My issue here is what does the existence of aliens do to our understanding of God and ourselves. The issue of whether they exist I will leave to you the reader but for the sake of argument lets us assume they do. I will add though that the universe is a BIG place and to assume that we are the only sentient life form God every created is not only egotistical but Human centric nonsense. God is also a very creative God and I doubt he has limited his creativity to just us here on planet earth.
This brings us to the first issue. Human egotism. On two fronts this confronts us a) that God's plans may involves something larger than this speck of dust rotating around a bright light in the Milky Way. Other races and beings my be involved in God's plans and we may only be a small part of that and a) In humility we may have to realize that we are not even really essential to God's plans at all and do not have an inherent right to those plans.
The second issue. The nature of what the image of God is may be called into question. If other races are also created in this image but they do not look or act like us, what does this do to our understanding of ourselves as created in God's image.
What becomes very clear is the discovery of aliens would do one of two things -- create fear or humility. Given our sinfulness -- fear is more likely and there would be war and we would start it if the race we encounter is sinless.
That brings up a final issue, one that C.S. Lewis explored in his Sci-Fi series of books -- what if another race of aliens faced their test and did not fail? How would we react to them and how they would react to us becomes and interesting issue. A non-fallen race would completely compliant with God's will. Maybe that is why we haven't met them -- it would be too dangerous -- for them. I know another blow to human pride and ego.
Next: Alien Religion
No comments:
Post a Comment