Christianity would struggle with proof of aliens, proff tells space conference

[Lisa]

Did Jesus die for Klingons too? Christianity would struggle with proof of alien life, professor tells space conferenceBy Gavin Allen

Last updated at 4:27 PM on 3rd October 2011

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A Christian professor has told a U.S. Government-backed conference on space travel that the discovery of aliens would lead to significant problems for his own religion.
In a speech entitled 'Did Jesus die for Klingons too?', German academic Christian Weidemann outlined the possible ramifications that the ultimate space discovery would engender.
Speaking at the 100 Year Starship Symposium in Orlando Florida, Professor Weidemann also attempted to outline how the inevitable theological conflict might be resolved.

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Weidemann, a professor at the Ruhr-University Bochum, said that the death of Christ, some 2,000 years ago, was designed to save all creation.
However, the whole of creation, as defined by scientists, includes 125billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy.
That means that if intelligent life exists on other planets, then Jesus or God would have to have visited them too, and sacrificed himself equally for Martian-kind as well as mankind.
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The alternative, posits Weidemann, is that Jesus chose earthlings as the single race to save and abandoned every other life form in the galaxy.
Or, it could have been because humans were the only race who had sinned and required 'saving', said Weidemann, who added: 'You can grasp the conflict.'
'If there are extra-terrestrial intelligent beings at all, it is safe to assume that most of them are sinners too,' he said, according to Space.com.
 Are they out there? The Darpa-backed 100 Year Starship is designed to engender a deep space programme and alien discoveries could result from that
  Science v religion: Professor Christian Weidemann, right, gave a speech to the symposium, wondering loud if Jesus died for the people of other worlds too

'If so, did Jesus save them too? My position is no. If so, our position among intelligent beings in the universe would be very exceptional.'
Among Weidemann's suggestions as to how Jesus and God may have tackled the issue of visiting other alien planets, he argues it is possible God could have sent multiple incarnations of Himself into space, with one attending each inhabited planet.
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS THE 100 YEAR STARSHIP?What is the vision behind the 100 Year Starship?
It is is about more than building a spacecraft or any one specific technology. Through this effort, Darpa seeks to inspire several generations to commit to the research and development of breakthrough technologies and cross-cutting innovations across myriad disciplines such as physics, mathematics, engineering, biology, economics, and psychological, social, political and cultural sciences. The goal is to pursue long-distance space travel while delivering ancillary results along the way that will benefit mankind.

Who is funding the 100YSS?
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the primary funding agency together with the support of NASA Ames Research Center.

What does Darpa expect to get out of this program?
Darpa contends that the useful, anticipated and unanticipated consequences of programs such as the 100 Year Starship will have real and direct benefits for the Department of Defense and to NASA. Technology ranging from robotics to the Internet have been spinoff results of innovative cutting edge research such as propulsion, energy storage and transfer, etc.
When will it end?
The 100 Year Starship Study will end on 11/11/11.

Source: 100yss.com

Given scientists' best guesses as to how many civilisations there may be in space, that would require around 250 incarnations of God to exist at any one time.
However, this theory would also lead to much beard-scratching among Christians as God is assumed to have taken on corporeal form as Jesus, making the multiple-Gods theory difficult to absorb into prescribed Christian thinking.
Prof. Weidemann's speech is highly theoretical and based on two very different instances of faith, which means one could be forgiven for dismissing it.
However, the 100 Year Starship Symposium is not a conference for those on the fringes of society.
The event is sponsored by U.S. defence department Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and is designed to further the discussion of issues surrounding long-distance space travel.
It is an off-shoot of the 100 Year Starship programme, which seeks to inspire a new space race using contributions from the various worlds of science, mathematics, engineering, biology, economics and the social sciences too.
However, the conflict of theology would be more of a problem for Christians than it would for other religions.
Hindus believe in multiple gods, and would therefore not have an issue with Weidemann's suggestion about multiple incarnations of God, and in the Muslim world Muhammad was not God incarnate, simple a prophet, which would also allow for the 'multiple God theory'.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2044730/Did-Jesus-die-Klingons-Christian-Weidemanns-speech-100-Year-Starship-Symposium.html#ixzz1Zjf37iHd

[PeanutGallery]

Luke 3 gives the geneology of Christ all the way down to Adam.
Christ, the seed of Adam, died for the sins of men.
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See what's happening here? They are positing a connection between man and aliens.

