I'm confidently and eagerly expecting the discovery of, at a bare minimum, plant life in Europa, Callisto, and Enceladus.
Another fictional account of intelligent life on other planets and their need for the gospel is Michel Faber's novel The Book of Strange New Things. I didn't read but my wife did and she says it was extremely interesting and thought-provoking; it concerns a missionary who travels to a distant planet and evangelizes the native population while dealing with troubling happenings in his relationships back on earth.
That's somewhat contra Lewis who says our distance from other star systems is probably a good thing considering how we tend to muck up encounters with other cultures. But interstellar missionary work is still a neat idea for theological sci-fi.
Calls to mind The Sparrow, by author Mary Doria Russell, and how "The first expedition to Rakhat, the world that is sending earth music, is organized by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), known for its missionary, linguistic and scientific activities since the time of its founder, Ignatius of Loyola. In the year 2060, only one of the crew, the Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz, survives to return to Earth, and he is damaged physically and psychologically. The story is told with parallel plot lines, interspersing the journey of Sandoz and his friends to Rakhat with Sandoz's experiences upon his return to Earth." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sparrow_(novel)
Love your content! As an English teacher I need to be that guy.
Just before your Rev. Heck quote you write, "C.S. Lewis, the renowned Christian apologist, explored this..." and right after that mention "The Space Trilogy." There should either be punctuation completing the sentence or, more likely, a preposition linking it to the title of the book. I think you probably meant to put "in" in there, but I'm just guessing.
Thanks, love your stuff. Congrats on moving up the Substack ranks!!
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I went back and listened to that part of my voiceover, and I think my mind inserted the "in," because I read it out loud that way. Funny how that works.
I enjoyed your essay, Sarah. However, it would be quite helpful to me if I read some of those resources you talked about! I tend to lean towards the earth as exclusive to human life, but your points are well noted. I wanted to know what you think about UFO's which are now called something else--can't remember.
I would say no, because many religions already have built into them a hierarchy of being. God, angels, man, woman, child, animals plants insects. For scientists, the hierarchy of being stops with mankind. In my view the people that will have the most difficult time adapting to the reality of NHI are not people of religious faith, it is scientists. All of sciences including physics, biology, material sciences could all be overturned with the open knowledge of intelligent life that is non-human.
Thanks Sarah, fun to think about, but I land on Earth is the beginning and end of all life. The universe is just one big, beautiful picture frame the Lord created for us...btw, He must've consciously determined an exact number of atoms, and is still aware of every single one! :D
Thank you for this and the reminder of C.S. Lewis, whom I read when I was a teenager and before I became a Christian. I will re-read those books now, alert to the idea of "God’s quarantine precautions". And this from you, https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-six-days-of-genesis-63120073/63120073, was a "threshold concept" moment for me just now of how creation might indeed be six days as 14 billion years.
I have long wondered about how intelligent life would impact Christian faith and always took the complacent view Christians would easily incorporate this into their theology from a sound Biblical basis. I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on this. The idea of "spiritual quarantine" for the "human measles" gave the utter misanthrope in me a good giggle. Let's just hope we don't do something idiotic before we have a chance to engage with them and understand them from a Biblical base. Great article!
We're on the same page here. We have a God who says He could make sons of Abraham out of stones, so making any sort of life elsewhere is up to His will and nothing more. And in history, we know the Greeks could sense they were missing something so they had the unknown God, Melchizedek was a priest of God when the Jews were just Abhram and his kin, and Jesuits thought the White Calf Buffalo Woman was possible Mary/a misremembering of details about Mary that the pre-contact Sioux encountered. So anything is possible with a potential relationship with God and another species. Who knows what His will was, but it's a great thing to dwell on (and produces tons of content for me to write on both fiction and non-fiction wise!)
When I was born, my father wrote a poem about me. The poem made no mention of my brother. If someone read the poem about me, and later learned that I had a brother, it would of course be ridiculous for the reader to say that the existence of my brother proves that our Dad does not exist.
That’s how I feel about the extraterrestrials question, as you’ve nicely explained here.
Are you familiar with Hugh Ross and RTB? I’ve always appreciated their commentary on this, they basically take the stance that it wouldnt be shocking at all if there was other life out there:
Glad to learn that there was at least one other person who read Michel Faber's novel The Book of Strange New Things. Enjoyable & challenging.
However, after all is 'said & done' I agree with physicist Max Tegmark in his book, "The Mathematical Universe":
“When I give lectures about cosmology, I often ask the audience to raise their hands if they think there’s intelligent life elsewhere in our Universe. Infallibly, almost everyone does, from kindergarteners to college students. When I ask why, the basic answer I tend to get is that space is so huge that there’s got to be life somewhere, at least statistically speaking. But is this argument really correct? I think it’s wrong - let me explain why.” (p.394)
Tegmark takes the next few pages to argue his case looking at 1) the probability of there being a habitable environment (on an appropriate planet), 2) the probability that life will evolve there and 3) the probability that this life will evolve to become intelligent. These three are then multiplied together.
Tegmark concludes: “That is why I think we’re alone in our Universe.” (p.397)
I like Tegmark, but he's thinking from a secular, materialist perspective. In the Christian worldview, ETIs would exist if God created them, so probabilities are irrelevant. In this sense, it works even more against materialists: the probability of intelligent life evolving elsewhere in the universe is so low that the best the case for their existence is the same as for ours – God created them.
What a great article! I was going to write something on Lewis' "Religion and Rocketry" essay, but you've gone a better job than I ever could! I especially like the "quarantine" idea. :)
I'm confidently and eagerly expecting the discovery of, at a bare minimum, plant life in Europa, Callisto, and Enceladus.
