No, the Bible doesn't say aliens don't exist
Ask a church receptionist #4
Welcome to another installment of Ask a church receptionist, a monthly column where I answer your questions about the Bible, Christianity, and how to fold a fitted sheet (you can’t).
Dear church receptionist,
Why do I keep hearing “fundamentalist” types (for lack of a better word, I guess) say that belief in aliens is incompatible with Christianity? Is there something in the Bible that says life on other planets doesn’t exist?
—the “I” in “team”
Dear Michael Jordan (I assume),
This is one of those questions that puzzles me as well, since the Bible says nothing at all about the question of whether there’s life on other planets—which makes sense, since no pre-modern cosmology I’m aware of envisioned the planets as earthlike things that could be lived on. (Pick any ancient astronomer you want, and you’ll find a near-universal belief that planets and stars were all just incorruptible spheres of some “quintessence” circling the earth forever.) Nor does the question of whether there’s life on other planets strike me as something worth having a firm opinion on: until and unless I get abducted and probed, the question of whether extraterrestrials exist is something with very little bearing on my life.
That being said, while I enjoy beating up on fundamentalist strawmen as much as anybody, maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt for a sec: It’s possible their concern is less about the factual question of whether aliens exist, and more about the practical reality that obsessive belief in aliens can lead people down rabbit trails to things like death cults, Scientology, and joining stupid Facebook groups. It’s an understandable concern, but it’s also an entirely different question; information can be dangerous without being factually wrong. Belief in essential oils tends to make people join up with MLMs, but that’s not an argument that essential oils don’t exist.
So, do extraterrestrials exist? I don’t know (and I don’t particularly care), but I do know that all the purported biblical arguments I’ve encountered against their existence suck. Usually these arguments fall into one of two categories, which I’ll get into after the break:
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1. “Aliens don’t exist because the Bible doesn’t mention them!”
I once overheard an angry neopagan type who, arguing with an evangelical preacher, demanded to know, “Why isn’t Lilith in the Bible???” He was factually wrong about this—Lilith (an ancient near-eastern demon that some later sources describe as the original wife of Adam) actually gets a shoutout in Isaiah 34:14—but more importantly, he was missing the point. His argument, if there was one, amounted to “If the Bible is true, why are there THINGS IT DOESN’T MENTION???” It should go without saying that “true” and “talks incessantly about everything” are not synonymous (a lesson I learned from a high school girlfriend).
This anti-alien argument is essentially the same thing, just in reverse: “If thing is real, WHY DOESN’T THE BIBLE MENTION IT???” But of course there are all sorts of real things the Bible doesn’t mention: you won’t find kangaroos or Lao Tzu or third-wave ska in the Bible, either. The Bible never presents itself as an exhaustive catalogue of everything in existence—and frankly, it’d be awfully weird (and thousands of pages longer) if it did.
There’s a slightly stronger version of this argument that centers it on the creation account in Genesis 1, arguing that the author there appears to be listing everything God created, and he doesn’t mention life on other planets. But of course, there are all sorts of things Genesis 1 doesn’t specifically mention, either, including the planets themselves. (And it’s not like ancient people mistook the planets for stars—anyone with eyes can look at the sky and see that five1 of the shiny dots move out of sync with the rest of them.)
So I don’t find that argument particularly good. The other one I’ve encountered is a little more interesting (though not much more convincing):
2. “Aliens don’t exist because how would they fit into God’s plan for salvation???”
This argument mostly applies to aliens that sci-fi nerds would call “sentient” (but they actually mean “sapient,” for the record): extraterrestrials who have a humanlike capacity for thinking, feeling, and making moral choices. “If humans fell into sin and needed Jesus to save them,” goes the thinking, “did aliens fall into sin??? And what then???” There’s a certain kind of person this argument will appeal to—namely the sort of person who mistakes their own lack of imagination for proof of something. But just because you can’t think of an answer doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
For a couple of possible answers, we need look no further than the patron saint of Christian wannabe writers himself, C. S. Lewis, who spent most of his fiction-writing career dreaming up answers to this exact question. In his Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet et. al.), Lewis hypothesized that earth was the only planet that ever fell into sin—a galactic armpit haunted by literal demons and uniquely full of beings who lie, cheat, steal, and think Pop-Tarts are food. When the corrupted earthlings first land on Mars, there’s a general there-goes-the-neighborhood vibe about the whole thing.
In his later Narnia series (which is admittedly about parallel universes, not other planets, but come on, it’s all basically the same), he took the opposite tack, acknowledging that other worlds might need redemption—but again, the solution was pretty straightforward: he turned Jesus into a local and killed him again.
And you obviously don’t have to accept either one of those answers; I only bring them up to make the point that there are possible answers to the question. If you want something even simpler, you could just go with what St. Paul writes in Romans chapter 8 about Christ’s death and resurrection redeeming the whole of creation, and leave it at that. Or—and prepare to have your mind blown—it’s also okay to just admit you don’t know the answer to a question!
And if all this is leaving you wondering, “Why does this guy want me to believe in aliens so badly???” let me once again reiterate that I have no opinion on the existence of aliens and I really don’t care if anyone else believes in them, as long as they’re not using them as an excuse to start cults or give Lucasfilm more of their money. I mostly just hate crummy arguments and unjustified certitude (and honestly, that pet peeve is at least sixty percent of what this blog is about).
Down here on the Silent Planet (and forever trying to hold my tongue),
—the church receptionist 🕹🌙🧸
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While there are officially eight planets, only five of them can be seen with the naked eye. Or six, if you’re willing to look down.
Great post. Perhaps I missed an earlier post of yours, but were you at one time a church receptionist? Or is that just the name of the article series? Either way, keep going.
Not sure what it is about Western Christianity and arguing about subjects that aren't particularly important, but here we are (I write this as a Christian who lives in the West).