Creator God of the Universe or Just of this Planet?
Trapping God in a box of your own Imagination & Understanding
In a Pew Research study released in July 2021, it was discovered that most Americans who identify as religious, particularly Christians, do not believe in intelligent life exists beyond our planet.
If most American’s identify as Christian (in a previous Pew Research study), I find this Pew Research study of June 2021 to be almost contradictory as it states that most Americans believe in the existence of intelligent life beyond our planet.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/30/most-americans-believe-in-intelligent-life-beyond-earth-few-see-ufos-as-a-major-national-security-threat/
There are so many rabbit holes I would like to go down based on these studies but for this article I prefer to focus on this interesting contradiction. Both research studies warrant some deep scrutiny and contemplation, but it begs the question do most American who identify as religious (Christians) answer the question differently about believing in intelligent alien life beyond our planet in secular contexts or social settings verses religious ones.
Depending on what circles you travel in you may choose to answer this question differently for a number of reasons. I think some would even split hairs about the difference in the belief of alien “life” on other planets in general (microbes, plant or animal) verses intelligent life (sentient beings with culture and technology). At this moment there is no proof of intelligent life beyond our planet, or at least no public acknowledgement of proof of intelligent life by our government.
Let’s consider the true complexity of this question. We’re asking a group of people who believe in the existence in an invisible, all knowing and all powerful supreme being of which at this moment there is no definitive proof of said being about the potential of believing in the existence of intelligent alien beings on other planets of which there is no proof of their existence of said alien beings. Or put more simply, you are asking a group of people who do believe in something that they can’t see or prove about something that they could eventually or potentially see that they can’t currently see or prove. I think I could create a great haiku from this.
I speculate that there seems to be an unspoken stigma about Christians who believe in intelligent alien life. You probably don’t hear too many sermons from the pulpit about preparing for the mission field on Mars or how to evangelize extraterrestrials. In my study and preparation for this article I did find that there is a charismatic sect of Christianity that believes that Satan and his demons are aliens (from the second heaven). As much as I would love to espouse the possibility of satanic reptilian alien overlords in the new world order found in the book of Revelation, I think it clearly illustrates the point how quickly we can find ourselves outside the accepted dogma and or orthodoxy of our Christian beliefs on this subject.
As rational and intelligent beings, we need to ground ourselves in biblical truth and the facts of reality. Like all things in Christianity, our beliefs are built on evidence and faith. As finite beings we can barely fathom much less calculate proof of an infinite Creator, as if He were something we could study in a lab or capture in a test tube. Our faith relies on that evidence to support our beliefs. That evidence derives from history, archaeology, people’s testimony and ultimately the bible. Thus, our beliefs are not a blind faith but a faith supported by evidence which is grounded in reality. If we apply this simple approach, we can derive an understanding of the issue.
Typically, in modern Christianity and its interpretations of the bible in reference to “the heavens” specifically refers to three heavens. 1. The atmosphere of our planet 2. Outer space (sun, moon, stars and everything beyond our atmosphere) 3. The celestial abode of God the Father. In the Jewish tradition there are seven heavens. The fourth heaven is regarding the Jewish faith the celestial abode of the stars, planets, etc. which they believe is where the Archangel Michael intercedes between worlds. What is that again about outer space angels or satanic alien overlords?
What does the bible say about the universe or the second heaven?
Genesis 15:5 NASB And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and account the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
Deuteronomy 4:19 ESV And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.
Psalm 8:3-5 ESV When I look at 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, and the son of man that you care for him. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.
Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
The bible confidently asserts that God is the Creator of the Universe not just this planet. Our Grand Artificer of the Universe spoke and or used sound waves to create all that we know. The biblical account of the creation of the universe is moving from what its critics would say is speculative to scientific fact though I will skip the part about how you can’t have a big bang without a “banger”. Below are two articles that continue to support this assertion.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21653-ancient-sound-waves-sculpted-galaxy-formation/
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia16881-sounds-of-the-ancient-universe
If our Christian orthodox understanding of the universe is that God created it and all things, all life in it, why would it be so far removed from our thinking that humans are the only intelligent life forms that He’s made, other than the fact that we have no public proof or evidence at this moment? Even one of our faith’s greatest thinkers pondered this possibility. In 1958 C.S. Lewis wrote “Will We Lose God in Outer Space?” and was published in the Christian Herald. Ironically, it was written as a rebuttal to Professor Fred B. Hoyle, the Cambridge astronomer and founder of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge who coined the phrase “big bang” though Hoyle didn’t believe in this theory. The point being is that in this discourse emerged from one of Christianity’s most astute minds a theological sound framework for approaching the subject of the possibility of intelligent alien life.
