What Do We Do if We Meet Aliens?

Claire Yang '17

What Do We Doif We Meet Aliens?

by Daniel Swanson

"So," one might reasonably ask, "what do we do if we meet aliens?" If you're asking about what we will actually do, then I have no idea (though if the non-Trek Sci- Fi I'm familiar with is any indication, it will probably be disastrous). However, on the matter of what we should do I present the following plan of action.

The first step would be to throw a bunch of linguists at them and replicate the first half of Arrival (I don't recommend the second half, but, if atemporal perspectives are available and you really like barely averted global war, then go for it). Once we can speak the same language, step two would be offering a trade of board games and spaceship blueprints (those who can travel the stars hardly lack access to natural resources). If we are the ones providing board games, I would recommend Tak and Go since both are simple, interesting, and easily divorced from their original cultural context.

Beyond this point the plan gets rather complicated (and, even before this, there are complexities that I'm ignoring) so I'm going to spend the rest of this article

on step three, which is to discuss religion. Since time, space, your attention, and my knowledge are all limited, the actions and implications discussed below are limited to those that are significant to Christianity, and not even necessarily all of Christianity. Doubtless some religions would be fundamentally contradicted and others radically transformed, some would claim to have been validated and others would be unaffected, while dozens more would spring into existence - but all these are outside my present concern.

The first thing to ask would be whether or not they are spiritual creatures like we are.

The first thing to ask would be whether or not they are spiritual creatures like we are. A traditional understanding of the soul is that it is what distinguishes a living being from a corpse. There are various types

of souls. Human souls have the capacity for rational and abstract thought and can survive the death of the body, whereas the souls of animals and plants do not have that capacity and probably don't survive death. If the aliens that we meet fall into the latter category, then they would seem not to be "in the image of God" as we are, and so there wouldn't really be anything more to discuss with them in terms of religion.

In the case that the aliens we meet are robots, the definition of the soul given above works out to either a stream of electrons or nothing at all. Either way, I don't think they can really be said to be alive, and if they aren't alive then they aren't really people in the relevant sense and we again don't have much to discuss (though we probably should treat them as we would if they were people, to avoid encouraging immoral tendencies in ourselves, if for no other reason). However, it is quite possible that the beings who created them were people, and we could potentially learn useful things by asking about those creators.

Of course, simply asking "Do you have

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souls?" is not likely to be particularly effective. The idea of a "soul" is probably going to be tricky to convey accurately, and until we know their language very well it might well come across as something like "Are you alive?" or "Are you possessed?", neither of which is what we want. Thus, we should probably prefer an indirect approach.

Of course, simply asking "Do you have souls?" is not likely to be particularly effective.

In my experience, all rational beings seek truth, and it seems reasonable to hypothesize that this is a feature of rationality in general, rather than of humans in particular. In addition to what is known from divine revelation, various human philosophers have constructed arguments from first principles demonstrating the existence and immortality of the soul. Thus, if aliens have rational souls and seek truth, I would expect that many of them would believe this

to be the case, even in the absence of divine revelation. Now, just as is the case with humans, where many are not convinced by the arguments for souls or the revelation, the existence of some aliens who don't believe in immortal souls would not invalidate the conclusion that they have them. In summary, if they commonly believe that they will survive death in some sense, then they probably will.

Once we know that we're dealing with rational beings, there are two possible states they could be in. They could either be in right relationship with God, as Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and as the angels are now, or they could be fallen, separated from God as we and demons are now. Only when we reach this point do our questions really have theological significance since, I would argue, the discovery of non-personal life elsewhere in the universe would have no more impact on theology than the discovery of a new species of mosquito in the Amazon.

Given what we know about God, I would expect any aliens we meet to have

some revelation from him. And even if they don't, it is still possible to know a great deal about God from his creation, so I would put complete lack of knowledge of God in the same category as having fallen from relationship with God. In any other case, their knowledge of God might well be different from our own, not in the sense of contradicting our knowledge, but rather in the sense of highlighting aspects of God that are less prominent in the revelation that we have received.

Studying their knowledge of God is the best way I can think of to resolve the question of whether or not they are fallen. If they are unanimous in their beliefs about God and those beliefs do not contradict what we know with certainty, that would be reasonably solid evidence that they know God and that their minds are not clouded by sin. If their beliefs contradict each other, that does not necessarily prove that they are fallen, but it seems extremely difficult to have ongoing communion with God and yet have significantly divergent opinions about Him. If their beliefs conflict with

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ours but in some relatively small way, we should make every effort not to create yet another division over mere word choice. 1 However, any beliefs that are completely irreconcilable with each other or previously revealed truth are likely false and also good evidence that their minds are clouded by sin, in which case they are indeed fallen.

