aidan

Please indulge me in my little foible dear brethren.Is there anything in prayer or scripture of any faith to support the existance of extra terrestial life?

arthra

Aidan,

There's a whole essay by Duane Troxel called "exotheology" that you might find interesting!

Excerpts:

Man is phenomenal on this Earth. There was a time when the Earth did not exist. There was never a time when man did not exist. Logical deduction: There was a time when the Earth did not exist. During that time man existed somewhere else in the universe.

"...[T]he reality of Divinity is without a beginning, creation is also without a beginning." (SFTW A-B 61) "[T]he coming of the Manifestations of God are not circumscribed by time." (FWU 53) "...[A]s God is creator, eternal and ancient, there were always creatures and subjects existing and provided for." (FWU 101) "...[T]he human soul has existed on the earth for prolonged times and ages, yet it is phenomenal." (SAQ 151) "...[T]he earth has not always existed,...". (SAQ 152) "...[T]he universe is not limited to this terrestrial globe." (SAQ 152) "...[I]t cannot be said there was a time when man was not." (SAQ 196) "...[I]t cannot be imagined that the worlds of existence, whether the stars or this earth...were without man!" (SAQ 197)

Intelligent Life in the Universe and Exotheology in Christianity and the Baha'i Writings

Yeshua

Since Christianity and most faiths apart from the Baha'i Faith, were born before speculation about the possibiity of extraterrestrial life, I think its unlikely that one will find any "explicit" references to the possibility of aliens in the religious scriptures of these religions. The exception of course is the Baha'i Faith. Baha'u'llah did in fact state quite clearly that alien life was not just probable but most likely certain.

Baha'u'llah made a dramatic statement about life in the universe,

"The learned men, that have fixed at several thousand years the life of this earth, have failed, throughout the long period of their observation, to consider either the number or the age of the other planets. Consider, moreover, the manifold divergencies that have resulted from the theories propounded by these men. Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute."
(Gleanings, p. 163)

Abdu'l-Baha taught that life develops on other planets according to the environment,

"The earth has its inhabitants, the water and the air contain many living beings and all the elements have their nature spirits, then how is it possible to conceive that these stupendous stellar bodies are not inhabited? Verily, they are peopled, but let it be known that the dwllers accord with the elements of their respective spheres. These living beings do not have states of consciousness like unto those who live on the surface of this globe: the power of adaptation and environment moulds their bodies and states of consciousness, just as our bodies and minds are suited to our planet. For example, we have birds that live in the air, those that live on the earth and those that live in the sea... The components of the sun differ from those of this earth, for there are certain light and life-giving elements radiating from the sun. Exactly the same elements may exist in two bodies, but in varying quantities. For instance, there is fire and air in water, but the allotted measure is small in proportion. They have discovered that there is a great quantity of radium in the sun; the same element is found on the earth, but in a much smaller degree. Beings who inhabit those distant luminous bodies are attuned to the elements that have gone into their composition of their respective spheres."
(Divine Philosophy, pp. 114-115)

By way of comparison, although as I say we cannot really infer from older religions if they had a stance on ET, some people believe that Jesus referred to the plausability of alien life in the Gospel of John:

John 10:16 -

"...I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd..."

A lot of people think this refers to aliens, however in the context it is most likely speaking of the conversion of the Gentiles.

Other passages from the Bible used to support aliens are:

"And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." ... And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen" (Mark 16:15, 20).

"If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister" (Colossians 1:23).

"But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed: "Their sound has gone out to all the earth, And their words to the ends of the world"" (Romans 10:18).

The rationale I have is this:

How can the Gospel be preached to "every creature under heaven", if animals do not have the sufficient degree of understanding to be able to receive the gospel and process it mentally?

The only conclusion one can reach then is that Jesus anticipated a time when other "creatures" also made in the Image of God, that is with sufficient mental capacity and an immortal human soul, would be able to receive the Gospel and understand it.

