IF

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswomen Nancy Mace and Anna Luna are reported to have announced recently that committees in both house of Congress will again take up the topic of unidentified aerial phenomena (particularly reported in the vicinity of Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.) House hearings are tentatively scheduled for November 13th. Barring unforeseen developments, the Senate committee will meet before the Holiday recess as well. The topic of unidentified flying objects (aka unidentified anomalous phenomena) is getting more attention now than ever before.  I’ve blogged about past hearings on UAP’s, and in this post, I want to explore what the discovery of life beyond our planet or from another dimension might mean for Christianity, “if” it exists.

While people from all walks of life in many different areas of the country report seeing unusual objects which are often easily explained, members of Congress are particularly nervous when trained observers such as commercial and military airline pilots note these objects in sensitive government locations. In these cases, it would be equally concerning to discover that these objects are made in China or Russia as it would be to find out that they are from Mars, which has no vested interest (to date) in attacking the U.S. Meanwhile, Congressional committees and subcommittees that review unsolved cases hope to exercise oversight into the related programs.  NASA, as well, has created their own investigative body. There is research under the auspices of Harvard University that searches for extraterrestrial technology in our present world or buried in our past. Military and civilian pilots are now urged, if not ordered, to report sightings whereas in the past pilots feared being ostracized or removed from flying status if they did.

The reasons for this change in policy have to do with an increase in the number of sightings and the remote concern that they might represent startling if “prosaic” military advances in China, Russia or some other rival of the United States.  Advances and upgrades in radar over the past decade and the presence of thousands or more drones in the air over the U.S. at any given time likely account for this increase in sightings as well. Last summer, ex-military officers who encountered these objects have made astounding claims in sworn testimony and under the threat of perjury to Congress. And, at least some of these allegations were implicitly substantiated in a recent classified briefing between the Inspector General of the U.S. Intelligence Community and members of the House of Representative’s “Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs.”

UFO enthusiasts are absolutely unbridled–almost delirious–in their speculation and expectation.  A term has been created for this called “ontological shock.” This phrase refers to someone’s worldview being turned completely upside down, sort of like when the inmates run the asylum. Some see “little gray men” as nefarious beings from another planet experimenting on humans or trying to steal our souls. The ancient notion of “panspermia” which says that our barren planet was “seeded” eons ago by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization has come roaring back to life from the dustbins of history (it was the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras who lived 500 BC-428 BC who coined the term.) Others believe that our universe, our planet, our very existence is nothing more than a computer simulation built on a grid and projected holographically, perhaps from some corner of the universe.  There are those who see our concept of God as nothing more than a member of some sort of galactic council, just one of many separate but equally powerful beings.  Angels and demons also occasionally figure prominently in these schemes. Entire existential and complicated alternate realities and systematic theologies are being created. Still others believe there is no God and the end is near. Many people don’t have an opinion one way or another. Others don’t care.

What the discovery of alien life might mean

If you’ve read many of my posts, you’ll note that I’m a big sci-fi fan. Yet, movies or television programs about aliens do not make me doubt my faith and worldview. I’ve lived several different lifetimes over the past seventy-five years and my God has never let me down. Whether tomorrow has a danger for me, it makes no difference to me if it is a stroke or is delivered via Ferengi energy bolts. There is a real comfort being at peace with God. And I hope to share that peace with you in this post and elsewhere on my blog.

What I want to do in this post is to explore what the official confirmation of life “somewhere else” might mean for Christianity.  Before that, I also want to explain what we know at the moment and where the trail of cosmological bread crumbs might lead. Most of the pioneering in this area seems to have been performed by Catholic theologians, but their excellent recommendations are equally applicable to protestant theology as well.

Natural vs. revealed religion

Before the Bible was written, all there was for most of the world was natural religion. This is a religion based on stars, seasons, superstitions and what we see in nature. It may have included fauns and faeries, or sirens and sylphs. False gods figure prominently in it. Thus, natural religion is often pantheistic in nature. In ancient Greece, there were so many gods created and worshipped that the Apostle Paul related being in Athens and finding an altar marked “To the unknown god.” Apparently, in their fastidiousness to honor all the many deities they heard of, the Athenians were concerned they might overlook one deity who might be angered to have not made the cut, so they added yet another altar for that hypothetical god’s sake. Sort of like the Tomb for the Unknown Soldier in Washington, DC.

