Hello everyone,
So the Mars Curiosity Rover successfully landed on the Red Planet. Some of its objectives are to find evidence for past or present life on Mars and/or evidence of past, life-friendly conditions on the planet.
The point of this thread is not to say your religion is false IF life is found; rather, I am interested if life on other planets would be a problem for your religion. Would God (Judeo-Christian god) also be credited with making this life even if it not mentioned in the bible?
Feel free to discuss any questions which may arise from this topic.
Personally, I would love it if they were able to find life on another world
For most people, I suspect that their perspective of alien life discovered would not mean they'd drop their thoughts/views of Theism. Many are similar to Carl Sagen in his views....if ever reading the book
"Contact" or
seeing the film later that starred Jodie Foster. Carl Sagan, noted astronomer and skeptic, makes his opinion on organized religion clear since he is very hostile to it................but with the film/book, he seemed to favour a sort of scientific respect for the universe in the extension of Einstein and others (who believes in God but sees him as distant). Albert Einstein (1879-1955) recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe/saw clearly that there was a design--with nothing simply happening. That didn't mean he believed in Jesus, of course, as many may assume. For context, in developing the theory of relativity, Einstein realized that the equations led to the conclusion that the universe had a beginning. He didn't like the idea of a beginning, because he thought one would have to conclude that the universe was created by God. So, he added a cosmological constant to the equation to attempt to get rid of the beginning. He said this was one of the worst mistakes of his life. Of course, the results of Edwin Hubble confirmed that the universe was expanding and had a beginning at some point in the past. So, Einstein became a deist - a believer in an impersonal creator God.
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
---Prinz Hubertus zu Lowenstein, Towards the Further Shore: An Autobiography (Victor Gollancz, London, 1968), p. 156.
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."
---G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930), quoted by D. Brian, Einstein: A Life , p. 186
Going back to what was said in the film known as "Contact",there much of the film focused on describing the relationship that the main character, Elle the scientist, had with Palmer the Theologian....as by the end of the film, she ended up in the exact same position she would have fought against earlier when it came to accepting things on faith that it seemed she simply couldn't explain logically to other skeptics who demanded "proof" of her transcendental experiences in the universe.
There were many positive things within the book/film "Contact" that many believers have favored for some time since it actually seemed to be very much in support of Theism---for whereas the movie kept the theme of the "message" from Vega being in a certain numerical pattern (as mathematics is the universal language), the Book didn't do as the film did by making it seem as if it was all orchestrated by extra-terrestial beings alone. In the book, Ellie went alongside five passengers through a series of wormholes to a place near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, where they met the senders in the guise of persons significant in the lives of the travelers, whether living or dead....and some of the travelers' questions were answered by the senders, with the senders ultimately hinting at proof of a Universal Creator contained inside one of the transcendental numbers.
Ellie being a lifelong religious skeptic switched in the book (as she did in the film), finding herself asking the world to take a leap of faith and believe what she and the others say happened to them...and having Palmer Joss be the one to support her as in the film. Sadly, it was ommitted from the film where Ellie, acting upon a suggestion by the senders of the message, worked on a program which computes the digits of π to record lengths and in different bases. Very, very far from the decimal point (1020) and in base 11, it found that a special pattern does exist when the numbers stop varying randomly and start producing 1s and 0s in a very long string. The string's length is the product of 11 prime numbers. The 1s and 0s when organized as a square of specific dimensions form a rasterized circle. The book showed how the extraterrestrials suggested that this is an artist's signature, woven into the very fabric of space-time.... another message, one from the universe's creator....and yet, ironically, the author of "Contact" kept from making grounds for anyone establishing any kind of organized religion by portratying the extraterrestrials as being just as ignorant to its meaning as Ellie. They also made reference to older artifacts built from space time itself (namely the wormhole transit system) abandoned by a prior civilization---and all of this leads to a new pursuit and passion driving work with the SETI program in trying to search for meaningful signals in noise from space.
Although I do believe that it's possible the Lord created alien life in the universe apart from us (more shared in-depth
here and
here ), some of it similar in dynamic with what was seen in the film "Contact" , I do think that what will always make a difference is the direction that a belief takes you. In the event E.T is being focused on, if it causes someone to be thankful for how much diversity he's capable of, I would not think "demonic"...but if others saw E.T and thought in terms of secular humanistic ideology (i.e. "Alien life proves there is no god" or "All forms of visitation do not need to be suspect of bad origins", etc), I would take pause.
Granted, as many are aware that things could be deceptions from the devil/enemy (for those who are Theist and believe in the God scripture points to), personally I'd wonder whether or not people would be more open to what believers seen as deception if seeing ET Beings come down with their own views. It could lend more credence to the thought others already have when seeing CHristianity as simply one view among many others rather than having a unique stance/verifiable when saying Christ is the Waay to salvation...
As II Corinthians 11 already notes how the enemy can appear as an angel of light, with the ability to appear shining/pretty never changing (as evidenced by many who had visitations by what they assumed to be angels...and those angels told them to do A LOT of evil things or things counter to what the scriptures say)....just because a creature looks nice doesn't mean it can be trusted...and I'm certain there'd be many who'd be quick to assume that any form of alien life discovered is automatically a negative.
However, IMHO, I would think that it's also possible for alien to truly be present--and even if it looks not really menancing, I don't know if one would need to automatically get in the defensive by suspecting them to be demonic.
C.S Lewis, in his "Space Triology" series, was very brilliant in the ways that he brought out the concept of alien worlds existing and yet still needing to be under the rule/lordship of the Almighty....and for many, it seems to give a bit of fresh air to understand that believing in E.T doesn't mean one must cease believing in Christ. If a UFO showed up tommorrow at the White House, many would be of the mindset that they'd be in just as much need of the Savior as anyone else....and the only way to tell if/when it's demonic or not is if they advocate that Christ is not real. If they said that they were wanting to learn of and follow Jesus Christ as our Lord/Savior", would it still be necessary for people to think "It's a DEMON!!!!"
Even if other alien beings showed up/had their own religion set up, I don't know if I would be thinking they're demonic. What I would be processing is whether or not it's possible the Lord made other creations in existence...and they happened to find their way to our planet, with the Lord desiring that His redeemed people evangelize/preach the Gospel to them just as we do for all others---and perhaps those creations would come to trust in the Lord because of what Christ has sought to accomplish. A genuine alien lifeform coming from a culture with their own religious beliefs would at that point be no different than with others on the planet here who come from differing cultures/have differing religions due to their developmental context....and regardless of the differences, the Gospel of Christ as the ONLY way would still be what needs to be preached/proclaimed.
Just my two cents, as I do wonder. Again, I guess I'd wonder what to make of the possibility of aliens being real and whether or not that really clashes with the testimony of the scriptures? For some things don't seem to be spelled out as clearly...and if the atonement is real, I'd think it'd be far reaching. In the event I didn't say it the right way, for more on, as seen here:
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With the Mars mission, the entire time I've been reminded of "John Carter of Mars" , the novel series that precedded much of what's seen in Sci-Fi also and which spoke on the issue when the main hero (John Carter) fell in love with a Red Martian.....something many often pondered on when it came to the concept of relationships
John Carter" is
a very beautiful film (based on the book "John Carter of Mars" made by the same man who made "Tarzan" )...and to see it come out before they landed on Mars gives a lot to think on.
IMAX promotional poster for John Carter's midnight show; art by Mondo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNC7IWqxIWE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=butMdidqqCs&index=19&list=PL1106B70905F773D7
