Aliens and The rior to his conversion, C.S. Lewis held that Christianity could not possibly be true because it “borrowed” so many themes from mythologies and religions that “supposedly” predated Christianity. He would, for instance, point to the myths about Greek and Roman gods taking human form. His Christian friends, J.R.R.Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, convinced him that those myths, even if distorted, could embody truth.
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The fact that we can find parallels to Christian theology in non-Christian religions and myths should not surprise us.The God-man Messiah, for example, was prophesied to Adam and Eve. We can easily presume that their apostate descendants could incorporate parallel ideas to the true religion in their own beliefs and stories. Nor should it be astonishing to us to find parallel themes in the modern mythologies depicted in movies, television, and literary fiction.The science fiction genre is no exception. The television sci-fi series Stargate SG-1, based on the 1994 movie Stargate, is currently in its ninth season.The stargate, a piece of ancient alien technology discovered during an archeological expedition, establishes wormholes to other worlds throughout the galaxy, many of which are populated by descendants of ancient earthlings. SG-1 is the designation of one team of travelers who visit these worlds in search of alien technology in order to defend the earth against the Goa’uld, a race of parasitic, snakelike aliens, who invade the bodies of humans and pretend to be gods.The Goa’uld usually bear the names of the deities of ancient Egyptian, Norse, or other religious systems. Not unlike our Lord, who has both a human nature and divine nature, yet is one Christ, these false gods have the divine nature of the Goa’uld parasite and the human nature of their enslaved hosts. While the Goa’uld are false gods bent on evildoing, thievery, and domination, the series provides no clear indication who the true God is or even if He exists. But using Martin Luther’s dictum that a god is “that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress” (Large
Catechism), one can conclude that the true god in Stargate SG-1 is the knowledge of the Ancients, the race of beings that created the stargates and other advanced and powerful gadgets. Individuals who have gained this ancient knowledge can obtain celestial attributes by entering a higher plain of existence through a process called “ascension.”The human nature is united with the divine which, in this case, is the knowledge of the ancients. Sci-Fi Channel’s new spin-off series Stargate Atlantis is based on a similar premise.The Ancients, who once lived in the aqueous city of Atlantis (located in a far away galaxy), had ascended.They abandoned the city to be found by