The Bible makes possible what is called “revealed religion,” because natural religion will only take a society so far. The Bible is many things, but in it, God tells us a tiny bit about HImself, and a lot more about ourselves, including our purpose. The Bible is a story of our origins, how and why we came to be, Who our Creator is and what He wishes from us. Without the Bible, it would be as if you washed up on the beach of a tropical island with no memories. Who are? What are you? Where did you come from? Why are you here?The Bible, in spite of references to nature and the heavens, was never designed to be a handbook on cosmology, or a textbook on biology or a technical manual. The Bible purposely contains no mention of the New World, of DNA, black holes and Einstein-Rosen bridges, electromagnetism, quarks, artificial intelligence or holograms. Or dimensions.

If primitive life is discovered elsewhere in the solar system or our galaxy, that would be mildly interesting. But one needs to be cautious. Newspapers, magazines and online news sources often quote scientists as saying there is “positively” or “absolutely” or “without a doubt” life elsewhere in space. The headlines to these stories scream out half truths. And, some scientists occasionally get ahead of themselves. They are human, too. But, in fact, no life has been found as yet, at least as far as the general public knows. These scientists are perhaps referring to some sort of mathematical or statistical probability that life likely does exist elsewhere, or very well could exist, but absent the release of scientific proof to the contrary, no life has been discovered so far anywhere outside of this planet. And if some microscopic life is someday found on Mars, we would have to wonder if we or the Russians or the British or the U.S. didn’t accidentally contaminate Mars with our space probes that landed there. If Martian cities were found, and there were mummified Martians lying about, then certainly there once was life. But even to discover proteins and amino acids does not make life a certainty. As they say, “one swallow does not make a spring.“

If we received a nonrandom signal from space (non-random meaning there was some intelligence behind it or something else very unusual about it or naturally improbably), then it would get a good deal of well-deserved attention. Like the “WOW signal” received (see below.)

The WOW signal

Imagine fishing on a pond. I used to do this as a child. I had no idea in some cases whether there were even any fish in some ponds, but it was fun. It was a chance to enjoy the weather, reflect on life and basically rejoice in being alive. When there were fish, they was catfish or blue gills and sunfish. To me, the catfish were a nusiance, but I loved the pan fish! I began with some old nylon fishing line tied to a plain bamboo pole. On the hook, I placed an earthworm. In between the hook and the pole, I had a red and white float to alert me if something was about to happen. Later, as I got older, I would graduate to an inexpensive rod and reel.

Sometimes, the float would quiver ever so slightly. That might indicate that a fish was nibbling at the bait, especially if the float was perturbed a few different times. When the movement stopped, you would have to check your hook to see if something had craftily stolen your bait.

Sometimes, out of the blue, you’d feel a strong tug on the pole and the lure would completely disappear under the surface of the water for an instance. That could mean you had snagged a “whopper.” It was this sort of “strike” that became known as the “Wow” signal (see below.).

On August 15, 1977, a strong, narrow broadcast was picked up by researchers at the Ohio State University’s radio telescope. It was in the middle of the night when no one was on duty, and it took another day or two before researchers even became aware of it. The signal seemed to originate in the star constellation Sagittarius, one of the twelve so called Zodiac constellations through which the planets in our solar system travel. While optical telescopes reveal to some degree what a star, star cluster or nebula looks like visually, a radio telescope focuses on noise or static-like signals produced by a star or other object in space. If anyone can remember sitting around an old radio set in a room and having heard radio static, you will recall there are no patterns that can be discerned from the static. It is just noisy, annoying. But, if amidst of the static, we heard over and over a faint series of dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot, then we might be reminded of Morse code, specifically the letters S,O and S. The SOS, if repeated over and over, would be nonrandom. The static, itself, would be random. Nor am I suggesting that hypothetical aliens if they exist would use Morse code to contact us. This is just an example.

One could wonder whether the “Morse code” was actually embedded in the static on the radio, or whether it was coming from elsewhere inside or outside of the room. Another radio perhaps? A child in the kitchen banging on a pot, or someone idly drumming his fingers. Ruling out plausible alternatives is a scientific necessity. Another important consideration is whether the code repeats itself, or if other independent researchers, preferably in other parts of the world, could pick up the same signal. Unfortunately, the signal did not repeat and was not heard elsewhere in the world. It was on this point that the signal was discounted. To be fair, no one heard the signal in real time. It was only discovered several days later as researchers reviewed the data. If someone heard it in real time and called another radio telescope station in time, it might have been confirmed on the spot. But after several days the trail was cold.