Historically, these passages have been understood as referring to animals, which I think is also valid. It has resulted in the beautiful Franciscan values of love for animals and addressing them as "brothers and sisters". St Francis in this mode preached the Gospel to fish, birds and other animals such as bears.

However I consider that Jesus might have had another meaning. What would be the utility after all of preaching the Gospel to animals who cannot receive nor understand it other than out of compassion for them?

So I posit that there is something deeper to this.

Note in particular this phrase from St Paul:

"...Their sound has gone out to all the earth, And their words to the ends of the world..."

Here a clear distinction is made between the "earth", which refers to this planet and "the ends of the world" which Paul sees as something different and which I believe refers to the universe.

Pollwr

"The learned men, that have fixed at several thousand years the life of this earth, have failed, throughout the long period of their observation, to consider either the number or the age of the other planets. Consider, moreover, the manifold divergencies that have resulted from the theories propounded by these men. Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute."

(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 162)

Yeshua

BTW speculations on such things are nothing new in Catholic circles. Prominent clerics of the Middle Ages, including John Buridan (14th c.), Bishop Nicholas Oresme (d. 1382), and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464), had already seriously discussed the possibility of other worlds.

The "worlds of God" are mentioned in the Qur'an as well.

From last year:

Catholic.net - Alien Life Out There

"...The head of the Vatican Observatory thinks there’s a good chance they do, and that their existence would be in keeping with the faith.

In a May 14 interview with the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano May 14, headlined “The Extraterrestrial Is My Brother,” astronomer Jesuit Father José Gabriel Funes said that according to his “scientific judgment,” the existence of extraterrestrials is a “possibility.”

“Astronomers contend that the universe is made up of a hundred billion galaxies, each of which is composed of hundreds of billions of stars,” he said. “Many of these, or almost all of them, could have planets. [So] how can you exclude that life has developed somewhere else?”

The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world, and has its headquarters at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo just outside Rome.

Its main research telescopes, however, are located at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Father Funes, who took over as head of the observatory in 2006, denied that the existence of other intelligent life-forms would contradict Christian belief.

“As there exist many creatures on earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God,” he said. “This doesn’t contradict our faith because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God. To say it as St. Francis [of Assisi], if we consider some earthly creatures as ‘brother’ and ‘sister,’ why couldn’t we also talk of an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? He would also belong to creation.”

...

When asked how aliens could be redeemed, Father Funes referred to the Gospel parable of the lost sheep. Aliens, he speculated, could already be redeemed because they could have remained in full friendship with God, while the human race “could be precisely the lost sheep, the sinners that need the shepherd.”

But what if they were sinners like us? Father Funes replied that just as Jesus is believed to have come to save mankind, so he was sure that they, “in some way, would have the chance to enjoy God’s mercy.”

Father Funes’ comments are not novel: Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, a fellow astronomer at the observatory, discussed similar themes in a booklet he wrote for the Catholic Truth Society in 2005..."

aidan

We are God's chosen people.Live long and prosper!

arthra

Aidan,

Duane Troxel also gathered a Compilation of the Writings relating to the topic..Some not cited in his essay I referred to above..

Here are some excerpts from that Compilation:

"This latter world hath neither beginning nor end. It would be true if thou wert to contend that this same world is, as decreed by the All-Glorious and Almighty God, within thy proper self and is wrapped up within thee. It would equally be true to maintain that thy spirit, having transcended the limitations of sleep and having stripped itself of all earthly attachment, hath, by the act of God, been made to traverse a realm which lieth hidden in the innermost reality of this world. Verily I say, the creation of God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures. In each of these worlds He hath ordained things which none can search except Himself, the All-Searching, the All-Wise.

Do thou meditate on that which We have revealed unto thee, that thou mayest discover the purpose of God, thy Lord, and the Lord of all worlds. In these words the mysteries of Divine Wisdom have been treasured. We have refrained from dwelling upon this theme owing to the sorrow that hath encompassed Us from the actions of them that have been created through Our words, if ye be of them that will hearken unto Our Voice."

~ Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh 187-188

"Through His potency the Trees of Divine Revelation have yielded their fruits, every one of which hath been sent down in the form of a Prophet, bearing a Message to God's creatures in each of the worlds whose number God, alone, in His all-encompassing knowledge, can reckon."

~ Baha'u'llah quoted by Shoghi Effendi in Advent of Divine Justice, Page 80

"'Abdu'l-Bahá stated there are other worlds than ours which are inhabited by beings capable of knowing God."

~ Shoghi Effendi, The Light of Divine Guidance v II, p. 79

"Regarding the passage on p. 163 of the 'Gleanings'; the creatures which Bahá'u'lláh states to be found in every planet cannot be considered to be necessarily similar or different from human beings on this earth. Bahá'u'lláh does not specifically state whether such creatures are like or unlike us. He simply refers to the fact that there are creatures in every planet. It remains for science to discover one day the exact nature of these creatures."

(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, February 9, 1937) (Lights of Guidance 478.)

Extraterrestrial Life

Yeshua

Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401 –1464) agreed with Abdu'l-Baha (quoted by me above in a previous post) that living beings on other planets would reflect the "elemental composition of those planets".


Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa wrote:

"...Therefore, just as the earth is not the center of the world, so the sphere of fixed stars is not its circumference – although when we compare the earth with the sky, the former seems to be nearer to the center, and the latter nearer to the circumference. Therefore, the earth is not the center either of the eighth sphere or of any other sphere...Life, as it exists on Earth, in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose, in a higher form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled — and that with beings, perhaps, of an inferior type — we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the centre and circumference of all stellar regions. Now, even if inhabitants of another kind should exist in the other stars, it seems inconceivable that, in the line of nature, anything more noble and perfect could be found than the intellectual nature that exists here on this earth and its region. The fact is that man has no longing for any other nature but desires only to be perfect in his own.

Were we to suppose that, for the realization of the plan of the universe, the whole region of the other inhabited stars stands in some relation of comparison, unknown to us, through the intermediary of the universal region a certain relationship springs up from both sides between the inhabitants of this earth or region and the inhabitants of other stars — in the same way as through the intermediary of the hand there exists a relation of comparison between the particular joints of the fingers and the foot, so that all be suitably adapted to the whole animal; not even then with this supposition could we find a relation of comparison between those inhabitants of the other stars, of whatever nature they be, and the natives of this world.

For since that whole region is unknown to us, its inhabitants remain wholly unknown. To go no further than this earth: animals of a given species unite to form a common home of the species and share the common characteristics of their habitat, knowing nothing of or caring nothing for strangers. Their idea of strangers, even if it reaches some kind of vocal expression, is wholly exterior and conjectural and, such as it is, conceivable only after lengthy experience. Of the inhabitants then of worlds other than our own we can know still less, having no standards by which to appraise them. It may be conjectured that in the area of the sun there exist solar beings, bright and enlightened intellectual denizens, and by nature more spiritual than such as may inhabit the moon — who are possibly lunar — whilst those on earth are more gross and material. It may be supposed that those solar intelligences are highly actualized and little in potency, while the earth denizens are much in potency and little in act, and the moon-dwellers betwixt and between.

We make these conjectures from a consideration of the fiery nature of the sun, the water and air elements in the moon and the weighty bulk of the earth. And we may make parallel surmise of other stellar areas that none of them lack inhabitants, as being each, like the world we live in, a particular area of one universe which contains as many such areas as there are uncountable stars. In these local areas (we may guess), so countless that only He who has created all things in number can enumerate them, the whole cosmos suffers a triple contraction in its downward fourfold progress..."


Nicholas Wood comments on this:

"Cusa conjectured that there was life on every other star. But he retained a basic anthropocentrism, at least as regards the terrestrial creatures.

He claimed that while the individuals of each species of living creatures differed from each other, they shared a specific nature.

