven't seen one, they will assume that there must be life out in space, simply because, "there has to be more than us."

Subsitute "God" for UFO, and haven't you got one of the major arguments for theism?

We have to realize that rationality and common sense is the oposite of God sense.

Say what? Where ever did you get this? You mean that we were created "in His image" and that rationality and common sense are not part of God? You just denied some basic characteristics of God here, all in order to win a petty disagreement about the possible existence of non-human intelligent life on other planets.

To our understanding it stupid to think of us being so special that the Lord made just us, and then left the rest of the universe barren.

As the characters in Contact said: "It's an awful waste of space."

I personal stance is to belive that there is no other life until proven otherwise.

Then your personal stance should also be: "I believe there is no deity until proven otherwise." Consistency.

I love to think of God loving me so much, and caring about me so much, that He didn't created any other planet out there with life - just mine. That just shows me such a more awesome love; one greater than I ever imagined, or will ever imagine until I'm in Heaven.

Ah, the old selfishness and pride argument. Isn't pride a deadly sin?

You know, there is another choice than 1) believe there is alien life or 2) believe there is not alien life. You CAN suspend judgement until you receive more data.

I find it amusing that you use all the atheist arguments against the existence of God as VALID when you use them against alien life. However, I am guessing since you are a Christian that you say all the SAME arguments are invalid when applied against theism.

Not very consistent, is it?

 

[wonderflex]

Say what? Where ever did you get this? You mean that we were created "in His image" and that rationality and common sense are not part of God? You just denied some basic characteristics of God here, all in order to win a petty disagreement about the possible existence of non-human intelligent life on other planets.

Common sense isn't of God - never is it. Common sense is using the flesh to try and rationalize something, verses going to the Father for everything we do. Jesus didn't do anything unless the Father told Him to. He never worked off common sense, He worked off God sense. yes, God has rationality, but He is to dispense it to us. Kinda like Salvation...He has it, but He gives it to us, not us. Also in a way it's like saying, "Are you saying that we are Created in God's image, yet God doesn't sin?" We sin...God doesn't. There are some things God has that we don't, and some things we have He doesn't. That's just how it works.

And if you belive the Bible to be 100% true, then we have all the hands on, tangable, proof to belive that God is real. We can also go along with miracles, and so forth too. Plenty of good things.

 

[lucaspa]

Common sense isn't of God - never is it. Common sense is using the flesh to try and rationalize something, verses going to the Father for everything we do.

You kind of ignored all my comments about using the common arguments of atheists against theists as valid here. I'd appreciate it if you would address those.

If God has neither common sense nor is rational, then we can't depend on God to be rational about how He chooses salvation. We can't trust God to use common sense about giving Peter a second chance, which is what Jesus did after Peter betrayed him 3 times. Remember when
God rescinded the dietary laws in Acts to make it easier for Gentiles to accept the gospel? Are you telling me that isn't common sense?

Jesus didn't do anything unless the Father told Him to.

Jesus said his power came from God, but to take that to this blanket statement is absurd. You are saying that Jesus never even went to the bathroom unless God told him to.

And if you belive the Bible to be 100% true, then we have all the hands on, tangable, proof to belive that God is real. We can also go along with miracles, and so forth too. Plenty of good things.

Ah, but did you see "if you BELIEVE"? Yet what is the Bible? It is the report of people experiencing God. But that is the SAME THING we have with alien contact: people experiencing alien contact! So, we are to trust them when they say they experience God but distrust those same people when they say they have had contact with an alien or seen a UFO? Again, you are using atheist arguments here: you are disallowing evidence based solely on what the evidence is about.

YOU don't believe in UFO's or aliens, therefore they can't exist. Well, guess what, atheists don't believe in God, therefore God can't exist! SAME REASONING. Just changing the words.

If the reasoning is invalid for atheists, it's invalid for you here.

Besides, you specified "physical, inhand, proof for the masses, then it means nothing."

Well, the Bible doesn't qualify because it isn't physical or in hand. It's simply the accounts by people written down of what they experienced. So if a person writes down his/her encounter with a UFO, then it is in the same class of evidence as the Bible.

What you want for UFO's is some tangible object from the aliens that we can all see, touch, listen to, whatever -- a body, spaceship, artifact. What artifact of God do you have that meets this criteria? Got the whole Ark? Hmm, can't have Jesus' body, can you? In fact, since God and Jesus are spiritual, you CAN'T have any "physical, inhand, proof for the masses".

Congratulations! You have just "disproved" Christianity!

 

[tjnesbitt]

Revelation 12:12 teaches that there are other planets populated with created beings!

 

[shernren]

There may be aliens or there may not be. But if there really were aliens, and if they possessed the incredible technology certainly required to cross the light-years to reach us physically, they wouldn't have a problem destroying the earth in a wink or disarming all nuclear weapons on the planet or immunizing everybody to AIDS all at once. They wouldn't need to leave any memories of being abducted in abductees and they sure wouldn't be sick enough to play sex experiments on us (or they'd have self-annihilated long ago in a blaze of glorious civil war).

If aliens exist they definitely aren't the aliens of popular imagination.

 

[relspace]

There may be aliens or there may not be. But if there really were aliens, and if they possessed the incredible technology certainly required to cross the light-years to reach us physically, they wouldn't have a problem destroying the earth in a wink or disarming all nuclear weapons on the planet or immunizing everybody to AIDS all at once. They wouldn't need to leave any memories of being abducted in abductees and they sure wouldn't be sick enough to play sex experiments on us (or they'd have self-annihilated long ago in a blaze of glorious civil war).

