God is in the ETails?


UFOs, flying saucers, extraterrestrial beings and the like re-emerged unexpectedly into the news last week. There was, you may remember, a mass release by the Ministry of Defence of many of the documented reports of sightings they have collected and collated over the years, which caused a flurry of excitement until it became obvious that few of the sightings were particularly interesting. Doubtless there's material in there to give diligent compilers of UFO data many happy hours. Doubtless, too, the conspiracy theorists will be telling us, anything really explosive will have been deleted.

But there was also, and I presume co-incidentally, an interview with the pope's chief astronomer Fr Jose Gabriel Funes, published in the Vatican newspaper and excitedly relayed around the world. In it, Fr Funes speculated openly about the existence of life on other planets - "Certainly, in a universe this big you can't exclude this hypothesis" - and went on to discuss the theological implications of some sort of alien contact. There was, he thought, no reason why God could not have created life on other planets:

Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom. ...Why can't we speak of a 'brother extraterrestrial'? It would still be part of creation.

He went on to suggest that such beings might not have "fallen", like humanity, and thus not be in need of redemption. They would be creatures "who remained in full friendship with their creator", he thought.

There's nothing particularly new about this type of speculation, even in the press. In 2005 another Vatican astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno, wrote a book entitled Intelligent Life in the Universe? Catholic belief and the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life which attracted quite a few headlines. He, too, focused on the theological implications of ET. As he wrote,

But there is one crucial question that will face Christianity if, or when, extraterrestrial intelligence is discovered. That's the question about what the Incarnation means to other species. In other words, would aliens need to have their own version of Jesus?

Do aliens need to be saved? Depends if they are subject to "original sin" or not. The traditional theology of original sin, tracing it back to the origins of the human race, says absolutely nothing about other entities, either way. Once we find other intelligences, we'll be in a better position to expand that theology.


And even if they did need to be saved, would Christianity be the appropriate way to do it? Or was the Incarnation of Christ a case of God becoming man, not little green man. Perhaps it doesn't matter. Brace yourself, the next quote is rather deep:

The point there is that, even though the life of Jesus occurred at a specific space-time point, on a particular world line (to put it in general relativity terms), it also was an event that John's Gospel describes as occurring in the beginning-the one point that is simultaneous in all world lines, and so present in all time and in all space. Thus, there can only be one Incarnation-though various ET civilizations may or may not have experienced that Incarnation in the same way that Earth did.


A mysterious concept indeed. And it raises what is (for those so minded) an even more important question: do we leave these aliens to their own spiritual wisdom, or darkness? Or should we send out missionaries and make converts of the heathen aliens.

According to a Russian Orthodox theologian Alexey Osipov, quoted this week, even asking this sort of question is heretical. With unassailable logic, he pointed out that the existence of extraterrestrial life is in any case inconceivable. Alien life forms were not mentioned in the New Testament, he said. Equally significantly, "there have been very many people in the Church who reached highest degree of Godliness and sanctity but no one of them has ever mentioned them [extraterrestrial civilizations], though they pointed out to many other things."

Furthermore, the fact that none had yet been discovered yet provided "solid grounds to negate existence of any extraterrestrial intelligent civilization", he claimed. And even if UFOs did exist and had occupants, they were probably demons. Case closed.

Perhaps herein lies an important difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. This sort of speculation, while anathema to Osipov, has a surprisingly long history in western Christianity. As Brother Guy points out, "to insist that God could not have made other worlds was declared a heresy back in the thirteenth century". On the other hand, "claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds" was one of the heretical opinions for which Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600. Still, it's natural for a theologians to want to speculate about questions of extraterrestrial life. Theology and Ufology have a great deal in common.

For one thing, their fields of interest are beyond the realms of what can be proved, known or properly understood. Alien beings might even be to modern theologians what angels were to their medieval forebears, invisible entities whose existence and characteristics must be inferred and which can be argued about without the troublesome intrusion of boring facts. Can aliens be saved? How many angels can dance on a pin-head? It's the same sort of meaningless question.

Theology and Ufology, moreover, are both rooted in faith. In fact, the early sightings of flying saucers swiftly gave rise to quasi-religious movements, some of which like the Aetherians and the Raelians - and above all the Scientologists - are still with us. Space-faring beings, like gods, are superior and might help us, but they are also potentially wrathful or malevolent.

