Lunarians, Venusians, and Martians: Fashions in Alien Beliefs

BreakPoint ^ | 12 Jan 04 | Chuck Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

How often have you heard a secular scientist express contempt for Christian belief in a supernatural Creator, or angels and devils? "Where's the evidence?" they scornfully ask.

Well, if we go back a few centuries, we see evidence of an amusing phenomenon: We find eminent scientists making bizarre claims that are hard not to laugh at today -- beliefs, backed by no evidence whatever, about creatures who are "out there" on faraway stars and planets.

For example, Sir William Herschel, the astronomer who discovered Uranus, claimed that the moon boasted buildings, canals, roads, and pyramids -- all built by industrious lunarians. And just where were these clever moon people? Herschel's son, William -- also a scientist -- had a ready answer: The lunarians had taken up residence on the dark side of the moon, where no one could see them.

Religious leaders often proved just as gullible. For instance, in the eighteenth century, Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg claimed that during visions, he actually spoke with lunarians -- creatures who, he said, talk loudly "from the abdomen."

Ellen Harmon, the founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, described the inhabitants of Jupiter as "a tall majestic people, so unlike the inhabitants of Earth. Sin," she concluded, "has never entered here."

Of course, modern science has proven these beliefs badly mistaken, if not a bit loony. But as Benjamin Wiker notes in CRISIS magazine, "If belief in solarians, lunarians, jupiterians, venusians . . . and martians seems madness now, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was taken to be the only rational, scientifically grounded view." So theologians of the day tried to integrate aliens into their belief systems.

Thus, we have seventeenth-century Anglican Bishop John Wilkins insisting that "the existence of extraterrestrials would not contradict Christianity," Wiker writes. William Hay, an eighteenth-century rector, "argued for multiple modes of salvation entailing multiple modes of Christ's incarnation." Beilby Portus, the eighteenth-century Bishop of London, claimed that "the Incarnation actually extends to all extraterrestrials."

By the start of the nineteenth century, many prominent evangelicals had incorporated alien life theories "as an essential element of evangelical orthodoxy."

The utter absurdity of this reveals that Christians have fallen for science's absolutist claims. We're so afraid of looking backward and unenlightened that we try to force-fit the latest cultural and intellectual fashions into our theology. A few hundred years ago, it was fashionable to believe in Martians who built canals. Today, some theologians try to mold their doctrines around cultural fashions like evolution or same-sex "marriage."

Christians ought to take a lesson from the foolishness of our spiritual forebears. We must never be afraid to challenge the latest claims from secular "experts" -- scientists and sociologists. Remind everyone: Science is not the "absolute perfect science" its practitioners say it is.

I hope you'll stay tuned for the rest of this BreakPoint series. You'll learn why, even today, millions believe -- despite a complete absence of evidence -- that somewhere out there, E.T. is waiting.

[Mr. Silverback]

Or as the boys in White Heart once put it...
Bell-bottom jeans
And ever-changing mood rings
Once made sense
For Miami Vice
You would have paid most any price
But now, pastels are past tense

Fasion fades, things will change
Something stronger will remain
The love of Jesus
Stays the same
Where will you be
When the fashion fades?

[Mr. Silverback]

BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!

If anyone wants on or off my BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.

[Support Free Republic]

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg		Freepers/Avg		Monthlies
25	South Carolina	412.50	17	24.26	201	2.05	68.50	8

Thanks for donating to Free Republic!

Move your locale up the leaderboard!

[JoeFromSidney]

You'll learn why, even today, millions believe -- despite a complete absence of evidence -- that somewhere out there, E.T. is waiting

I don't know whether ET is waiting out there or not, but I do enjoy a good alien invasion story, and I've had two published in ANALOG.

[BushCountry]

Here is another alien story. The person that runs the website claims (not me) that the rock shapes were not created naturally. He claims that rock formations like the one that appears to look like a turtle are symmetrical and natural rock formation are never created symmetrically so they must have been artificially created.

The folded sand in the bottom right-hand corner has NASA and scientists baffled. The soil appears to have been folded and has adhesiveness. The NASA scientist that I heard discuss this was excited and he said it appears to act like an unknown substance.

[Paved Paradise]

As always, Colson rocks. But, he's got the solid rock for that.

[dead]

For example, Sir William Herschel, the astronomer who discovered Uranus, claimed that the moon boasted buildings, canals, roads, and pyramids -- all built by industrious lunarians. And just where were these clever moon people? Herschel's son, William -- also a scientist -- had a ready answer: The lunarians had taken up residence on the dark side of the moon, where no one could see them.

Herschel’s son’s name was John, not William. And the story about the moon people appeared in the New York Sun more than a decade after Sir William died, so he had no comment.

The story told about how Sir John was working with a new telescope in South Africa, and had seen these creatures on the surface of the moon, so Colson’s comment that they were on the dark side of the moon makes no sense.

In the end, it turned out that while John Herschel was in South Africa making discoveries with his new telescope, he never made any claims about men on the moon. The story was a product of the imagination of the journalist, Richard Adams Locke. Herschel didn’t even learn of the supposed “discoveries” attributed to him until months later.

It’s one thing to fall for a hoax, but Colson fell for one that was revealed over 160 years ago. This is a very amateurish article.

[Indie]

The lunarians had taken up residence on the dark side of the moon, where no one could see them.

OH MURDER! :))