Aliens go to hell?

[Hikarifuru]

I grant "Dr." Ham's opinions on the salvation of non-human creatures the same amount of respect I grant his opinions on tax laws.

O really?

 

[ViaCrucis]

Ken Ham says space travel may be pointless because aliens cant be redeemed. What do you think?

http://mobile.rawstory.com/all/2014...ram-because-aliens-are-going-to-hell-anyway#1

I think that Ken Ham's opinions are worthless.

Christianity doesn't have an position on the extraterrestrial intelligent life, as such anything said is entirely speculation and opinion. Until first contact with alien intelligence actually happens, it's little more than an exercise in philosophical and theological speculation (which isn't bad, as long as we know that's all it is). Once and if first contact is made with an alien intelligence, then more serious conversation can take place.

My general thought process goes something like this:

Christianity has a history of learning that the Gospel is more inclusive than previously assumed. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that it was a significant controversy over whether or not uncircumcised Gentiles were included in the Gospel proclamation and mission, the verdict was a great big yes. And so even though Jesus a Galilean Jew lived in a very small area in the backwaters of the Roman Empire, Jesus was understood to be for Jew and Gentile, and so the proclamation was sent out and it went out to every corner of the Roman Empire and beyond.

In the Middle Ages nobody seriously questioned that the earth was a round sphere, anyone with even a little bit of education knew this as it had been known since the time of the Greeks, not only was it well known that the world was round, but it's approximate size had long been fairly well established. But the question remained whether or not there were people living in the Antipodes, that is, hypothetical landmasses south of the equator. Many people believed it was impossible for other landmasses to have people, because it was thought that the equatorial region was simply too hot for human beings to traverse, and thus how would they get there?

But then Europe discovered there were two continents, the Americas, between the Western edge of Europe and the Eastern edge of Asia, that it wasn't just a vast global ocean between the two. And that people lived there. They also discovered people living in sub-Saharan Africa. And thus Christianity again realized there were more people, people separated by the previously thought untraversable ocean and equatorial region. And so the Gospel included them too.

So what happens when we finally realize there are people living on other rocky orbs in the vast sea of stars?

If Christ came for the "all who are far off" as it says in Acts 2, which included not only everyone from Jerusalem to London, but everyone from Shanghai to Alexandria to Tenochtitlan also. So why shouldn't the Gospel include people from other worlds, who are as alien to us as the idea of people living in the Antipodes was alien to those in the Middle Ages?

And what of the fact that they never heard the Gospel? My thought is what of it? What of the billions who here on Earth never heard the Gospel? Jesus is for them too, and God is good, kind, and just toward all His creatures.

If Christ is not just for human beings, but for all of creation--as Christianity does indeed teach--then this Jesus who though born in a particular place and at a particular time as a particular person is nevertheless universally for all. That He is for the aliens living in Ireland and Germany as my ancestors were, as well as for the alien living somewhere out there amongst the stars is simply a matter of perspective and scope. Of understanding that the Gospel is always inclusive, it's for everybody, for everyone, and includes the entire creation, from the biggest and most distant stars to the smallest elementary particles that make up the atoms of our own bodies.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Hikarifuru]

Viacrucis

As always, very interesting. Ty