A group of Christian thinkers gathered over the weekend at the 100-Year Starship Symposium organized by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said that finding alien life forms would be a great challenge to the very perceived existence of God.
Most of the world's religions would be affected, not only Christianity. Granted, the latter would be the worst-hit, since the Bible does not allow for the existence of life on other worlds. It holds that Earth is the center of everything, and that humans are special. If aliens exist, then that becomes another lie.
German philosophy professor Christian Weidemann, who is based at the Ruhr-University Bochum, put the issue into perspective with a brilliant question – Did Jesus die for Klingons too? The conflict of ideas should become immediately apparent, he told theologians and philosophers at the meeting.
The existence of both a god and alien civilizations would give rise to some extremely disturbing questions, which not even the most fanatical religious zealots could shield themselves from by wearing their customary horse goggles.
“If there are extraterrestrial intelligent beings at all, it is safe to assume that most of them are sinners too. If so, did Jesus save them too? My position is no. If so, our position among intelligent beings in the Universe would be very exceptional,” Weidemann explained, quoted by
Space.
Another issue to consider is the sheer number of worlds in the Universe, which may amount to trillions. If only 0.5 percent of these are inhabited, then the number of alien civilizations would be massive. To assume that God saved each and everyone of them is a long stretch, even for professional story-tellers.
Many participants at the symposium agreed with the point the German philosopher made. Even pastors agreed that the issues Weidemann raised were precisely on point, and capable of inciting further discussions into the topic.
Interestingly enough, no conflicts were detected between the Islamic faith and the existence of aliens. Muhammad was not Allah, but a prophet of the God. As such, many other prophets may have been sent to other worlds, potentially saving alien civilizations as well.
“Religion is essentially conservative. You can put almost anything in its face and it's going to shake out a little bit, and then it's going to drop right back down. We've seen this happen historically,” Tulsa, Oklahoma-based protestant pastor Rev. Thomas Hoffmann explained.
He highlighted that Christianity was able to endure many scientific revelations before, which slowly but steadily chipped away at its centuries-old foundations. Eventually, nothing but hollows remained, yet people still believe. Similarly, this faith will probably survive finding aliens as well.
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