A Biblical Perspective on Extraterrestrial Life

A Biblical Perspective on Extraterrestrial Life
Since the UFO craze began in the late 40’s and early 50’s, there have been some few prominent Christian ministers and theologians who have ventured to guess at whether or not intelligent biological life exists elsewhere in the universe. Successful world evangelist Billy Graham made some statements affirming his belief in aliens in his book Angels, God’s Secret Agents. Renowned Christian philosopher William Lane Craig speculated that aliens may exist in the August 2008 episode of his “Reasonable Faith” podcast.
On that episode, Dr. Craig made the very relevant point that whether or not aliens, in the classic science fiction meaning of the word, exist has no real bearing on the Christian faith. If little green men should touch down tomorrow on the White House lawn, all the premises of Christianity would hang together just as they did prior.
That said, there is a fairly solid case to be made against the existence of intelligent aliens if one takes the Bible to be truthful.
The first argument comes from the creation account. This is a much debated account both within and outside of Christian circles, but the gist of the account tends to be that the earth is the central focus of creation, with special emphasis on human beings themselves. If this seems unlikely in the vastness of the universe, keep in mind that size does not necessarily equate with significance - as any particle physicist could tell you. This point alone does not make a strong argument against other intelligent life forms in the universe, but when added up with the whole of the argument, it hangs together.
The second point flows out of the first. If taken at face value, the creation account (Genesis chapters one and two) indicates that the world, and the universe around it were created in perfection. This is not the picture given, however, in the book of Romans where Paul says:
“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
What happened between the creation of the Genesis account and this creation of the Romans account that groans in corruption? What happened was a fairly significant event Christians refer to as “The Fall.” This occurrence, in which humans rebelled against God, not only affected human nature but, according to Paul, affected all of creation. In fact, no matter how one views scriptural accounts, it is clear that the entire universe flows from order to entropy in such a way that the entire structure is headed toward an extinction event that scientists call “heat death.” Paul, who could hardly have known about the ins and outs of entropy and heat death in the first century, does a fairly good job of describing just that in the Romans passage. This flow toward entropy, which the Bible attributes to the Fall of Man, would include any poor aliens that happened to be elsewhere in the universe. This hardly seems fair if humans were the ones who rebelled and not the aliens.
In fact, the entire redemptive story is decidedly human focused. God came in human form, died, rose, and ascended to heaven where he will reign for eternity in a human body. In this story human beings appear to get special treatment over and above extra terrestrials.
Finally, scripture makes it fairly clear that all of creation is scheduled to be destroyed (because of its corruption due to The Fall) and replaced by a newly perfect heaven and earth. These hypothetical aliens would presumably be swept away in this fiery holocaust without a second thought.
Now it should be made clear at this point that the Bible certainly does affirm the existence of a sizable number of spiritual beings that are both intelligent and fairly alien to humans, and while these beings have interactions with the physical realm throughout scripture, it would be a stretch to equate them with science fiction aliens. The Bible and the Christian faith don’t seem to leave much room for extra-terrestrials.