Sci-Fi Christianity

Sci-Fi Christianity, Part III: (Re-)Making Ourselves

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For the preceding post in this series, click here.

I’m a fan of the cyberpunk genre. I grew up playing the Shadowrun tabletop roleplaying game, which probably is what started my love for the genre–it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I started reading the progenitors and great writers of this brand of sci-fi (Stephenson, Gibson and Morgan, for instance).

One of the key aspects of the genre is cyberware (and/or bioware and/or nanotech)–the ability for humans to replace or supplement their physical bodies to achieve superhuman abilities through technology.

Unless you haven’t been paying attention, you know that we’re there in real life–or very close to. Les Baugh, Neil Harbisson and the number of patients with installed brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are proof of this. On the biological side, CRISPR may allow us to undo some of the infelicities of genetic processes, essentially eliminating some genetic disorders or diseases.

So far, these technologies are concerned with restoring lost faculties, but is perfectly conceivable that there will be some willing to lose their meatbody (to use the cyberpunk nomenclature) arm to replace it with one that can perform at a much higher level than the one with which nature provided our subject–and without the constant need to prevent muscle atrophy.

To be clear, these technologies are in their infancy, and we really don’t know yet how far we’ll be able to go in synching man and machine–without sufficient neurological feedback, a cybernetic arm is as much a liability as an asset. Imagine not being able to gauge how hard you’re gripping something when you want to hold that ceramic coffee mug.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the technology described in cyberpunk fiction becomes available. Since we’re in a realm of speculation here, let’s assume that such technology becomes available at a price point that a majority of people can afford it if they want to. Can you imagine the person who treats body modification in the same way he might have treated souping up a street racer or a mudding truck? If the technology is there, it seems rather inevitable to me.

From a Christian perspective, how do we address this potential? How can our theology and desire to follow Christ inform our response?

Well, that depends on the theology, I suppose. The easiest argument, one I expect to be made by many, is that voluntary body modification is an abomination; a rejection of being made “in the image of God” and a rejection of the principle that “our body is a temple.”

But let’s think about those ideas, starting with the latter. Paul’s exhortation that we should view our bodies as the temples of the Lord (in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20) is used as an argument for sexual purity. Leaving the specific context aside for a moment, let’s think about the metaphysical and theological meaning of the statement itself. When we incorporate the sweep of the Gospels, Christ’s reference to his own body as the Temple and his death and resurrection in John 2:21-22, and the promise of the Holy Spirit, the major thrust of such a metaphor is that God enters into us through the Holy Spirit. One valid interpretation of this, yes, is to say that we ought to keep God’s new Temple beautiful and pure just as the Jews did for the Temple in Jerusalem. But isn’t it more important that the statement reminds us that God is always with us, always seeking relationship with us, and is not in some distant place to which we must walk though valleys and over broken hills to commune with? At the end of the day, these interpretations should probably be considered “both/and” rather than “either/or,” but this still leaves us with the necessity of determining the details of how our individual temples to God ought to be kept.

That Genesis tells us that we are made “in the image of God” might provide some interpretative assistance, but we must unlock the secret of this enigma as well. How are we in the image of God? First, we must accept that we are in the image of God in some form, but certainly not in degree. With this understanding, it seems foolish to believe that our being in God’s image is somehow related to our physical form–are we saying that the infinite, sovereign God is shaped like us but moreso? Or bigger?

No, we must look to something more existential to properly understand this question. Is it that we are able to think on a higher level than the rest of Creation? That we may philosophize and theologize? Perhaps, but we must approach such a conclusion with some trepidation, for those abilities ultimately remind us of our finitude and God’s infinitude.

As Paul Tilich writes, “Our power of being is limited. We are a mixture of being and nonbeing. This is precisely what is meant when we say that we are finite. It is man in his finitude who asks the question of being. He who is infinite does not ask the question of being for, as infinite, he has the complete power of being. He is identical with it; he is God” Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, pp. 11-12.