There were certain qualities, though, about the WOW signal that piqued interest. There are an infinite number of radio frequencies. But this signal was discovered on 1420 Megahertz, which is the frequency of hydrogen, an element so common and important that it’s thought to be known by intelligent lifeforms anywhere in the universe. It is one of the most important frequencies for this reason, if not the most important frequency in the search for extraterrestrial life. This frequency is what radio astronomers call a waterhole, and this frequency is universally reserved for the search for extraterrestrial life. Let me explain:

Suppose you had to count the number or variety of mammals and reptiles living in a tract of fifty square acres of desert. How would you do that? One way might be to wander around aimlessly or perhaps systematically looking for voles, snakes or lizards. Or, if by chance there was one (and only one) spring or pool of water on the tract of desert, you could park yourself there and let the wildlife come to you, since all animals need water sooner or later. Which would be easier? More accurate? By pointing a radio telescope to a certain frequency like 1420 which is reserved for astronomers and astrophysicists, your chances of success would be greater.

The seventy-two second signal was also loud. Very loud. It was booming compared to the normal static scientists hear day in and day out. And while seventy-two seconds is not long, it could have contained hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of pages of data compressed within it. This same principle of data compression applies to U.S. nuclear submarines which must remain submerged in silence for weeks or more under the ocean. But the submarine commander needs orders and sailors want to hear from home, so the submarine periodically broadcasts a short, compressed signal. If the signal lasted an hour or more, the enemy might be able to triangulate on it and detect the location of the submarine. So, the signal from the submarine is very short. Perhaps too short to even be noticed.

The WOW signal seemed to originate specifically from a remote star in the constellation Sagittarius.

With one caveat, the signal was perfect for a signal broadcast by intelligent life. The caveat was that it was apparently not repeated in the almost half a century since. Being able to reproduce something in science is very important. Yet, in real life, sometimes this is not possible. Many WW II allied ships sunk so fast after a German torpedo attack that they could only get one message off. That doesn’t change the fact they were in distress. So, this singular occurrence does not in and of itself disqualify it. The celestial coordinates of the signal are not monitored more than a few minutes a day from anywhere in the world if at all. Suppose the signal returned? What then?

Maybe alien life is much closer to home?

Regardless of how advanced alien life elsewhere in the cosmos might be, there is the distance involved from star-to-star, even when traveling at light speed. Unless there are other purely theoretical objects such as wormholes and ways to fold space, meeting life from another galaxy may never occur anytime soon if at all. But it is possible that life is much closer to home, including your home. The land on which your house or apartment exists is a fundamental part of our dimension, and unique to you. You possess it or rent it in our 3D world. But in another dimension, it might be at the heart of a blazing star, 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit! Or, it might be 55,000 feet below the surface of a water world, or within a granite cliff or inside a large manufacturing plant. If there was the sort of programming remote that you use to flip through the channels of your television, and it could let you visit different dimensions as easily as different channels, you might be able to see what else occupies the spot on which you live on a dimension-by-dimension basis, though dimensions as far as we know are finite and television channels today are almost infinite. Suppose at night when it’s very quiet and still, you can almost imagine hearing machines. Could it be that in another dimension there is a factory where you live and the echoes of those noises “bleed through” or somehow spill over to our dimension when conditions are right? I remember the fascination I felt touching a stairway banister that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton had touched. They are long dead. That means the fourth dimension does not support any subjective closeness I might feel towards them. But the other three dimension are correctly aligned. I was standing where they stood, touching what they touched, not just reading about it from another part of the world. I’m at the right point in latitude, longitude, and height. It is “just” the wrong time, else I would meet them, but for a single dimension’s difference.

What I’m saying is that we know from Scripture that there are other “places” that contain life. Angels, holy creatures, the righteous dead and so on. They may dwell in the Andromeda galaxy, but my guess is that they are much closer, more convenient to us, so why not a different dimension? It’s not like an angel needs to pack a lunch to get here.

We were created as three dimensional creatures and there was no need for God to explain the eighth dimension or the eleventh dimension to us. In fact, even today, we cannot disprove, prove or understand the higher dimensions with any certainty.¹ There are sights and sounds beyond the range or capability of humans to experience, so how can science describe them, let alone discover them? But the fact that the Bible is silent on these states does not mean they do not exist. It means that God only gave us what we needed in this life to get by. We humans can perceive an estimated ten million colors. We don’t need more rods and cones to see infrared or ultraviolet colors as well as our familiar spectrum of light (though some insects or animals do) to be more than successful in life. Mosquitos can see infrared, which is produced by body heat. This allows them to “zero in” on us. Microwaves, television screens and radar all can be thought of in colors beyond our perceptual range. Why would Moses, Jesus or the Apostle Peter bother to go into what would be twentieth centuries discoveries? This was probably not even revealed to them.