C.S. Lewis begged a bigger question: “How can we, without absurd arrogance, believe ourselves to have been uniquely favored?”
https://www.cslewis.com/religion-and-rocketry/
God tells us in the book of Genesis everything we need to know about this probability. Our God is a creator that loves to create. Our God loves to create so much that He took time to rest and to enjoy His creation. He loved His creation so much that He created mankind and one of our jobs was to tend His creation. If you ponder the greatness of this infinite being, for who a millennium is a mere second, how can we perceive that He topped Himself and stopped creating with humanity? As C.S. Lewis proposes, its an absurd arrogance on our part. So now we’ve covered the theological and philosophical ground for the potential of other intelligent life in the universe, we must examine the next evidence in the equation.
What is the evidence for sentient alien life?
Recent developments with an admission from the Pentagon before Congress on May 17, 2022 that we have unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP aka UFO) in our air space that we can’t confirm their origin will be raising this conversational topic on social media, the news, your dinner table and water cooler discussion. With the release of the now famous “tic tac” video and the startling testimony by Luis Elizondo about the secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) program shook the world of ufology and probably secretly theology. With the stigma of reporting such phenomena being removed from the FAA and military, more often and in-depth reporting has started to pour in on these occurrences. If you think it’s an elaborate cover story for the next advancement in US air superiority technology (or worse our enemies) or our government trying to prepare us for the eventuality of an alien civilization, you are going to talk about it sooner or later with someone as it is part of our regular news cycle. Even Gallup polls are seeing a rise in the belief of alien life and intelligence.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/350096/americans-believe-ufos.aspx
Considering this development publicly from our government, it opens a scope of possibilities as evidence builds. From my perspective, we have seemed to abandon this discussion or rendered it neuter or invalid. It is better to confront the subject now rather than ignore it, yet we still do. You can probably think of reasons, but I think the answers are very simple: apathy, tradition, and fear.
First, Christians don’t simply care about the subject. I consider this to be folly as we’ve seen a rise in the belief in our culture based on the aforementioned recent events and the in the rise of alien astronaut theory. This theory states that knowledge and understanding that ancient civilizations possessed were given to them about extraterrestrial beings which is proposed in the book “Chariots of the Gods?” By Erich von Daniken. The theory’s reputation has been amplified by the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series. I predicted this back in the late 1990s and the early 2000s and it’s come to pass that one of the new propositions of this theory that Jesus Christ may have been the product of artificial insemination by aliens. Crazy, yes. It is a conversion being had though not too much a serious one in our culture yet as acknowledgement of Jesus as a historical figure is such a divisive subject among nonbelievers as well. To not have an understanding or plausible defense or apologia of said cultural dialog is in my opinion foolish.
Secondly, we have no tradition of discussing this subject or any subject outside the scope of the bible. In some ways, Christianity has atrophied from those faithful believers who once studied God’s creation as a means to better understand the Creator. Most people’s modern perception of Christians is that we are not very open-minded. As Christians we should be the most open-minded people on the planet in the realm of scientific possibilities. To name a few from Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Charles Townes to our modern day with Francis Collins (director of Human Genome Project) Christian believers have been leading the way to great scientific discovery that has benefited mankind. Pondering possibilities of scientific discovery should go hand in hand with great biblical revelation even on a personal level.
In some ways modern Christians are too shackled to the thinking of the secular world. Subjects on the metaphysical world which are discussed in the bible like angels, demons and demonic possession are almost taboo subjects because of the relevance of our age. Even in the last few years as the amount of people claiming to be possessed or supernatural occurrences increase around the world, prompting the Catholic church to start training more exorcists, people of the Protestant sects continue to shy away from the subjects of the spiritual realm. What we once perceived as demon possession we now see as epilepsy through developments in medicine and psychology. To be clear, I am not saying more people are becoming demon possessed (or having their bodies snatched by aliens) but some form of phenomena is occurring lead people to believe something extraordinary is happening beyond our modern reasoning. It appears to be another modern contradiction. Whether or not to prevent the miraculous from becoming perceived as mundane medicine or the opposite with the devil in the details behind every mishap or tragedy, Christianity hasn’t done a good job in handling of the forbidden fruit of fringe discourse.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43697573
Lastly, fear of this subject comes in many flavors. Christians are afraid to be labeled heretical or kooky for said thoughts or beliefs. No one wants to be known as the alien autopsy apologist, extraterrestrial evangelist or the Roswell reverend. Let’s be honest, Christians might be big on forgiving but not forgetting. In the age of the internet, your Sermon of the Jedi could come back to haunt you like Jar Jar Binks in a force ghost form.
