Saturday, September 18, 2010

Would Aliens Need Baptizing?






In Bible study last week, we finally got to Genesis. (We had done other books of the Bible in the past.) Verses on the creation generated the question, "Okay, but are we alone?" My opinion has always been that there is a slightly-better-than-even chance that we are. Why?

I call the answer to that question "The 1,000,000 Jesus Christs Problem," which runs as follows.

Our Sun is 1 of 100,000,000,000 ("100 billion") stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Astronomers estimate that there are about 100,000,000,000 galaxies.

100,000,000,000 galaxies x 100,000,000,000 stars = 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 sextillion) stars.

Lets be conservative and say that 1 out of 10 billion stars has life on a planet orbiting it. And let us say that intelligent life evolved on only 1 out of a million of those.

Those conservative assumptions suggests that there is intelligent life on about 1 million planets throughout the Universe.

Now, contrary to Bible literalism, Original Sin is not an event in history. Instead, it is how we would react in the absence of the grace of the cross to normal human passions, beginning with "When do we eat?" Original Sin is "created biological entity without the Final Ingredient," grace.

Without grace, each of us would be man-consuming monsters, like the horrible creatures in the "Alien" movie series.

It follows from that if there are people-size entities out there among those 1,000,000 planets with intelligent life, they are going to be made of between 1 trillion and 10 trillion cells (humans are made of about 6 trillion cells each) and each cell in each entity's body screams at each entity's free will, "When do we eat?"

"When do we eat" without the Final Ingredient = Original Sin.

So, as far as I can see, intelligent aliens with a free will would need saving, which means that they would need grace.

Now, despite the nasty eye-for-an-eye demands of God's perfect Justice, grace is free for us because Christ paid the horrible price -- His excruciating and violent abuse and torture and murder -- exacted by that Justice.

The key to unlocking the door to access to saving grace purchased in this way is belief (to death) in that Christ, and that sacrifice.

Now, here is the problem...

There is substantial evidence that the determining factor in intelligence is the average brain weight versus average body weight for a species.

Man has the highest ratio in that test (although McDonald's supersizing might have heavily impacted that ratio).

Pictured above are some of the other past-and-present Earthbound life forms with a species-wide brain-weight-to-body-weight ratio almost as high as ours.

They include Gracile Australopithecines with a crest on their skulls, Saurornithoid reptiles, dolphins, of course, and elephants.

Now, suppose Flipper, one day, comes to the surface, and with squeaks, grunts and hums manages to evangelize to his aquarium owner that on the bottom of the sea the Second Person of the Trinity has come to Earth as a dolphin and lies dead, impaled and cut and bled by evil swordfish, sawfish and octopi, as a sacrifice to pay the price exacted by God's harsh justice for the grace of salvation, and that you must believe in the dead dolphin to be saved.

Would you bow to the Dolphin Christ?

Or to a Australopithecine Christ, with a crested skull?

Or to an egg-stealing Saurornithoid Christ?

Or to Elephant Christ?

If I were to stand in the middle of my street, and say, out loud, "Will any of you go to church with me to pay homage to the Saurornithoid Christ whose followers landed in the flying saucer last week," I'd be arrested, with good justification.

The only answer to cross-species worship of Christ seems to be 1,000,000 Christs.

I can't accept that.

Therefore, I am slightly biased against us being "not alone."

At Bible study, some dedicated to the concept that there are aliens "out there" argued that God may have created them "perfect," and that they don't suffer from Original Sin, so they won't need Christ.

I say that "Original Sin" is being made of cells and being alive while being attached to a free will.

If that is correct, then any other somatic (bodied) species with a free will needs grace, and therefore a Christ.

Are there 1,000,000 different Christ's? I doubt it.

Would I worship Elephant Christ or Reptilian Christ?

Nope.

Would you?

Or, should you be "locked up" by your neighbors?

2 comments:

  1. 'Or to an egg-stealing Saurornithoid Christ?'

    I'm not having problems here, if we are NOT alone. I'm not having problems with the million Christs.

    IF there are, or over time, will be 1,000,000 Christs, then
    a) we're off a bit on the concept of 'trinity'
    b) there IS trinity, but perhaps this is an event that God seems to feel must be played out and witnessed by all his creation.

    Perhaps our Jesus of Nazareth story is the 37,322 itteration of this event to be played out in our universe, over time, and many more showings to come.

    Perhaps there are a million editions of the Bible(customized to the species-du-jour), all with typology, and word pictures . . . all pointing to an event. Sort of wouldn't work out too well, if the event was played out once on one planet somewhere in time and the holders of this 999,999 Bible editions where the event DIDN'T take place never saw the events predicted by the embeded typology, never saw the predicted events come to fruition.

    Maybe its a little less about the DNA and a little more about the witnessed deed and what we do with it from there.

    Ah, now the question of trans-substantiation . . .

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  2. I'm glad that you zeroed-in on the "egg-stealing Saurornithoid Christ." He poses the biggest problem.

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