[Psalm 51:17]

Luke 3 gives the geneology of Christ all the way down to Adam.
Christ, the seed of Adam, died for the sins of men.
-------------------------
See what's happening here? They are positing a connection between man and aliens.

Also, Genesis 1 says God created the earth, but it said NOTHING about "creating other planets".

[Mark]

Obama: new religions will arise after contact with aliens [Watch]
Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
5-7 minutes

In a spate of recent interviews, former President Barack Obama repeatedly discusses UFOs. Obama claims that concrete proof of extraterrestrial life would not change any of his beliefs but would probably lead to the creation of “new religions.” What Obama is clearly not aware of is that the Bible already addresses the subject.
Obama: extraterrestrials and new religions

“It’s interesting. It wouldn’t change my politics at all,” Obama said in a podcast interview on the Ezra Klein show last Tuesday. “Because my entire politics is premised on the fact that we are these tiny organisms on this little speck floating in the middle of space.”

Normally, such conjecture by a former president would be considered decidedly abnormal however next month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Defense will be required to provide the intelligence and armed services committees of Congress with an unclassified report on “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

“The differences we have on this planet are real, they’re profound, and they cause tragedy as well as joy,” Obama said. “The best thing we can do is treat each other better, because we’re all we got.”

“I would hope that the knowledge that there were aliens out there would solidify people’s sense that what we have in common is a little more important,” he said

“But no doubt there would be immediate arguments about like, well, we need to spend a lot more money on weapons systems to defend ourselves. New religions would pop up,” the former president continued. “And who knows what kind of arguments we get into. We’re good at manufacturing arguments for each other.”

Obama does, in fact, believe that the sightings are genuine and may indicate alien origins. In another recent television appearance on the Late Late Show, Obama said as much:

“What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there are, there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know, I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”
New technology, Star Wars, and new religions

Though it may seem counterintuitive that proof of aliens would cause people to turn to new religions, religions have cropped up on flimsier bases. Star Wars was not only a wildly successful cinematic franchise but it also led to the establishment of a Jedi religion with hundreds of thousands of adherents. The development of computer-based artificial intelligence was incorporated into the transhumanist movement which is a strange mix of science, philosophy, and religion with its own vision of a computer messiah.
Extraterrestrials and the Bible

But the concept of extraterrestrials is no challenge for Bible-based belief. There is even a reference, albeit vague, to extraterrestrials in the Bible. The book of Judges 5:20-23 mentions the ambiguous ‘Meroz’, whose inhabitants have free will, and can choose whether or not to heed the call of God.

In his book, Chariot of the Gods, author Erich Von Daniken hypothesized that the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of a celestial chariot was actually an extraterrestrial spacecraft. 

Still others suggest that the Nephilim (literally “the fallen”) described in the pre-diluvian sixth chapter of Genesis were, in fact, extraterrestrials attracted to the daughters of men.

So it is entirely reasonable to conjecture that the astounding announcement that extraterrestrials exist would send spiritual shockwaves around the world. Exotheology is a word that sends the etymological geek-meter spinning, and very few can claim to have even a passing knowledge of this esoteric field. Dr. David Weintraub, professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University and the author of Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It?, is uniquely qualified to answer questions on the subject. His book presents a staggering array of opinions, ranging from Aristotle’s premise that extraterrestrials cannot possibly exist, to the more recent Enrico Fermi, who, over 600 years later, came to the same conclusion.

“Judaism accepts the possibility of extraterrestrial life. At this level, Judaism is similar to most, but not all other major religions. A few other religions clearly demand and embrace the idea that extraterrestrial life exists.  Except for a few extreme kabbalistic interpretations of a few passages in the Talmud, Judaism does not go that far,” Dr. Weintraub told Israel365 News.

The professor states that Jewish theology may actually require a belief in extraterrestrials since “there are no limits on the power of the creator. Thus, for Jews to say that no life beyond the Earth could possibly exist would be unacceptable, as such an idea would appear to place shackles on God’s creative power…the universe belongs to God (or is God) and God can do what God wishes to do with the universe.”

In any case, Professor Weintraub feels that contact with extraterrestrials will not affect Judaism or other earthly religions in any significant manner.

“Maimonides never considered man that important in the larger universe, though all other medieval and most present-day Jewish thinkers have argued that God is primarily concerned with the affairs of humankind,” he said, referring to a renowned twelfth-century Jewish thinker.

https://www.israel365news.com/192192/obama-new-religions-will-arise-after-contact-with-aliens-watch/