Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: kw1r+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kevin Whitley) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Extra-terrestrial worlds Message-ID: Date: 7 Oct 90 01:15:58 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 43 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu C.S. Lewis wrote an essay called "Religion and Rocketry" which deals exactly with the questions you raise. My copy is in a book called "The World's Last Night and other essays" and is published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. A brief synopsis of the points he makes are 1) The existence of life on other planets shouldn't be a difficulty for Christians, shouldn't even really be raised as an issue at all until we know that there really is life (there's lots of speculation now but nobody really knows and the speculation is actually quite wild), and that the life has rational souls. 2) Then we start to worry about whether these other beings are fallen. Maybe they are maybe they aren't. How can we know? Maybe God redeems them as He redeemed us, maybe he didn't have to, maybe he did it some other way. 3) If there are other beings, there are going to be problems when we meet them. The European civilisation hasn't treated less materially advanced cultures very well, we will do the same to any other cultures we meet in space. And they (if we are less advanced) are likely to do the same to us. Not fun. But if we run into an unfallen race, would we even be able to recognize it. Or would we try to convert them to our, inappropriate, way. I am in agreement with pretty much everything Lewis says in this essay. I would just emphasize that such speculation is interesting, but really it is all so guesswork and far-fetched that nobody should ever have any faith difficulties due to this. I might point out that there is an idea called the "anthropic principle" kicking around among some scientists. This principle states that the universe is so odd, our chances of being here so slight, that there must be a "design" for life to be possible in the universe. (I should point out that the average materialist scientist considers this idea to be lunatic fringe). I recommend a book by P.C.W. Davies called "The Accidental Universe", Cambridge University Press. Kevin Whitley kw1r@andrew.cmu.edu