Just as there were primitive views of the cosmos in past ages, so too are there primitive views within the religious community. Please allow me to elaborate...
The first thing I want to clarify is that "nothing is impossible with God". Every time we wonder if God could do this, or state He would have to do things this way, we are placing limitations on a being who we cannot possibly begin to imagine or understand with our finite minds an unlimited, immortal, that always was and always shall be. Even the imaginings of "great" scientific, philosophical, and scholars of a multitude of disciplines cannot even imagine infinity. There is no quantifying infinity...
Further, some of this type of theorizing may be comfortable for some, interesting for others, and still fascinating -even addictive- for others. When the cosmological community can do more that guess, can truly quantify infinity, and print the pictures, produce the raw data, and fully demonstrate (without theory, speculation, or educated guesses) what they only imagine today maybe, just maybe, the primitive views of today will once and for all be put to rest.
Throughout my 30 odd years of education I read many, many, many statements that contained the ominous and all encompassing "theory" as a foundational premise or even as an axiom. Someone needs to look up the definition of theory...
Next, let's just pretend (another word for theoretical things), that God did manifest Himself throughout the universe (which we cannot fully wrap our minds around) why would that be difficult for a being that we equally cannot fully wrap our minds around? If further pretend to take infinity and multiply it by one trillion lifetimes, divided by the speed of light and add the average human IQ, then elevate that to the 10000th power, we might be able to understand all of this when divided the largest most absurd number we can further invent. In other words, we can imagine and pretend; we can toot our own horns and make claims of great knowledge; or we can accept that infinity cannot be understood nor can a God who is also infinite,omnipresent, and without any conceptual bounds we can find or imagine.
Still within our pretense, we ask if God could be present at all of the inhabited worlds, the reality, the real answer is yes...
Are there in fact other worlds with "intelligent" life? If there are, I would hope they would have pity on us...
Since religion is simply anything you want to believe or make up then of course aliens can be accomadated after the fact. How can anything be more bizarre than what religions claim is truth anyway?
LOL
Yeah, but they want to get their story straight so it is more convincing to the masses when and if they need to retool the belief system to try and explain an extraterrestrial being.
The "essence" of Jesus Christ is a constant "truth" that is applicable to all social orders that are existing in a world that feeds to exist and are subject to physical death . Such orders include Earthlings, Klingons, Romulans or whoever. They may merely know their icon as @?!%. Like beliefs of any other religions may also be applied.
What a small minded people we are to actaully believe that we humans are the only life in the Universe. How smug we are to believe that the Bible would give us all the knowlege of God. As if, God couldn't or wouldnt have something to do with life in the Universe Other Than Our Precious Earth. Maybe, Just Maybe, God didn't think it important for us to know about every single thing there is to know about...maybe there are some things we need to find out for ourselves...just maybe...you think?
First of all, even if we do get a visit from some advanced beings that never have in their history believed in any external invisible unobservable being such as God. Our religions will have no problem lying and rationalizing themselves around the problem since everything about all religions is nothing but fallacy anyway.
Another problem I have is where did God come from anyway and what medium does he exist in, logically he has to be somewhere but that "place" he is in cannot mingle or react in any way with our world. Why didn't God do all his things in the same medium which he exists in? There really is no good reason to create the material Universe and what is the point of making it so huge?
So here we have a God that sees, hears and knows everything who creates a Universe, creates Adam & Eve, knows what they are going to do and lets it happen just so he can punish them, then mankind continues to **** him off with behavior he does not approve of but also knows exactly what they are going to do so it is no surprise to him but he feels he needs to do something anyway. Then God has a brilliant idea in order to help mankind I'll disguise myself as a man, get born by a virgin just to make it even more mysterious then wait until I'm 30 years old, get the authorities so pissed off at me that that beat the living hell out of me and nail me to a cross. I will then rise from the dead after 3 days and tell the people that I died for their sins and all is forgiven by my sacrifice, but on the other hand if they sin they will go to hell, anyway. What the hell is this? Was this the best scenario God could muster up? Of course not, it is a story that man made up to serve his own ego. Get it? I'm so important that God died for me. I say whatever power created all there is never going to become a man and certainly men will never ever be capable of harming that power in any way. The Christ story is rubbish as are all other present and past religions. Grow up! Get a life and deal with reality, it is all there is, learn to work with it and make the world a better palace.
No one knows if there is a much more intelligent form of life out there than us. They would have to be in order to have the intelligence to get here. What if they thought of humans the way we think of cows and wanted to harvest and eat our meat? Would we believe that God is good? If cows had a big enough brain, would they think God is good? Would there be a separate heaven for the smarter life forms or would we go to the same heaven as the ones who ate us? Truth is stranger than fiction, and we don't know a lot more than we do know. Do we have tunnel vision, possibly?