So what must it be, then? It is our power to create, I would argue. We, like God, make meaning in Creation, particularly through the creation of narratives that define us and our world. Unlike God, we do not do so ex nihilo, but by recombining the things that are in new and unforeseen ways. That is a difference in degree but not kind.

This minor power of creation, coupled with freedom of the will, forms the basis of the need for God’s action in us through Jesus Christ–so that we might be both free and independent and good. But that is a discussion for another time.

We already spend most of our time creating identify for ourselves: every time you tell a story about something that happened to you, you are using that story to create some idea about who you are for others to absorb. If you don’t believe that, think about the last story you told a friend about something that happened to you and honestly count the number of ways you might have “massaged” the truth a little to get across a certain point.

We already use much of our technology in the quest to find or make meaning and identity. What are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter but media for the construction of identity.

“Look at what I had for lunch today, and what that says about me.”

“Look at what I tweet about.”

“Look at what I like.”

“Look at me.”

That being the case, isn’t control over our bodies simply another form of self-creation? How we choose (or choose not) to modify our bodies with the technology we have available to us is not, I think, an issue of categorical morality.

That does not relieve us of moral responsibility. The questions of intent and consequence, common to all moral questions in Christianity, remain to confront us in relation to any particular choice about body modification. Just as there are good and bad reasons to get a tattoo, or to have elective surgery, or to wear makeup, the morality of a choice to augment human capabilities through advanced technology is a highly contextual calculus.

We must walk a fine line here. Jesus came to us as a human, so we must see that embodiment and incarnation constitute important aspects of God’s Creation. At the same time, we must not distort such an idea into the belief that there is only one right way to be an embodied human being–that there is only one type of body that is good.

The theology (at least in very simplified form as argued above) of human enhancement reminds us that morality–that sin–is not composed of easy categories, of boxes into which a particular action does or does not fit. We ought, then, to look at sin as a state of being, of disassociation from the right relationships with our neighbors, with ourselves, with God, with Creation. We enter into sin not because we have crossed some clear demarcation but because we have stopped considering our intentions towards ourselves and all other beings and have avoided concern about the consequences on Creation (and all that is within it) of our actions. Yes, the state of sin leads to hurtful actions and destructive or antisocial behavior, but let’s look past the symptoms to the disease.

Sci-Fi Christianity, Part II: Mind Uploading and Mind/Body Dualism

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For the previous post in this series, click here.

If you’ve read the second post in my sci-fi example of worldbuilding (to which I’ll likely return in the near future) or my highly-critical post of a certain brand of materialist science, you know that I’m highly skeptical of ideas about the “Singularity” and particulary prophecy about the future potential of uploading minds into computers to achieve digital immortality. Yesterday, as I binge-watched the released episodes of the second season of Westworld with some friends, I was reminded of this issue (though, if you’re as interested in both technology and sci-fi as much as I am, it’s an idea that’s never too far from hand). I think also of Altered Carbon (both the book and the Netflix show, but especially the book, to which I’ll return shortly).

For a short recap, here are my condensed criticisms of mind uploading as touted by Ray Kurtzweil and others.

First, we simply do not understand consciousness well enough to make such far-fetched claims with anything but wild speculation. The Kurtzweil paradigm assumes a materialist basis–that the mind is merely an emergent function of its underlying physical parts (i.e. the brain). This approach allows us to assume that replicating the (arguably) underlying material components of consciousness will lead to a replication of the consciouness itself.

To be sure, there are some scientific studies that, taken uncritically, might lead one to such a belief. In particular, Google has been working on “mind-reading” technology, which uses high-resolution brain-mapping to predict what a person is thinking about in more-or-less real time. Google has been experimenting with reading mental images and unvocalized commands. In the realm of images, Google’s development allows a sophisticated system to make guesses with high accuracy about what image a person is holding in his mind by looking at those brain scans. In command inputs, Google’s AlterEgo prototype allows someone to command Alexa or Siri without any physical or verbal component–with 92 percent accuracy (which is far better than the accuracy I get when trying to speak to either).