Thus all dogs participated in a basic canine nature, but each one was unique in being more or less perfectly canine. However, a dog and a man differed essentially, and thus also in their degree of participation in the Divinity. Cusa extemporized a variation of the theory of the Great Chain of Being, and in a metaphysical line of reasoning placed man at the intermediate point between the sensible and intellectual natures, describing him as a microcosm enclosing all things, and as the nature with whom God would unite, and nature and the universe attain a supreme gradation...

Cusa tried to combine this view with his assertion that there were creatures on other stars, and claimed that there could not be a more perfect nature among the intellectual natures than the terrestrial one. While this is not absolutely clear from the text, it seems that he was not claiming that other
creatures in other worlds were inferior to man, but rather simply different from him; they had simply no comparative relationship with human beings.
Men were not able to comprehend the nature of extraterrestrial beings, just as here on earth members of one species could not comprehend beyond a
very rudimentary level the thought of the members of other species. All they could do was conjecture that the solar inhabitants were more brilliant, those of the moon more moonlike etc. We thus see that Cusa made a particular effort to neutralize the anti-anthropocentric potentiality of conjecturing extraterrestrial intelligent life, by retaining man’s privileged position in the Great Chain of Being..."

- NATHANIEL WOLLOCH

aidan

Dear Art,isnt the other worlds of God the after life?

arthra

I think so...When people think of the "Worlds of God" they usually mean spiritual worlds..

However there are statements such as

Verily I say, the creation of God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures. In each of these worlds He hath ordained things which none can search except Himself, the All-Searching, the All-Wise.

Then its seems a natural world(s) is meant.

LordOfGoblins

yes i am *out there*

arthra

Yeah you are soooo far "out there"!

aidan

Or are you just out of it? lol

Yeshua

As a note of interest, the Kepler telescope has discovered the MOST EARTH-LIKE PLANET YET.

ITS THE ONLY DISCOVERED EARTH-LIKE PLANET THAT IS IN THE HAIBITABLE ZONE!

BBC News - Kepler 22-b: Earth-like planet confirmed

Astronomers confirm 'Earth twin'

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet in the "habitable zone" around a star not unlike our own.

The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.

It is the closest confirmed planet yet to one like ours - an "Earth 2.0".

However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid.

During the conference at which the result was announced, the Kepler team said that it had spotted some 1,094 new candidate planets.

The Kepler space telescope was designed to look at a fixed swathe of the night sky, staring intently at about 150,000 stars. The telescope is sensitive enough to see when a planet passes in front of its host star, dimming the star's light by a minuscule amount.

Kepler identifies these slight changes in starlight as candidate planets, which are then confirmed by further observations by Kepler and other telescopes in orbit and on Earth.

Continue reading the main story
Kepler Space Telescope

Stares fixedly at a patch corresponding to 1/400th of the sky
Looks at more than 155,000 stars
Has so far found 2,326 candidate planets
Among them are 207 Earth-sized planets, 10 of which are in the "habitable zone" where liquid water can exist
William Borucki talks about Kepler

Kepler 22-b was one of 54 candidates reported by the Kepler team in February, and is just the first to be formally confirmed using other telescopes.

More of these "Earth 2.0" candidates are likely to be confirmed in the near future, though a redefinition of the habitable zone's boundaries has brought that number down to 48.

Kepler 22-b lies at a distance from its sun about 15% less than the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and its year takes about 290 days. However, its sun puts out about 25% less light, keeping the planet at its balmy temperature that would support the existence of liquid water.

The Kepler team had to wait for three passes of the planet before upping its status from "candidate" to "confirmed".

"Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at Nasa's Ames Research Center.

"The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season."

The results were announced at the Kepler telescope's first science conference, alongside the staggering number of new candidate planets. The total number of candidates spotted by the telescope is now 2,326 - of which 207 are approximately Earth-sized.

In total, the results suggest that planets ranging from Earth-sized to about four times Earth's size - so-called "super-Earths" - may be more common than previously thought


OF COURSE THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT HAS LIFE OR EVEN WATER BUT ITS INTERESTING!