Geez, this is the best answer Protestant "theologians" can produce? Give me a break! A huge chunk of the New Testament suggests an answer to this. The assumed position of early Christians was that Jesus died for the historically Hebrew people only. The Apostle Paul's whole thrust was to convince the world that the picture is bigger than just one ethnic group. Non-jews as well as Jews could find salvation in the Messiah, Jesus. In fact, the Apostle Paul argued, the true member of the "chosen" race is a member because they believe, not because they belong to a certain ethnic group (Romans 9:6). So IF there is sentient life out there, it is not beyond the scope of the Christian faith, that ONE sacrifice (Jesus on planet Earth) is effective beyond the narrow perspective we have. Not just the ethnically Jewish race, but Gentiles as well... not just the ethnically human, but all creation as well ???? Makes sense to me! And in case someone holds the argument that other species would have no knowledge of salvation accomplished on another planet, take a look at accounts of ethnic groups that first heard the Gospel. It was common that there was some sense of the Salvation Story before they ever heard it in detail from missionaries (e.g. "Peace Child" by Don Richardson). If this is true, I just hope we Christians can learn to quit being so ethno-centric! The world (or the cosmos) does not revolve around our tiny preconceptions!) All I can say about the enduring nature of Christianity is.... "LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!"
It's true that salvation stories were present in some sense in other cultures that had no contact with Christians. For example, the Egyptians had a story remarkably similar to the story of Jesus right down to the virgin birth. Of course, this story was around centuries before Jesus supposedly existed. As were most of the others. The name "Jesus" and associated details was a Jonny-come-lately version of a very old story.
@rcjsd, thank you and amen. As jesus taught, even those who know not of me. Yet who still act in a Godly fashion. Shall have a place in my kingdom. God created all of the HEAVENS and the earth. He has always done so much with so little. To prove it was of him. We do not have the ability to understand his wisdom. When we accend into heaven in our spirital form. We shall understand and see all.
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The first thing I want to clarify is that "nothing is impossible with God". Every time we wonder if God could do this, or state He would have to do things this way, we are placing limitations on a being who we cannot possibly begin to imagine or understand with our finite minds an unlimited, immortal, that always was and always shall be. Even the imaginings of "great" scientific, philosophical, and scholars of a multitude of disciplines cannot even imagine infinity. There is no quantifying infinity...
Further, some of this type of theorizing may be comfortable for some, interesting for others, and still fascinating -even addictive- for others. When the cosmological community can do more that guess, can truly quantify infinity, and print the pictures, produce the raw data, and fully demonstrate (without theory, speculation, or educated guesses) what they only imagine today maybe, just maybe, the primitive views of today will once and for all be put to rest.
Throughout my 30 odd years of education I read many, many, many statements that contained the ominous and all encompassing "theory" as a foundational premise or even as an axiom. Someone needs to look up the definition of theory...
Next, let's just pretend (another word for theoretical things), that God did manifest Himself throughout the universe (which we cannot fully wrap our minds around) why would that be difficult for a being that we equally cannot fully wrap our minds around? If further pretend to take infinity and multiply it by one trillion lifetimes, divided by the speed of light and add the average human IQ, then elevate that to the 10000th power, we might be able to understand all of this when divided the largest most absurd number we can further invent. In other words, we can imagine and pretend; we can toot our own horns and make claims of great knowledge; or we can accept that infinity cannot be understood nor can a God who is also infinite,omnipresent, and without any conceptual bounds we can find or imagine.
Still within our pretense, we ask if God could be present at all of the inhabited worlds, the reality, the real answer is yes...
Are there in fact other worlds with "intelligent" life? If there are, I would hope they would have pity on us...
LOL
They're working at the Taco Tico down the street.
.
Another problem I have is where did God come from anyway and what medium does he exist in, logically he has to be somewhere but that "place" he is in cannot mingle or react in any way with our world. Why didn't God do all his things in the same medium which he exists in? There really is no good reason to create the material Universe and what is the point of making it so huge?
So here we have a God that sees, hears and knows everything who creates a Universe, creates Adam & Eve, knows what they are going to do and lets it happen just so he can punish them, then mankind continues to **** him off with behavior he does not approve of but also knows exactly what they are going to do so it is no surprise to him but he feels he needs to do something anyway. Then God has a brilliant idea in order to help mankind I'll disguise myself as a man, get born by a virgin just to make it even more mysterious then wait until I'm 30 years old, get the authorities so pissed off at me that that beat the living hell out of me and nail me to a cross. I will then rise from the dead after 3 days and tell the people that I died for their sins and all is forgiven by my sacrifice, but on the other hand if they sin they will go to hell, anyway.
What the hell is this? Was this the best scenario God could muster up?
Of course not, it is a story that man made up to serve his own ego. Get it? I'm so important that God died for me.
I say whatever power created all there is never going to become a man and certainly men will never ever be capable of harming that power in any way. The Christ story is rubbish as are all other present and past religions. Grow up! Get a life and deal with reality, it is all there is, learn to work with it and make the world a better palace.