Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear Can Christians believe in aliens?
Pastor J.D. talks about whether aliens are a possibility or a mere figment of the imagination.
A glimpse inside this episode:
Our faith doesn’t rise and fall with this question, so we have some liberty here. It’s not in our church’s statement of beliefs. C.S. Lewis seemed to keep the option open, and he’s smart … so there’s that.
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- Evolutionists say yes: the likelihood of that much space. Stephen Jay Gould thought we should stop trying to send out signals because they in all likelihood would be hostile
- Astronomers estimate the number of stars at more than 3,000 billion trillion. Mathematicians says Septillion. 24 0’s.
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- Now, if you’re like me, numbers like million, billion, trillion, or a septillion tend to sound all the same after a while. One million seconds ago. Do you know what you were doing a million seconds ago? 11 days ago.
- What about a billion seconds ago? Do you remember what you were doing then? That’s 31 years and 8 months ago. Some of you, of course, can’t remember what you were doing then because there was no “you” to speak of. Sometime in the 1980s. The compact disc player had just been released. Rambo was saving our world from certain destruction. The Jedi were returning for the first time.
- How about a trillion seconds ago? How long ago do you think that would be? A couple centuries back? A trillion seconds ago was 29,672 BC. The 1st Rocky movie had just come out.
- And there are as many as 40,000,000,000 (40 billion) potentially habitable planets. So the likelihood is high.
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- Astronomers estimate the number of stars at more than 3,000 billion trillion. Mathematicians says Septillion. 24 0’s.
- Evolutionists say yes: the likelihood of that much space. Stephen Jay Gould thought we should stop trying to send out signals because they in all likelihood would be hostile
- But: Anthropomorphic/Goldilocks Principals (chances are low)
- Creation thought: Did God really waste that much space?
But:
- (Lewis: God creates for himself).
- Plus, according to Genesis 1, man is the center of creation:
- God created the Sun, Moon, and stars to give light (brightening the utter darkness of the night sky) and to assist mankind (see Genesis 1:14-15).
- Throughout Scripture: This centrality of man continues. “Thou dost make him [man] to rule over the works of thy hands, you have put all things under his feet” (Psalms 8:3,6).
- Why so many stars for these purposes? Is it any big thing to God?
- Plus, God says that all of Creation exists to declare the glory of God! Psalm 19:1. The very vastness of space declares to us the awesome power and majesty of God! The more we know the more we say with David in Psalm 8: “O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is your name in all the earth, Who hast displayed your splendor above the heavens! …When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, The moon and the stars (I say)…O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Also:
- The Bible tells us that one day we will rule even angels, and the 2nd member of the Trinity became a man and now sits on the throne of the universe. It’s hard to read Scripture in a way that allows for other races.
- The Bible also pretty clearly indicates that God’s plan for mankind and the universe itself are intertwined. When Christ returns, he’ll destroy this universe and the Bible talks about a “…new Heaven and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:7, 10).
- So, what does that mean for aliens? Well, because the Bible talks about the destruction of the earth and the universe and the re-creation of a “new Heaven and the new earth”, it seems unlikely and unfair that there would be other life on other planets whose reality still revolves around us. Distant planets would be destroyed by God because of his plan for Earth. The implication of Scripture is that there are no other intelligent beings besides man, animals, and the angels.”
- I’m not sure we could TOTALLY close the door on other intelligent life, but another rebellious race that God gave himself for? That’s hard to integrate with Scripture.
Practical question: If there were, could we ever be visited? Based on the physics of the universe, hard to imagine.
The closest star to the Earth, Proxima Centauri (a-Centauri C) is 40.7 million million kilometers (approximately 25 million million miles) away. The Apollo flights took three days to get to the moon. At the same speed, one would need 870,000 years to get to the nearest star. Of course, one could accelerate (particularly unmanned) probes to a greater speed.
At the incredible speed of one-tenth the speed of light, the trip, one way would still take 43 years. However, one would need enormous amounts of energy for such an acceleration, roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of the entire world’s population for one month.
Furthermore, in every cubic kilometer of space, there are an estimated 100,000 dust particles (made up of silicates and ice) weighing only a tenth of a gram. At such a velocity, colliding with even one of these tiny objects could destroy a spaceship.
What is behind all the sightings?
- I don’t know. People’s imaginations. But something to consider, Sociologist Gerald Eberlain said: Research has shown that people who are not affiliated with any church, but who claim they are religious, are particularly susceptible to the possible existence of extraterrestrials. For them, UFOlogy is a substitute religion.
- Furthermore, in Ephesians the devil is called the “prince of the power of the air.” As Dr. Werner Gitt points out, “The devil has his own repertoire of deception in the form of various occult practices and a multitude of religious rites. It could be that behind those unexplainable UFO reports there is the work of the arch-deceiver.”
All that to say: Believing in the possibility of aliens is probably fine, though questionable at best. But obsession over them might indicate something troubling for a Christian. We don’t need beings from another planet to save us; We’ve already had a heavenly being walk in our midst.