But when we look closer, these technologies are far more primitive than we might expect. For the image-reading programs to work, they must be extensively trained–by looking at particular pre-selected images. The brain scans of activity when looking at these photos are then used in a sophisticated game of “match” when trying to predict which image(s) the subject is thinking on. With AlterEgo, the system actually reads electric signals to muscles generated when a person mentally (but not physically) says certain words.

When it comes down to it, these devices are using highly-impressive algorithms, artificial intelligences (though not the sci-fi kind) and neural networks to read physical corrolaries to thought to deduce the thoughts themselves. I do not mean to sound like this is not amazing research and development, but it is not true “mind-reading” and it does not require an understanding of the dynamics between brain and mind. Nor does it offer any special insight into that relationship.

And that leads to my second criticism: We just don’t understand enough about the relationship between brain and mind to have any authority whatsoever to predict what is and isn’t possible in regards to mind uploading. It has been definitively established, I think, and cannot be questioned that chemical states in the brain influence experienced consciousness–my own journey with depression is a constant personal reminder of this. But there’s also a number of scientific studies that show that this is a two-way street–the action of the mind also affects the physical brain. Dr. Mario Beauregard’s The Spiritual Brain presents some evidence of this, as does the entire field of cognitive psychology. There’s nothing wrong with Kurzweil and his fellows speculating, of course, but a line is crossed when such speculation is offered as having been established on an indisputable and fully-understood foundation. Current science simply isn’t equipped to prove or disprove mind uploading theory.

Which conveniently leads to my third–and most important–criticism: we’re dealing with issues of consciousness here. Even without the kink in the hose caused by the thought of consciousness transfer, we already have no means by which to verify consciousness. We can test for the “symptoms” of consciousness–a la the Turing test–but we cannot definitively establish that any person or thing is or is not possessed of independent essence and consciousness. We do–and must, I think–for means of living life well and maintaining some semblance of sanity assume the full consciousness of other human beings (and probably also animals), reject solipsistic ideas and treat questions of what is “real” and what “actually exists” as fodder for creative fiction but not the sort of thing that should actually keep us up at night.

But when it comes to transferring consciousnesses as predicted by projections of mind uploading, we have no means by which to verify that such a transaction has been successful. I’m reminded of China Mieville’s Kraken, where a character and fan of Star Trek is haunted by the ghosts of all the times he’s killed himself using teleportation magic in imitation of the show. The difference is that we would never know if our “mind uploading” is just murder followed by the creation of very good imposters. That alone should be enough to keep us wary.

But this post is not (merely) an opportunity for me to rehash my criticisms of the idea of mind uploading, but to use this idea (in its many forms) to discuss mind/body dualism in Christianity.

Mind/body dualism is the idea that the mind and body are independent of one another but linked together somehow–they are not the same substance or material. In other words, the death of the body does not necessarily mean the death of the mind. This is in contrast to materialism, which is a form of monism (assertion that there is only one type of substance, material or essence) and the idea that the mind is merely an artifact of the activity of the physical brain.

For a quick example of mind/body dualism, let’s look at the novel version of Altered Carbon. In that novel, the main character, Takeshi Kovacs, previously served as an Envoy, a political/espionage/military operator tasked with handling senstive missions for the UN (which is hinted at being responsible for human government across planets). Note that the TV show alters what an “Envoy” is substantially. Because the fastest way to travel is to have your mind uploaded and sent as pure information before being downloaded into a new “sleeve” (slang for both “natural” and artificial bodies), part of Envoy training includes a number of mental adaptations and cognitive trainings desgined to make the Envoy especially effective no matter what sort of sleeve he is in. Though this does not necessitate belief in mind/body dualism, it certainly suggests such–it goes unquestioned that the uploading and downloading of minds creates an absolute continuity of consciousness and being–even being downloaded from an old backup means only a loss of recent memories, not a loss of self. If you would like to look at this approach in all of its terror and nuance, consider the effect on selfhood of dementia, Alzheimer’s or amnesia. For our purposes, however, Altered Carbon seems to treat the mind and body as separate–the mind can be separated from the body and rejoined to a new body and, because the mind half of the equation is the true self, the download to the new sleeve simple incarnates the mind again.