Another reason we seem to fear this subject would be how it would affect the Christian faith. Back in the late 1990s I wrote a song called Jesus Christ vs the Aliens which is copy-written in a volume of music I wrote which is registered in the Library of Congress. Some of my closest friends are privileged to know this song and some are privileged not to have heard it. In the song I asked the question when you look to the sky what you expect to see – Jesus coming in the rapture or a UFO. The crux of the song was wrestling with why the belief on one excluded the other. Why can’t we have both?
Believe it or not, NASA (of all the organizations) partially funded a study on how various faiths and systems of belief would react and or function after the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Of course, the study concluded that most faiths would just keep moving along though the reaction to an alien civilization might have more complications.
https://mindmatters.ai/2022/01/will-religions-crumble-if-we-find-extraterrestrial-life/
If you read the article, the author references C.S. Lewis and his thinking on the subject. Imagine that. What I do find humorous is the author points out if aliens are atheistic, what a great new field of evangelism we would have. I don’t know about you, but I am excited at the prospect of an intergalactic mission field. I think I would be willing to go into the undiscovered country on the final frontier for the sake of the Gospel if it was needed.
As C.S. Lewis states, we would need to know if these being were in a fallen state as mankind to need redemption. If they were fallen, maybe they already have and redeemer. That would require us to compare this redeemer to Jesus Christ. This is where we’re very fearful on this subject. Christians get very sensitive when it comes to talking about alternate means of salvation.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus was very specific and exclusive on this subject of salvation. There is no room for misinterpretation on this subject here. Jesus is the ultimate Sith Lord.
Matthew 12:30 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Our aversion to considering alternative means of getting to heaven receives a zero-tolerance stance. People like Oprah who espouse the many paths to God are pariah and anathema. Maybe Oprah is an alien? What was that about outer space angels and satanic alien overlords again? I think we can safely say that for humans this is the way. Jesus is the only way for us. Per chance you are from another planet and you come knocking on my door with your pamphlets, we’re going to have to sit down and compare notes before I can accept or integrate Phlaxnar as my Lord and Savior.
We should not shy away from this discussion because in exploring who God really is through this subject matter we will create a better understanding of who He is. When you delve into the attributes of God like omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), and omnibenevolence (supremely good) it really helps you see the cracks in all the other belief systems compared to that of the Judeo-Christian belief. There can't be anything wrong with using our God-given imagination to ponder the greatness of creation to deduce knowledge of the Creator. If the possibility of imagining that aliens came to our planet and presented an alternate redeemer destroys your worldview, I would question if you have experienced the undeniable salvation that comes from knowledge and residing of the Holy Spirit. Like those who claim to have seen Big Foot or the pilots who testified about the “tic tac” video, I can not deny that I have experienced something extraordinary. It would take more than aliens from another world to shake my belief in the Holy Spirit.
If you would indulge me for a moment, I would like to go down this rabbit hole since we’re at this particular segment of the realm of possibilities discussing a potentially alien messiah. My tin foil hat may be showing a little on this one but from what I’ve read, heard or watched from those who claim to have interviewed said alien beings, the more credible ones consistently tend to say these beings talk in almost metaphysical terms. The beings tend to see their bodies as vessels and death as a transition from one form of life to another. These beings also talk about other entities existing in other dimensions parallel to ours influencing the physical world which sounds much like the book of Ephesians. What was that about outer space angels and satanic alien overlords again? Before I lose credibility in my readers eyes, all I will say is if I were going to make something up to fool people, I would stick to something more grounded in reality with a flavor of the fantastic. I am not saying I believe this to be true, but I find it interesting that the opposite seems to be the norm instead of something more atheistic.
Astronomer Carl Sagan is quoted in saying, “if we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space.” I think its logical to assume God did something with the space, but we’ve not reached the point yet to make those discoveries. Maybe God spaced us all apart from each other that in our quest to discover more about Him, that we might find each other. But I find science fiction writer and futurist, Arthur C. Clarke’s quote more apt. “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
We know that it is written into the imago dei of every human the desire to believe in something, something bigger than themselves. Every society created some form of worship or interest of belief system. Even Giorgio Tsoukalos, the leading alien astronaut theory expert and Co-Executive producer of HISTORY's Ancient Aliens and publisher of Legendary Times Magazine, has publicly distinguished between these perceived galactic travelers and the acknowledgement of a supreme being. We have some common ground to share the Gospel with this emerging subculture. You might as well familiarize yourself with the writing of C.S. Lewis and the bible on the subject because its not going away. I could be wrong about all of this, but its just my perspective from the bottom end.
#alienlife #alienastronauttheory #aliens #godvsaliens #ancientaliens