If aliens exist they definitely aren't the aliens of popular imagination.

I don't think such technology is possible. The Minkowsky structure of space-time isolates from each other, whatever residents the universe may have, pretty effectively. With the human race being our only example of "intellegent civilization", it may be foolish to associate technology with wisdom, but I would tend to think that, if aliens did cross space to visit, they would be smart enough not to intervene in any way. Who in their right mind would want to get involved or take responsibility in our affairs.

Tales and rumors of aliens bear a striking resemblance to those of ghosts and angels in their ability to elude substantial evidence or verification. This leads me to suspect that they have the same charactersic of subjective experience, and are thus of a spiritual or psychological nature rather than physical. This does not mean that UFO's are not real or even that they are not really aliens. For perhaps the only viable means of crossing the vastness of space to visit us, may be to do so, only in spirit. Anyone see the movie, KPAX?

As a final comment, I would like to suggest that it would simply not be wise to put any faith in beliefs regarding things we cannot ultimately know for sure. For God and/or the devil like to show us up for the fools we are, when we do this.

 

[DeepMindQuest]

"I became entirely given over to extreme dread. The fear was so powerful that it seemed to make my personality completely evaporate... 'Whitley' ceased to exist. What was left was a body and a state of raw fear so great that it swept about me like a thick, suffocating curtain, turning paralysis into a condition that seemed close to death...I died and a wild animal appeared in my place."
-Whitley Strieber, Communion, p. 25-26


"Increasingly I felt as if I were entering a struggle that might even be more than life and death. It might be a struggle for my soul, my essence, or whatever part of me might have reference to the eternal. There are worse things than death, I suspected... so far the word demon had never been spoken among the scientists and doctors who were working with me...Alone at night I worried about the legendary cunning of demons ...At the very least I was going stark, raving mad."
-Whitley Strieber, Transformation, p. 44-45


"I wondered if I might not be in the grip of demons, if they were not making me suffer for their own purposes, or simply for their enjoyment."
-Whitley Strieber, Transformation, p. 172


"I felt an absolutely indescribable sense of menace. It was hell on earth to be there [in the presence of the entities], and yet I couldn't move, couldn't cry out, couldn't get away. I'd lay as still as death, suffering inner agonies. Whatever was there seemed so monstrously ugly, so filthy and dark and sinister. Of course they were demons. They had to be. And they were here and I couldn't get away."
-Whitley Strieber, Transformation, p. 181


"Why were my visitors so secretive, hiding themselves behind my consciousness. I could only conclude that they were using me and did not want me to know why...What if they were dangerous? Then I was terribly dangerous because I was playing a role in acclimatizing people to them."
-Whitley Strieber, Transformation, p. 96


"One of the purposes for which UFOs travel to Earth is to abduct humans to help aliens produce other beings. It is not a program of reproduction but one of production. They are not here to help us, they have their own agenda and we are not allowed to know it's full parameters" -Dr. David Jacobs, Secret Life, p. 305

"Everything I learned in 20 years of research into the UFO abduction phenomenon leads me to conclude that the aliens central purpose is not to teach us about taking better care of the environment:instead, all the evidence points to their being here to carry out a complex breeding experiment in which they seem to be working to create a hybrid species, a mixture of human and alien characteristics. A careful reading of the various witnessess' account suggest that here , as in many earlier cases, reproductive issues appear far more frequently than alien ecological concerns. Budd Hopkins, Witnessed, p.378


"I think we are looking at a catastrophic situation. I think we are looking at a disaster. We are seeing a unified program here with these beings, a program of physiological exploitation by one species of another. I know this sounds absolutely insane...we are looking at a colonization program in some way" - Dr. David Jacobs, NBC Confirmation Broadcast, Feb. 17/99.


"..If for the sake of argument we grant that life on Earth was seeded by ancient extraterrestrials, then the obvious question is , Who or what created our extraterrestrials creators? Some would argue that they were, in turn sprinkled (created) by an even more ancient race of ET's. Well, where did they come from? An infinite regression back in time of "alien sprinklings" will not do, because the universe is finite.." Missler & Eastman, Alien Encounters, p.141.


"We believe that the cultural preparations (or deliberate conditioning) of the world to view our alien visitors as powerful and highly evolved saviours makes the UFO phenomena the perfect motif for the Antichrist to exploit when he ascends to power.His ability to perform supernatural signs and wonders, his comprehensive plan for the peaceful unification of mankind and his connection to or origin from god-like alien entities will engender the masses to follow him into the biggest deception in history." -Missler & Eastman, Alien Encounters, pp. 295-296
"These entities are clever enough to make Strieber think they care about him. Yet his torment by them never ceases. Whatever his relationship to the entities, and he increasingly concludes that their involvement with him is something 'good,' he also remains terrified of them and uncertain as to what they are."
-John Ankerberg, The Facts on UFOs and Other Supernatural Phenomena, p. 21

 

[Snowy]

wow old thread...my original post doesn't even show up lol

 

[shernren]

Threadomancy is fun, innit?

 

[BlackAndy]

Kinda reminds me of a joke....

Aliens have the technological capabilities to travel light years...
only to break down and crash when they get here.