Another fictional account of intelligent life on other planets and their need for the gospel is Michel Faber's novel The Book of Strange New Things. I didn't read but my wife did and she says it was extremely interesting and thought-provoking; it concerns a missionary who travels to a distant planet and evangelizes the native population while dealing with troubling happenings in his relationships back on earth.
That's somewhat contra Lewis who says our distance from other star systems is probably a good thing considering how we tend to muck up encounters with other cultures. But interstellar missionary work is still a neat idea for theological sci-fi.
Calls to mind The Sparrow, by author Mary Doria Russell, and how "The first expedition to Rakhat, the world that is sending earth music, is organized by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), known for its missionary, linguistic and scientific activities since the time of its founder, Ignatius of Loyola. In the year 2060, only one of the crew, the Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz, survives to return to Earth, and he is damaged physically and psychologically. The story is told with parallel plot lines, interspersing the journey of Sandoz and his friends to Rakhat with Sandoz's experiences upon his return to Earth." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sparrow_(novel)
Love your content! As an English teacher I need to be that guy.
Just before your Rev. Heck quote you write, "C.S. Lewis, the renowned Christian apologist, explored this..." and right after that mention "The Space Trilogy." There should either be punctuation completing the sentence or, more likely, a preposition linking it to the title of the book. I think you probably meant to put "in" in there, but I'm just guessing.
Thanks, love your stuff. Congrats on moving up the Substack ranks!!
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I went back and listened to that part of my voiceover, and I think my mind inserted the "in," because I read it out loud that way. Funny how that works.
I enjoyed your essay, Sarah. However, it would be quite helpful to me if I read some of those resources you talked about! I tend to lean towards the earth as exclusive to human life, but your points are well noted. I wanted to know what you think about UFO's which are now called something else--can't remember.
I would say no, because many religions already have built into them a hierarchy of being. God, angels, man, woman, child, animals plants insects. For scientists, the hierarchy of being stops with mankind. In my view the people that will have the most difficult time adapting to the reality of NHI are not people of religious faith, it is scientists. All of sciences including physics, biology, material sciences could all be overturned with the open knowledge of intelligent life that is non-human.
Thanks Sarah, fun to think about, but I land on Earth is the beginning and end of all life. The universe is just one big, beautiful picture frame the Lord created for us...btw, He must've consciously determined an exact number of atoms, and is still aware of every single one! :D
Thank you for this and the reminder of C.S. Lewis, whom I read when I was a teenager and before I became a Christian. I will re-read those books now, alert to the idea of "God’s quarantine precautions". And this from you, https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-six-days-of-genesis-63120073/63120073, was a "threshold concept" moment for me just now of how creation might indeed be six days as 14 billion years.
I have long wondered about how intelligent life would impact Christian faith and always took the complacent view Christians would easily incorporate this into their theology from a sound Biblical basis. I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on this. The idea of "spiritual quarantine" for the "human measles" gave the utter misanthrope in me a good giggle. Let's just hope we don't do something idiotic before we have a chance to engage with them and understand them from a Biblical base. Great article!
We're on the same page here. We have a God who says He could make sons of Abraham out of stones, so making any sort of life elsewhere is up to His will and nothing more. And in history, we know the Greeks could sense they were missing something so they had the unknown God, Melchizedek was a priest of God when the Jews were just Abhram and his kin, and Jesuits thought the White Calf Buffalo Woman was possible Mary/a misremembering of details about Mary that the pre-contact Sioux encountered. So anything is possible with a potential relationship with God and another species. Who knows what His will was, but it's a great thing to dwell on (and produces tons of content for me to write on both fiction and non-fiction wise!)
When I was born, my father wrote a poem about me. The poem made no mention of my brother. If someone read the poem about me, and later learned that I had a brother, it would of course be ridiculous for the reader to say that the existence of my brother proves that our Dad does not exist.
That’s how I feel about the extraterrestrials question, as you’ve nicely explained here.
Are you familiar with Hugh Ross and RTB? I’ve always appreciated their commentary on this, they basically take the stance that it wouldnt be shocking at all if there was other life out there:
Their discussion here was really insightful:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stars-cells-and-god/id1768361311?i=1000706653148
Glad to learn that there was at least one other person who read Michel Faber's novel The Book of Strange New Things. Enjoyable & challenging.
However, after all is 'said & done' I agree with physicist Max Tegmark in his book, "The Mathematical Universe":
“When I give lectures about cosmology, I often ask the audience to raise their hands if they think there’s intelligent life elsewhere in our Universe. Infallibly, almost everyone does, from kindergarteners to college students. When I ask why, the basic answer I tend to get is that space is so huge that there’s got to be life somewhere, at least statistically speaking. But is this argument really correct? I think it’s wrong - let me explain why.” (p.394)
Tegmark takes the next few pages to argue his case looking at 1) the probability of there being a habitable environment (on an appropriate planet), 2) the probability that life will evolve there and 3) the probability that this life will evolve to become intelligent. These three are then multiplied together.
Tegmark concludes: “That is why I think we’re alone in our Universe.” (p.397)
I like Tegmark, but he's thinking from a secular, materialist perspective. In the Christian worldview, ETIs would exist if God created them, so probabilities are irrelevant. In this sense, it works even more against materialists: the probability of intelligent life evolving elsewhere in the universe is so low that the best the case for their existence is the same as for ours – God created them.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15dMJRbnFF/
What a great article! I was going to write something on Lewis' "Religion and Rocketry" essay, but you've gone a better job than I ever could! I especially like the "quarantine" idea. :)
In Lewis’s essay “On Religion and Rocketry,” he quoted a Catholic poet named Alice Mynell who theorized Jesus could have visited other species:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_(Meynell,_1921)/Christ_in_the_Universe