However, it is possible that the higher dimensions figure prominently in our belief system as far as where Heaven and Hell are, where angels come from, where demons wander and so on. I’m not sure anyone believes that Heaven is in space and Hades is in the earth’s core, but who knows? I do know that demons do not travel in space ships and I can rule that out completely. I believe that the God we know is present (nay, omnipresent) in whatever the future holds. Thus, King David writes (Psalm 139:7,8):

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.“

I’ve chosen the conjunction “if” as the title of this post. “If” unidentified anomalous phenomena are from elsewhere than Earth; if they originate in another dimension; “If” some astounding revelation about life off planet is approaching or, “if” we go here or there in space ourselves, to the moon, Mars and beyond, God is nevertheless there with us. These life forms would be created beings as we are, and we have nothing to fear from them, though we should exercise prudence.

Blinded by the light

We could not survive as we are if we were suddenly pulled into the fourth dimension. Our muscles and organs and our senses all fit into a three dimensional, or three-sided container we call our body. If all of a sudden, our three-sided body finds itself in a four “sided” world, that means in crude terms that we are now missing one “side” of our body (the fourth side.)

The first thing we might notice in the few seconds we might survive is blinding light.

Light would be able to hit your retina from multiple directions without being filtered by the iris or focused by the cornea and lens, making your eyes little more useful than a simple light/dark sensor.”

Also, our blood pressure, which is maintained at a certain level within our tightly-sealed “three-sided bodies” suddenly falls to zero because we’ve been pulled into a four-dimensional world, and, again, now we are missing a “side.” Our blood pours out of the missing side, and our organs do as well. The atoms in our body will lose their coherence and elements like magnesium become noble gases and cannot support life. Oxygen would behave differently and not be able to support life, either. The challenges go on and on.

So, again, we could not live as we are now if we were suddenly pulled into the fourth dimension. But our spirits and our souls which presumably do not need oxygen or blood pressure could. In theory. We believe as Christians that our souls continue after our bodies die. Hypothetically, then, death could be nothing more than moving to the next highest dimension. And in some sense, we are indirectly affected by the fourth dimension as Einstein proved when speaking of time-space.

What might we expect alien life to resemble?

Many alien life forms would likely be primitive, possibly microscopic and limited in their abilities. On earth, we have one-celled life forms and then multicellular lifeforms. There are no known two-cell lifeforms, which in some sense is another example of a missing link. What the life would look like depends on the conditions that a certain planet has to offer. Our planet offers carbon. Other planets have a preponderance of silicon or ammonia which can more or less support the emergence of life. You can have a “water world” where life is peculiarly adapted for a marine environment and possibly great pressures as well. People on earth in the Middle Ages believed that salamanders lived in fire. Perhaps this is a possibility as well. Intelligent plants on a distant world might exists. For examples, on our planet, trees are capable of much more than we might imagine.

It’s possible that aliens might be dangerous. Science Fiction write H.G. Wells wrote a book called “War of the Worlds” where Martians attack Earth, killing millions of people only to be destroyed themselves by common bacteria, harmless to humans, but deadly to them. That’s one way of looking at it.

A relatively new hypothesis termed The Dark Forest warns that we should not broadcast our existence into space, attracting unwanted attention from potentially hostile aliens. This theory has come to the forefront with the series “Three-Body Problem” available on Netflix.

Then, there is the question of how to communicate with aliens. They probably don’t speak English like the aliens on Star Trek. Under the hypothesis that alien civilizations have wheels (to move things and turn equipment), some suggest transmitting 3.141 to them. We believe it is a universal ratio. However. a reply of 3.141 would not be a correct response. Rather, something would just be parroting what we are transmitting. The “correct” answer would be “592” which are the next three digits, but is it really logical to expect this? I mean, any alien civilization would be . . . alien! Who knows for sure what we might expect?

If you want to dig a little deeper, you can find a good article here.

How should we respond to extraterrestrial or interdimensional life?

Many people wring their hands in fear at the thought of first contact with a being from another world. Perhaps this is because we cannot forget the barbarism with which we treat ourselves. Tamlin Magee writing for the BBC notes: “A clue for how we might treat aliens we ever do have contact with may lie in the rights we’ve afforded non-human species on our planet.” Take, for example, the Armenian Genocide:

“The Armenian genocide refers to the physical annihilation of ethnic Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from spring 1915 through autumn 1916. There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the Empire. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide.”

Then, there was the Holocaust which roughly coincided with World War II. An estimated six million people died there. During the 1970’s, Pol Pot, the ruler of Kampuchea (Cambodia) oversaw the deaths of up to 2,000,000 people, or 24% of the population in that country. In Africa (Rwanda) in the Spring of 1994, more than 500,000 members of the Tutsi tribe were exterminated. If we do this to our own species, how can we expect more consideration from alien civilizations?

