"And if there's life on other planets..." Reflections on God and E.T.

Is it possible that there is intelligent life out among the stars? And if there is, what would be the theological implications of this fact? Many Christians have assumed that there could not be intelligent extraterrestrials, and that if some were discovered then this would somehow constitute a challenge to the Christian faith.

But that apparently wasn't the view of Larry Norman, the father of Christian rock. Norman always sang about interesting, relevant and unusual topics. In his classic song "UFO" (off the album In Another Land) he likens the returning Christ to an "unidentified flying object". In keeping with this cosmic theme, Larry then sings: "And if there's life on other planets, then I'm sure that he must know. And he's been there once already, and has died to save their souls."

Is Larry correct? Could there be intelligent aliens out there? And if there are, are they fallen like us? (Or, are they fallen because of us?) Were they made in the image of God? Do they too need a savior?

These are some of the questions raised in the fledgling discipline known as exotheology. While I will attend to some of these interesting questions in subsequent posts, here I will focus on another issue: the extent to which the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life often serves a quasi-religious role for the "scientifically" minded.

Aliens have long carried a quasi-religious fascination for the general public. For instance, Spielberg's classic film E.T. has some of the most striking christological parallels in all of cinema: so striking in fact that one could almost consider the film an allegory of the Christ story. Consider that E.T. comes from the heavens to bring healing to a broken family. He performs miracles, including bringing things that have died back to life. In a Garden of Gethsemane scene, he goes out into the woods the night before he is taken prisoner and "phones home". Then he is taken into captivity, dies, is resurrected, and ascends back to the heavens in a space ship.

While the religious allusions that pervade E.T. may simply be part of the rich texturing of storytelling in a premiere family film, the fact is that many people imbue aliens with quasi-religious status. And we need not think only of those devotees of crop circles and alien abductions. Even many hardened scientists who would blanch at the idea of God as non-scientific become positively mystical when contemplating intelligent life from unknown worlds.

Consider how many scientists speak of E.T.s as having potentially godlike attributes. Physicist Paul Davies has speculated that "super-advanced aliens would appear [to us] as gods." Indeed, Michio Kaku has speculated that a super-technological alien society could have even created our universe!

If aliens could have created the world, many scientists hope they could also fix the world. Carl Sagan, who for years spearheaded the "search for extra-terrestrial intelligence", was known to be driven in part by a hope that contact with aliens could bring to us new discoveries that could greatly alleviate the suffering of our world (a form of salvation). Thus he wrote of first contact:

"To me, such a discovery would be thrilling. It would change everything. We would be hearing from other beings, independently evolved over millions of years, viewing the Universe perhaps very differently, probably much smarter, certainly not human."

I agree that first contact with alien life would truly be extraordinary. But would such a discovery deal with the existential crisis? Could it constitute our salvation? Such speculations remind me of the famous quip by G.K. Chesterton: "When man stops believing in God, he will believe in anything at all."

Here is PART 2 of the article on the same subject by the same author

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"And if there's life on other planets..." Reflections on God and E.T. (Part 2)

By Randal Rauser

So on with the question at hand. If aliens landed on the White House lawn tomorrow, what would be the first questions we would be thinking? Here's one: "Got sin?" That is, is it possible that there could be unfallen aliens? Creatures which are intelligent like human beings, but which do not sin?

It would seem that it is possible since angels are spirit beings which are unfallen and do not sin. (In fact, had we but world enough and time, we could consider the many speculations that UFOs and alleged alien abductions could be angelic and/or demonic visitations.) So if these aliens were to make the claim that they knew not sin, we probably couldn't dismiss the claim out of hand. Instead, we might have to wait and see, judging them by their fruits as it were.

But let's assume that our aliens are fallen. What is the next question to ask? Let's consider the one countenanced in that Larry Norman lyric cited in the earlier post: "And if there's life on other planets, them I'm sure that he must know. And he's been there once already, and has died to save their souls."

Larry's lyric raises two important questions. First, is it possible that God the Son could be incarnate elsewhere than as Jesus? And second, would such an incarnation be necessary to save the aliens? Or, conversely, would the incarnation and death of Jesus be sufficient to cover fallen aliens as well as fallen humans?

Let's begin with the possibility of multiple incarnations. First let's make clear what we mean by this. We don't mean that God the Son first could have incarnated as Jesus and then left his humanity behind to incarnate as, oh let's say "Zorg" on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. The problem is that Christians believe the "Jesus incarnation" was once for all. Even now we have one man as mediator to God, and his name is Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). God the Son did not leave his humanity as Jesus behind at the ascension so that he could incarnate in other forms on other distant worlds. Christians believe that when God the Son became the historical personage Jesus, this was an identity that he took on forever.

And so, if there are multiple incarnations then they will not be one after the other but rather simultaneous (!). Thus, the idea is not that God the Son might have left his human identity behind so that he could become Zorg or some other alien being. Rather, it is the idea that even as he remained Jesus, he could simultaneously become Zorg.

Now that really is a wild idea. But even so, the notion of multiple incarnations has been countenanced by a number of theologians including such heavyweights as Thomas Aquinas. So maybe it is not as flaky as it might seem at first blush.

It is also not quite as abstract and irrelevant as it might first seem. You see, if God the Son could simultaneously be both Jesus and Zorg, then could he also simultaneously be another human being?

This idea has been suggested by the Christian pluralist John Hick. Although once an evangelical, Hick now believes that all religions are "true", at least insofar as they make their adherents better people. And in his desire to give all religions equal standing, Hick has suggested that if God the Son could be Jesus and Zorg, then maybe God the Son could also be Buddha, Zoroaster, Joseph Smith ... you get the idea: Pluralism deluxe!

It is interesting how such seemingly abstract questions can have far-reaching practical consequences! Clearly this will require more thought...

Scripture is full of descriptions of highly intelligent, non-human creatures. Humans, however, hold a special place in the creation

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [c] and crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:

all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

Psalm 8: 3-8

This "special place" is evidenced by the fact that, at this very moment, there is a flesh and bones human being seated on the throne of God .. and that the endgame of God is for those human beings who accept His redemption to rule His physical creation with Him.

Of course, the “life on other planets” could look just like us, in which case finding them would be a tremendous blow to those who think our existance is random chance.

I tend to think there aren’t others. If you believe evolution, and the billions of years we have existed, and you also believe in the theory that we can double our technological advancements every few years or so, then in order for the “life on another planet” not to have found us yet, they must be behind us on the evolutionary scale.

But if there is life on at least ONE other planet, then the odds are there is life on thousands of other planets. And if that is true, the odds that, of all those living beings, we just happened to be the most technologically advanced are astounding. Not nearly so astounding as the odds that we evolved to begin with, mind you, but simply more astronomical.

It’s like the discussion of time travel. It probably isn’t possible for people to time travel, because if it was, that would suggest the future already exists, and if so, that people would have already traveled into the past, and someone would screw up and we’d know about it. We’d likely keep screwing up until we modified the future into one where there was never time travel.

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