Drake Equation, Alien Abduction and, Is Jesus an Alien? Questions a Christian would not dare explore, but I do

I have been watching much sci-fi lately and one of the most troubling areas of exploration of sci-fi, i.e. if one gets past the monsters and the fight scenes, is the question are we alone? Are we the only intelligent life on this universe? I think this question requires exploring just as much as the profound existential questions that has troubled humanity ever since they discovered that life is not just about hunting, propagation and war, or in the more contemporary setting, life is not all about birth, school, work and death. There must be something more to this world rather than the archaic thinking that this big, elaborate and incomprehensible expanse we call the universe was created for one single life form, the miserable human bean…err…I mean human beings.

In mathematics the probability is enough to convince even the most skeptical skeptics that there is other sentient life in the universe. The most famous mathematical expression that shows the probability of other sentient life existing in the universe is the Drake Equation. N = R* f_p n_e f_l f_i f_c L Click on the video for Dr. Sagan's explanation of the equation. 

Though most of the alien researchers are being ridiculed as nuts and insane with the exceptions of the astronomers and the astrophysicist with their equations and hypotheses which some how gives them credibility, yet the exploration requires serious contemplation because the realization that there are intelligent life form other than us will create another paradigm shifts or a Copernican revolution that will move our intellectual equilibrium as well a our egotistical belief that we are special and by default the owner of the universe. Paradigm shifts in history maybe observed as from a theocentric (God centered) to an anthropocentric (humanity centered) to a non exclusivist and this time to an inclusivist understanding (we have neighbors in outer space! It’s just that they are too far away) that we maybe just one of the many life existing in this universe.

Will this affect our self understanding and even our understanding of God?

Though humanity by its nature is a xenophobic creature, I think we will have no problem encountering aliens if we would get past the Roswell and H.G. Wellsians misconceptions of aliens as hydrocephalic belligerent creatures out to destroy and conquer this planet. Aliens that are so far ahead of us technologically but are not even aware that germs and (or computer) viruses exists which may annihilate them in a sneeze. I am with Isaac Asimov in the belief that alien abductions and alien invasions are too below the aliens to even conceive to do. Why would they abduct people and invade this miserable planet if they are too ahead of our technological development? Why would alien abduct humans and study us if they could establish direct contact? Would they waste all that energy just to abduct a few individuals? For what? And it is really nothing but pure egotism and delusions to think that aliens may be interested in us.  It is even more presumptuous to think that aliens think and behave the way we, humans, behave-warlike and destructive out to conquer anthills.... Anyways…

Christian theology is not ready to tackle this alien question because Christian theology is grounded upon the revelation and the understanding that God’s life and existence revolves around humanity. Though the belief is the humanity is for God, in actuality, and if you really think about it, the relationship is reversed. (Feuerbach may have a point here).  Everything that God designed, created and planned is for the benefit of humanity. We may still call this the humanity-centered cosmology of Christianity (This is my blog, so I will use any terms I like!). Though the destruction of the Christian theocentric view of the world which was brought upon by the skeptics who espoused doubts and denying the truth of experiences and facts that freed humanity from the yoke of ecclesiastical control and restraints and ushered in the modern era in the industrial, economical and especially in the intellectual sphere, humanity has not escaped the belief that he is unique-a one and only begotten son. Of course the skepticism has its culmination in the Humean denial of a God to even the nihilistic destruction of God and religion by Nietszche and the existentialist thinkers who espoused atheism and Sartrean responsibility which freed humanity from the fear and even guilt of atheism. Though I am still on the belief that the atheistic freedom carried with it the unbearable burden of living an absurd and meaningless existence which Nietszche tried to soften by espousing the concept of the Uberman and Sartre’s suggestion that by being free and living an absurd existence, we could create our very meaning for our existence, there is some hope in faith. But of course the realization that we live our lives so that we could have salvation to live an eternal life in heaven has its own absurdities too that is more painful…

Anyway, his provincial outlook that we are God’s one and only begotten son in the universe may have to change to take Paul’s words we should not be confined to Jerusalem, we have to go to Judea, Samaria and all the nations….err…why not to the other life forms… The ladder of consciousness may take another step further directing our scientific as well as our intellectual and even our theological enterprise to get past our understanding of our souls and our confinement of our little planet to the reality that God may have other children and flock outside the fold and outside this planet (no, I’m not losing my mind…).

Of course, with the alien question, the greatest threat and Christian theology’s greatest fears are the repudiation of God’s revelation and the displacement of humanity from God’s universe. (Personally, I, me, and myself alone, believes that the existence of alien life forms or ETs does not, in anyway, endanger God.) The fear is that with the possibility of even thinking that there may be life in the universe other than ours runs counter to God’s special creation of humanity and God’s special revelation . This thinking, unfortunately, may be the last firewall and defense to the acceptance of the probable reality of the existence of alien life forms. This cannot be avoided since Christianity, just like other religions, are built upon special revelations. And special revelations are not open to emendations, they only allow re-interpretations.

Is God an alien? Is Jesus an alien hybrid?

I believe that God will not take it against me to sometime think this way because I believe when he has given me an intellect (distorted to some it may be) God has given me the freedom to think on my own. God has given me the freedom to question, to think, and to even make up my own reality. God will be the last to call me an heretic and insane. Anyway, is God an alien? Yes! Because if we study the Bible, Jesus is always telling us that this is not God’s world. This is not God’s plane of existence. God’s has plans for us, God has created a world with many rooms for us. This is what we look forward, this world is not ours. God will give us a new body, an alien body designed to inhabit a new alien world. By the fact that God cannot show his face to us, gives me inkling that God is an alien-he is not of this world.

Is Jesus an alien-human hybrid? After an introduction into the bloody christological controversies and the mind bending and unintelligible solutions of what is termed as the hypostatic union of natures in Christ, which is really a medieval construct  influenced by the medieval thinking…anyways…maybe its time to look at it through our postmodern eyes and to define terms using our own world...looking through it using the lens of our time.


 I’m having headaches already…

More into the future….