As a side note, Altered Carbon (both show and book) deals somewhat with Christian views on mind uploading and “resleeving”–though the book really only treats a conservative view that mind uploading (though apparently permitted by God under the laws of the universe) somehow condemns the person uploaded and downloaded to hell (regardless of their own intent or say in the matter).

The idea of dualism between mind and body is deeply entrenched in Christian thought, but I’m not sure that it’s fair to say that it is necessary to the faith. In the Old Testament, the Jews speak of “going down to Sheol”–a very depressive and Mesopotamian-style view of the afterlife as existing as a shadow of the living self that, at least in certain references, may be intended only as metaphor. Elsewhere, there are indications that an afterlife does await at least those who are righteous.

Certainly, in the time of Jesus the Sadducees taught that there was no afterlife, and some Biblical scholars assert that the idea of an afterlife developed mostly in the folk practice of Judaism rather than through the “official” theologies of the faith. I don’t find the Scriptures particularly determinative on this front–again we reference the Sadducees, but Jesus also points to the Scriptures as evidence that they are mistaken in the denial of the afterlife.

On the other hand, Jesus does not talk about heaven in the colloquial sense we tend to think of it in in modern American Christianity–as the place you go to experience the afterlife. Jesus talks about the Resurrection, and many passages seem to indicate that that Resurrection would be bodily and incarnate. At least some of the medieval theologians believed the Resurrection to be bodily on a restored Earth–if you look at the marginal illustrations in certain manuscripts, you’ll see wolves coughing up limbs so that they may be reunited with their owners in the Resurrection. If I am not mistaken, a large part of the Christian practice of burial (aside from being at least partially inherited from Jewish practice) is based on belief in the bodily Resurrection–or at least doubt about the ability to be resurrected if your body had been utterly destroyed.

Much of our dualistic (as in mind/body duality; dualism can mean a number of other very different things in religion) thought comes from the writings of Paul (here, for expedience in argument, I’m using “Paul” to mean the collective writers of the Pauline Epistles). There is much scholarship on Paul’s background in Platonic philosophy (i.e., the philosophies expounded upon by Plato) and the extent to which it influences his theology. I’ll just make a few points about this.

Platonic philosophy is staunchly dualistic; it posits a realm of the “Forms” where the perfect version (or Form) of each thing that exists in the perceivable (embodied) world resides. Everything that we experience around us is an imperfect instantiation (incarnation, we might say) of a perfect Form. The chair you’re sitting in right now; it’s an emanation many times removed from the perfect Chair that exists in the realm of the Forms. Perhaps the most famous explanation of this idea is in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

In 1 Corinthians 13:12, Paul tells us that “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.” If this doesn’t line up well with the Allegory of the Cave, I don’t know what does.

Elsewhere, Paul makes much about the difference between flesh (often categorized as weak and sinful) and spirit (desiring to be more righteous but constantly tempted by the desires of the flesh). In Romans 8:1-4, Paul writes, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Paul’s words in Romans mirror at least some statements made by Jesus. In Matthew 26:41, in scolding the disciples for falling asleep in the Garden of Gethsemen, Jesus tells them, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Of course, the language above in context is not just about the disciples, for Jesus himself immediately goes away again and asks the Father to spare him from the suffering to come–it seems reasonable to assert here that Jesus is struggling with the temptation of his own Incarnation here, as he does before he begins his ministry.