Not everyone fears the “first contact.” It is popular for some people to imagine some sort of “United Federation of Planets” that hope to teach us peaceful ways while eliminating cancer and doing us other paternal favors in the process. At Malestrom AFB (mentioned above) in 1967, a UFO/UAP was reported to have “switched off” ten nuclear warheads. If that happened today, perhaps at the hands of a Russian drone, that could be a real problem. So, in some sense, it doesn’t matter where these “things” are coming from if they are downgrading our deterrence capabilities or we cannot defend against them. But some UFO fans take heart when they hear this, because they say we are being spared from some nuclear holocaust. Personally, I don’t place must faith in this hypothesis.

A first contact is not the end of the world. We would still have to work, have bills to pay. Babies would be born and people would die of natural causes. No doubt life would not be the same in some fundamental sense, but it would go on nevertheless.

Could aliens have a notion of sin?

As far as alien life goes, one problem Christians might have here is the problem of thinking “small.” Skeptics wonder why God would choose small, insignificant tribe among fledging civilizations, on a tiny planet, in a nondescript solar system, in one of perhaps millions of galaxies to which to reveal Himself. Peter L. Berger writing in “American Interest” in an essay called “Do extraterrestrial aliens have original sin?” suggests thinking of God and Jesus as Pantocrator, of the Creator and Redeemer of all the universe, rather than just the people of Earth. For those who are unfamiliar with the doctrine of original sin, original sin preposes that there was not sin nor evil in the universe that God created, until Adam and Eve transgressed. That act set into motion an entirely separate quantum reality that would not exist today had Adam and Eve remained faithful to God’s injunction. As a result creation needed to be redeemed, or brought back to its original state. Yet, the need for a redeemer suggests that there is something that needs redemption. Berger concludes by noting “. . . if such beings do exist, and if they are subject to death and are capable of evil, they will need some sort of redemption.” In that case, why not Jesus?

What of other sentient creatures on earth? St. Anthony recalled meeting a faun one day while on a journey. When he asked the half man, half goat who–or what–he was, the faun replied:

“‘I am a mortal being and one of those inhabitants of the desert whom the Gentiles deluded by various forms of error worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs, and Incubi. I am sent to represent my tribe. We pray you in our behalf to entreat the favour of your Lord and ours, who, we have learned, came once to save the world, and ‘whose sound has gone forth into all the earth.‘”

Author C.S. Lewis took this same theme and applied it to a fantasy world called Narnia. Narnia was a world governed to a large extent by animals who were captive to sin. . .original sin. To these talking beavers, fauns, goats, centaurs and others creatures, it was only fitting that their Redeemer appear as an animal, himself (in this case a Lion.)

In John 10:16 Jesus says “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.” The classical. interpretation is that Jesus was referring to Gentiles (i.e., non-Jews) who were scattered across the planet, but couldn’t it also mean other life forms who were scattered across the galaxy? There is nothing in the verse to forbid this.

Extraterrestrials–if they exist–are almost certainly created beings. And they are likely to be mortal as well. Mortality in some sense supposes fallibility and that might lead to or be a consequence of sin, since the wages of sin is death as St. Paul puts it (Romans 6:23.) This is because sin has a corrosive effect on our health even as cholesterol has (though I’m not suggesting we should give up eating chips.). Eventually, we die.

AFTERWORD

So, I will likely tune into the hearings next month (particularly the House of Representative’s hearing) because it will be a pleasant diversion from U.S. election politics. I will listen attentively as a juror might listen to a witness in a trial. But absent any physical proof, such as a piece of metal containing two or three hitherto unknown elements, or a “ray gun,” I will not get too excited. At the moment, there are bigger fish to fry down here on Earth.

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Footnotes

¹Most scientists agree when one talks about space, (planets, comets, galaxies, etc.) though there are differences and heated debates about dark matter, whether the universe which is currently expanding will collapse on itself at some point in time and so on. When one such as I mention dimensions, all bets are off. No one does or should doubt that we have at the very least three dimensions, and most scientists and mathematicians admit to a fourth dimension as Einstein spoke of, to which we only have a limited access to (i.e., time.). Whether there are more than four dimensions and what the function of each is remains an academic exercise, because we are not capable of empirically or experimentally experiencing or discovering additional dimensions. We can neither prove nor disprove them. Those who support a fifth or tenth or even a twentieth dimension do so on the basis of mathematical modeling and in their pursuit for a “Theory of Everything.” So, anyone of any reputation who speaks authoritatively of more than four dimensions is on shakey ground, even if they have a Nobel Prize in Physics.