If they aren't fallen, then we would learn that there are parts of the universe that weren't damaged by our fall. This might have interesting implications for our understanding of the fall of humanity, since that is generally understood to have affected the whole universe. If the effects of one race's fall only extend to their own planet, then perhaps studying the aliens' world could give us insight into what the Garden of Eden was like. On the other hand, if they fell through the breaking of a commandment, then we might be able to reach the same conclusions about the effects of our fall, but we wouldn't gain that same insight into what an unfallen world looks like. But there is another possibility: they could have fallen as a direct consequence of our fall. If this were the case it would seem that humanity is extremely important in the grand design of the universe.

Furthermore, the relationship between our fall and theirs could be one of indirect causation, in which case it could go either way. We might learn that somehow their actions changed the events at the beginning of Genesis and that if, they had acted differently somehow, Satan would not have appeared to tempt Eve or someone would have made a different choice. That could be taken as showing the aliens'significance in the grand design, though I would be inclined to view it more as evidence of how deeply interconnected all things are.

The final question - not because there are no more questions after it but because the layers of speculation become unmanageable - is if the aliens have fallen from grace, can they be saved, and, if so, how? According to Christianity, humans can be saved through faith in Jesus, but fallen angels cannot be saved. From that it might seem like the answer could go either way, but that doesn't seem likely to me. Tradi-

If the aliens have fallen from grace, can they be saved, and, if so, how?

tionally it is understood that the primary reason angels cannot be saved is because they cannot repent, rather than that God doesn't want to save them.

For humans, information is perceived by the senses, is understood by the intellect, and is acted upon by the will. 2 Angels, on the other hand, do not have bodies and thus do not have senses like we do, since our sense are tied to our physical organs. Asa result, they do not obtain knowledge over time but rather simply have whatever knowledge God has given them and innately understand whatever that knowledge implies. 3 Since their knowledge is constant, and that knowledge is what the will acts on, their wills are also constant, and thus at the moment of their creation they choose to turn either towards God or away from Him and that choice is permanent. 4

Since we are discussing biological and thus corporeal aliens, they would be capable of changing their minds and thus I would expect there to be some way for them to be

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saved based on Paul's statement that God "desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4 ESV). We can't absolutely rule out the possibility that salvation is not available to them, but, if that were so, I have no idea how we would know it without divine revelation. So the answer to the first part of the question is a probable "yes", but that still leaves the second part: How are they saved?

In our study of their religions, we might discover one that hasactually received revelation from God. If we found one and it described a way for them to be saved, then we would have our answer. This way might be any number of things. Perhaps something like observing the Law of the Old Testament or the temple sacrificial system would be sufficient for them. Perhaps Jesus also became incarnate on their planet (or the Holy Spirit, for that matter). But then again, as Aslan says, "things never happen the same way twice" 5 so whatever

the method of their salvation, it will probably be a surprise to us.

On the other hand, if it turns out that God has not told them how to be saved then the answer is probably that they are saved in the same way that we are. If we run into problems like the aliens being the Wicked Witch of the West and baptism will literally kill them, then perhaps they're actually waiting for some other species to show up and share salvation with them. (It should be noted

My intuition is that God would either create a single means of salvation that is the same for all species or He would give ech species their own path.

that, if it is not essential to the nature of baptism that it be done with water or if salvation is primarily brought about by internal belief rather than sacramental action,then this sort of issue will not arise.) It would, however, strike me as odd if they were waiting for someone else. My intuition is that God would either create a single means of salvation that is the same for all species or He would give each species their own path. The comparison that

comes to mind is that it's as if God's chosen people, rather than being specifically Israel had been Israel and China, but no one else. On the other hand, if this did turn out to be how God has set things up, then we would have yet more evidence that God's ways are not my ways and I would have a new mystery to be curious about.

In any event, upon meeting aliens I would recommend asking the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth and ensure that we answer these questions correctly and properly apply the answers.

Incidentally, the fourth step of the larger plan is to ask what sort of music they like. r

Endnotes 1. Not all splits within Christianity are simply over words and not all splits over words are without significance, but there are a frustratingly large number of divisions that are now nothing more than quibbling over the preferred wording of technicalities. 2. Aquinas ST 1 Q84 A6. 3. Aquinas ST 1 Q58 A3. 4. Aquinas ST 1 Q64 A2. 5. C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian.

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