As I said above, my own experiences have given me intuition that there is a divide (but also a dialectic relationship) between mind and body. And we’ve all, I think, had experiences of being young and hormonal–feeling the tug of fleshly desires against our better judgment. At the end of the day, it’s not a difficult argument to make that Christianity assumes mind/body dualism, with its focus on the perceivable world and the unseen God. Of course, there are monist (though not necessarily materialist, though there could be, I suppose) Christians–as a footnote, John Milton was one such. He believed that spirit was a more refined version of the same material substance all around us. To what extent that view is a matter of semantics, I am unsure.

Why does all of this matter? Admittedly, for the most part, much of the monist versus dualist debate regarding mind and body may be fodder for the theologians and not much more. At the same time, though, there are very complex issues surrounding one’s stance on such a matter, and some of these may affect ideas that directly impact how your order yourself on your journey to follow Jesus.

Here’s the rub: I think it’s far easier to make a mind/body dualism argument for Christianity (and existence in general)–this matches with my understanding of scripture, of Jesus, of my own experiences, and of church tradition. The existence of mind/body dualism should tell us that there is some important to that split and that both mind and body are valuable. We must remember, that, even as Jesus talks about the difference between the flesh and the spirit, he himself Incarnated as an embodied spirit in flesh as the crux (forgive the pun, reader and God) of God’s redemptive plan–a combination of flesh and spirit that God viewed as somehow fundamental to God’s plan.

And yet, there is a strong temptation to belittle the flesh and laud only the spirit. When we think of the physical world as a fallen, sinful, irredeemable place and only the spiritual having value, we are forgetting that God created the physical world, too, and called it “good,” that God created first bodies into which God’s spirit was breathed to create humans, that our goal in sanctification is not to mortify or disavow our flesh in embracing spirit, but to bring the spiritual heaven into being as an embodied physical heaven through our following of Christ.

Failing to do so leads to a failure to be proper stewards for the Earth as we’ve been called to, leads us to ignore the different experiences of embodiment humans because of perceived racial divides instead of celebrating that diversity as purposeful and meaningful but in need of greater justice, leads us to take a Gnostic approach that rejects the world instead of trying to heal it.

Yes, sometimes we may need our spirit to overcome our flesh, the mind to be over matter. But the end goal is a righteous and proper relationship between mind and body, spirit and flesh, just as the end goal is a righteous and proper relationship with each other, with God, and with all creation.

Let me attempt to bring this back to mind uploading. To really work in a meaningful way as the singularists seem to argue, mind uploading requires a dualist approach when it comes to mind and body. A monist, materialist, approach dehumanizes saying that destroying you and booting up a program that operates convincingly as you is just as good. The dualist approach, however, would say that the digital uploading and downloading of consciousness (assuming for the sake of argument that we could be sure of consciousness) is the severing of the bond between the mind and one body and the instantiation of the mind in another body, with the continuity of the existence of the mind providing the philosophical bridge that overcomes the third criticism I voiced above.

Even in such a situation, many dangers lie in even a dualistic mind uploading paradigm. We would risk seeing our bodies as fungible, seeing them as useful only for their functionality instead of what they mean as part of who we are. We would risk seeing all physical things as subordinate and relatively unimportant compared to ephemeral data–and this dehumanizes as well. We would forget to see the value of protecting things as they are–of healing what is–rather than simply replacing it. This is a direction modern society already pushes us; mind uploading technology would simple urge us farther down the path.

So, the mind uploading idea–especially in speculative fiction where it is usually accompanied by appropriate dystopic ideas and (often) a cyberpunk aesthetic–reminds us that we need both flesh and spirit, and we need to paradoxically hold the value of each in tension.

Sci-Fi Christianity, Part I: Inverse Xenotheology, or, Anticipating First Contact

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Okay, I have to admit here that the title is a little bit of a stretch, and I’m using it more because there are so few opportunities to (seriously) write words like “xenotheology” in non-fiction work.