Both UFO believers and religious believers are unswayed by evidence to the contrary: God, after all, moves in mysterious ways, while the government has its own deep reasons for wanting to cover up the truth. And both have the same love-hate relationship with conventional science. Science can never disprove what they believe. Yet the possibility must also exist that scientists will one day prove that it is true. And in the meantime ufologists will point to hard-to-explain sightings, and the religious to "miracles", as evidence that challenges science. Deep down they both want scientific approval.

Comments

Anonymous said…
James Blish (an atheist) explored this issue in his novel A Case of Conscience. Blish consulted a Catholic theologian (or maybe just a priest) who said aliens would be fallen, unfallen, or intelligent beings without souls. Not sure how that last one would work, or how the fallen and unfallen would be distinguished by poor, sinful humans. Blish, rather cleverly, came up with a fourth option.
Sci-fi writers are generally much better at this sort of thing than theologians. Perhaps that's because writers know they're dealing in fiction...
Heresiarch said…
The only other possibility I can think of is that they are fallen and somehow irretrievably lost. But how this could happen theologically I'm not sure. Perhaps they didn't bother killing their messiah...
Anonymous said…
You're almost right. Suffice to say Blish offers an ambiguous ending i.e. you can choose the science option or the faith option. Oh, and I forgt - the novel is also about religious objections to evolution.
Valdemar:
"Case of Conscience" is a wonderful book: in the Blish preface, I think he says he takes most of his theology from the 1950 Catholic encyclopedia - with one exception (regarding the Catholic sacrament of Extreme Unction).

Lord Heresiarch:
CS Lewis considered the matter from a Protestant perspective. I think the essay is in "Elephants and Fern seed". He points out, before merrily evangelizing the extraterrestials, we would have to be sure that: the aliens were Fallen, that GOD hadn't made separate plans for their salvation, that the only way to salvation was a Messiah, that the aliens had not received such a Messiah and none such would be forthcoming etc. On these grounds he was against it.

Lewis also wrote SciFi. I think the medium is well suited to addressing great philosophical and religious themes as the canvas is so broad.
Anonymous said…
As ever the most civilised part of the web. I too love A Case of Conscience, indeed the whole After Such Knowledge trilogy. I spilled tea over my paperback single volume which is now surprisingly scarce - I have of course (Heresiarch is mapping my library) all the individual volumes though only Black Easter is a (British) first.

Valdemar is right - Blish was an atheist but the last two tales, Black Friday and The Day After Judgement are predicated on the assumption that magic works and that both God and the Devil exist, although...

Isn't the truth that we are all aliens to each other anyway? As a Glaswegian god-hater I find the presbyterians of Lewis as incomprehensible as the Shia who send postcards down the well to their last Iman. Who needs aliens?

Oh, and I remember reading an old SF volume in which Blish, Amis and Lewis nattered very entertaingly to each other. Clearly alien to each other they found common ground in enquiry. Ah, you might find that scarce in both Aleppo and Stornoway. The aliens are amongst us, they just, like Heinlein's Jonathan Hoag, don't advertise!
Anonymous said…
Ach Black Easter I mean not Black Friday!

Oh and (bless you Google) the Amis, Blish & Lewis conversation is in something called SF Horizon - forgot the book but I remember the essay.
Heresiarch said…
Well thank you. I'm beginning to feel most ignorant for not having come across this clearly seminal work before.
Anonymous said…
Even a heresiarch should have a Blishful experience from time to time.

Oh and by 'presbyterians of Lewis' I meant of course the Utter Hebrideans and not the presbyterians C S Lewis grew up with. We know a Dutch couple who settled on Lewis (not the CS Lewis, the Hebridean one) a few years ago and they lasted less than two years. People were polite but as they didn't go to church they were Not One of Them. They may even have broken incomprehensible taboos like putting washing out on a Sunday. i suspect that this is what an alien encounter would be like - we would have nothing to say to each other except 'don't eat me'.
WeepingCross said…
I seem to remember there were parallel arguments when European Christians encountered the peoples of the New World. I suppose it was easier to establish that they were humans, but to deal with an extraterrestrial encounter doesn't seem hugely different.
Heresiarch said…
According to a documnetary I was watching the other week, medieval philosophers were very interested in whether the dog-headed people had souls. It was pointed out that they lived in villages, farmed, and had family lives, so while they might not have looked human they had certain human characteristics. The philosophers simply assumed the dog-heads existed, but were intellectually stimulated by debating their characteristics.

Debating whether hypothetical aliens have souls is, at least, a fairly harmless activity for theologians to engage in. The recent debate about human-animal hybrids, by contrast, showed some religious thinkers at their worst.

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