“Xenotheology” is the word for the burgeoning (yet speculative and perhaps still a little premature) field of the study of alien religious systems and theologies. By the inverse of xenotheology, I mean to look at the repercussions in Christian theology that might result in the instance that we make contact with other intelligent lifeforms in the universe (or multiverse, if the physicists are right). See; the title’s a stretch.

Nevertheless, I continue. I read an article this morning that piqued my interest and spurred me to write this post; you can find it here. In the article, scientists at NASA discuss the ways in which an ancient but advanced civilization might be detectable millions of years down the line–what they call the “Silurian Hypothesis” after Doctor Who (sounds like the name of a “Big Bang Theory” episode). That, of course, got me thinking about the Fermi equation, and the likelihood of eventually encountering some alien species. And that (again, of course, because most things do) got me thinking about Christian theology.

To be fair, there are plenty of scientists (and speculative fiction writers) who believe that if we find other intelligent life “out there,” we still might not be able to communicate with or understand them. Their existential position (as a perceptual framework or paradigm for understanding existence as a whole) might be so different from ours that there are so few common points that real communication might be difficult at best. How could that be, you ask? That’s perhaps the most troubling aspect of this thought–the whole point is that their understanding of existence would be so different from ours that we could not readily conceive of it (nor them of ours)!

This in and of itself would beg a deep theological question: if Christianity is the true faith, how could it be applicable and accurate to something so radically differently situated from us? I say this without intending to devalue other religions, which I do believe have valuable things to offer the seeker of truth while maintaining that the person (divine and human) of Jesus Christ gives us the most truthful understanding of God and the cosmos. A troubling prospect, indeed; a seed of doubt that, by its very nature, could not be resolved by human minds. Is that an insurmountable issue? Of course not, there are many existential questions that we humans are incapable of resolving without divine revelation–the problem of evil and suffering, for existence. Becuase of all of this, I can only point out the question without offering any potential resolution except to say that it, like many other things, must be a matter of faith.

Lesser (in terms of difficulty in resolving, at least) existential questions follow. In such a situation, we would have to work out a new understanding of the relationship of Scriptures and Jesus to our suddenly-expanded reality. Here are a few scary (and, thankfully, improper) resolutions: (1) Christianity is proof that God favors humanity, allowing for crusades and persecution of alien species, or at least latent and continuing racism. While we no longer live in a society of monolithic religion, it is possible that Judaism and Islam could reach the same conclusion (because of human nature, not because of the nature of those religions, just as with Christianity), resulting in a hostile stance for humanity as a whole. I think it’s more likely, though, that some maintain such a belief privately, resulting in continuing issues of race (though in a slightly-new context) for centuries or millenia to come. (2) The “baby with the bathwater” approach: Scripture doesn’t tell us about aliens and neither does Jesus, so none of it must be true. This, of course, is a logical fallacy–there are plenty of things Jesus doesn’t talk about (molecular biology, cars, computers, black holes, particle physics, string theory) that nevertheless exist and that have not (at least when intellectual rigor and honesty is employed) destroyed the plausibility of Christian belief, despite how much the Enlightenment (and modern materialists) may have attempted such. (3) Christianity is supplanted by alien religion (assuming we could understand it) under the idea that a culture more advanced than us technologically must be more advanced than us spiritually–one only needs to read the Old Testament and look at the world around us to know that people generally have not changed much, if at all, in their nature because of technology. There are more possibilities than could be recounted here; I’ll leave you to your imagination.

Additionally, there’s the possibility that an alien culture that is like us enough that we can relate to them has had their own revelations from God that mirror those from our own Scriptures and the Incarnation. If that were the case, the type of thought I’m concerned with in this post might be moot.

However, my understanding of God sees great purpose in God’s remaining often hidden from us and not directly revealing the nature of all existence to us in some undeniable way. This makes room for faith, and it is possible that some of life’s ambiguity is necessary for our free will to exist in the way that allows for meaningful relationship with God and for following Jesus on the path of sanctification. That’s a topic for another time.

I think it more likely that we find alien religion much like we find other human religions–not devoid of some existential truth and not without some ability to point the seeker to the reality of the Creator, but mixed in with misunderstandings and fallacies that result in a system of belief that misses more than it gets right. Again, being subject to human failings in interpretation, I certainly wouldn’t say that Christianity has everything right–far from it. But, God’s revelation through the Incarnation lays bear more existential truth and gives us more to work with in the search for capital “T” Truth than any other system of belief or understanding of God known to man.

Rather than revel in the negative possibilities (which doesn’t seem very Christian at all, does it?) perhaps we should discuss theological principles that might need adjustment to conform our understand of God and the meaning of Scriptures and Jesus in light of new experience.

The most fundamental question of all would be to decide whether Christianity retains applicability given the existence of other intelligent lifeforms. I think most Christians would unhesitatingly answer, “Yes.” If we believe that the God’s revelation through Christ is True, no new understanding of our universe should change that. The second question, then, is whether Christianity should be viewed as applicable to aliens. Again, if we believe that Jesus, as He claims to be, is “the way, the truth and the life,” we must answer this question affirmatively. Which means that we must come to an understanding of God’s salvific work in Jesus (and God’s overall Great Plan for existence) that applies equally to all sentient beings capable of understanding (I’m willing to believe and hope that my pet, Berwyn, is an innocent subject to Grace despite how frequently he’s a “bad little dog.”).

These questions answered, we must look to ways in which Biblical interpretation must change to account for the new situation. I’m going to argue that some (admittedly more progressive) interpretations of the faith would not have to change at all.

In light of the existence of intelligent extra-terrestrials, we would do well not to interpret the story of Creation literally. Instead, we should seek to understand what early Genesis tells us about the existential condition of sentient beings (I use this phrase as a more-expansive variant of “the human condition”), the foundation upon which God’s plan for all Creation builds. As we would by necessity need to presume that Christ had a hand in creating all alien species as well (following the beginning of the Gospel of John), we would need to accept that the metaphors contained within Genesis are equally applicable to aliens and that, likewise, the path to salvation is open to them.

Alongside this, we ought to be less concerned with historicity in the Bible and more concerned with what the Bible tells us about the existential condition, as the latter will be far more universally applicable than the former. The ancient context of the writings will continue to be an important interpretive tool, but even this is entirely separable from historicity.

We would also have to find ways in which the experiences of alien cultures and beings help us to better understand Jesus and Scriptures–otherwise, we prove ourselves hypocrites in the belief that there is divine revelation (however difficult to discern) through existential experience.

Certain things might need to be interpreted more generously than current trends allow. If there are species that are not biologically binary (as in, distinctly “male” and “female”), then our understanding of sex and gender ought to expand. Otherwise, we might have to exclude entire species as “against the law of God.” In such a light, finding that homosexuality, transgendered people and other non-cisgendered folk are somehow abhorrent to God seems downright foolish.

We would also have to find a new humility–if we find that the Incarnation is not a common feature somewhere within the religions of all alien societies, we will have to sort out why God chose to condescend to humanity and not some other species in a way that impresses upon us the need to “make disciples” while not becoming self-righteously arrogant or assuming that our species has some special favor from God. This, I think, would be a great struggle but a fascinating aspect of the path of santification.

There are many more (and more specific) aspects of Christian theology that will need re-evaluation (as they perenially do anyway) to account for such a new discovery, and this post is admittedly a stream-of-conciousness response to something I came across this morning, so I must admit that this post is a collection of initial impressions–not a researched and long-considered topic like some of my other posts.

Still, I find it interesting (though this could be my own bias), that it appears that a more liberal/progressive theology is already better situated to account for the existence of other intelligent life in the universe than a more conservative theology. That by itself cannot be considered proof of the superiority of one interpretation over the other, but it is something worth pondering.