c. 1996 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) When people talk about a mission to Mars, they probably don’t have Father Peregrine in mind.
In Ray Bradbury’s”Martian Chronicles,”a popular science fiction series from the 1940s and `50s, Peregrine leads a group of earnest Episcopalian missionaries to Mars, joining thousands of other human colonists.
Notions of advanced life on Mars were easier to imagine in those days, when we knew less about the solar system. They have since come crashing down like the meteorite in Antarctica that holds disputed evidence that micro-organisms may once have inhabited the red planet.
It now appears that if we are ever to have an intelligent conversation with an alien, it will be with one from another solar system. But if we ever find it, Bradbury’s tale is as good a model as any for how theologians might approach a vexing, if theoretical, question: What should we do if we ever meet any beings from another planet? Should we proselytize them? If E.T. were to land on Earth, should he be given a Bible along with some Reese’s Pieces?
In Bradbury’s tale, when Peregrine arrives on Mars, he attempts to preach to mysterious, intelligent, floating blue globes.”We must … live with them, to find their own special ways of sinning, the alien ways, and help them to discover God,”he says.
The blue globes turn out to be quite spiritually satisfied, thank you, having lived ascetic lives of prayer for so long that they have literally shed their physical bodies.
Peregrine and his colleagues become interplanetary ecumenists.”Truth here is as true as Earth’s Truth, and they lie side by side,”one of them concludes.”And we’ll go on to other worlds, adding the sum of the parts of the Truth until one day the whole Total will stand before us like the light of a new day.” The idea of bringing _ or seeking _ Truth on other worlds carries a host of questions with it. Scholars inevitably draw parallels to colonial-era Christian missionaries, whose notions of Western superiority seemed inseparable from their gospel.
This was”at least as arrogant and hegemonic in its approach as it was helpful,”said David Hein, chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Hood College in Frederick, Md.”Assuming the existence of sentient beings on another planet, the work of the missionary should first of all be to listen, to demonstrate love,”said Hein.”The other reality may have at least as much to teach us as we have to teach them.” The British Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote a space-travel trilogy in the 1930s and `40s imagining that each planet was governed by a presiding angel. Mars and Venus were teeming with creatures that had no need of salvation because they never experienced original sin, although visitors from Earth tried their best to corrupt them. Only Earth, governed by rebellious Lucifer, was fraught with sin inherited from Adam and Eve.
Lewis, who died in 1963, viewed the burgeoning space explorations”with real dismay,”said Lex McMillan, a Gettysburg College administrator and Lewis scholar.”He thought if we did encounter rational life on other planets, we would treat it as an enemy or a savage”and contaminate it with sinfulness.
The question of whether original sin would exist in other worlds remains. When astronomers last year announced they had found a planet in a solar system similar to our own, a Catholic theologian in Rome, Piero Coda, said any life there would need salvation from sin. Virtually all Christian scholars agree God is capable of creating life anywhere in the universe, although many evangelicals say such life does not evolve.
Bill Hoesch is a geologist and a creationist _ he does not accept the theory of evolution. Even so, Hoesch, a spokesman for the Institute for Creation Research in North Santee, Calif., said any life on Mars”would have to have been intelligently designed, just like it had to be here on Earth.”He doubts sentient life exists elsewhere, but says such a discovery would not present”insurmountable”theological problems, because the Bible is silent on the issue.
On the other hand, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, also an evangelical, said God would not create life as he created Adam and Eve without providing for its redemption from sin. If that occurred, he said, it would”violate everything we know and believe as Christians.” But the idea of original sin is being re-evaluated by many theologians, said Robert John Russell, founder and director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, Calif. Russell, who holds advanced degrees in physics and theology, said”there probably wasn’t a first couple”who passed on a congenital sinful nature to their descendants.
Sin, Russell said, is rather an inevitable part”of being a moral free agent. Wherever evolution would produce enough complexity where you get what we would call moral free agents on another planet, my question is, would they also experience what we call moral failure, as well as moral virtue?” Russell said he believed such creatures not only would sin, but that God would provide a”Christ event”to save them. But it would be different from ours.”They’re not going to wait around for us to tell them about Jesus,”he said.
If humans did meet intelligent aliens, we should”share what we have found about the richness of altruism, the richness of compassion, and science,”Russell said, citing current models of interfaith dialogue.”I would think it would be glorious. But the first step is to listen to the other.” Current evidence suggests that, if anything, we will be meeting much lower life forms first _ such as the primitive bacteria whose fossils some scientists believe are engraved on the meteorite from Mars that has made recent headlines.
If so, the growing religious awareness that humanity has a responsibility to care for the Earth’s resources would extend to space, Russell said. Humans should be careful not to contaminate any alien life forms.”The Bible teaches that humanity has special relation with the Lord, but it also celebrates Leviathan, the forms of life that are just there for God’s pleasure,”he said.”I really want to place humanity within the ecosystem as a biblical scholar and not say we’re the absolute pinnacle”of creation.
The Martian soil, once so fertile to the writers’ imaginations, has gone barren as science fiction has gone further afield. In popular features such as”Star Trek”and”Star Wars,”characters hopscotch from solar system to solar system rather than from planet to planet. But the preoccupations of science fiction remain constant. The”prime directive”in”Star Trek,”for example, forbids space explorers from interfering with developing cultures, a clear reaction to the cultural imperialism of Western colonialism.
While Christianity has a stronger evangelistic impulse than most major religions, the question of alien life poses questions for other faiths as well.
The discovery of other life”would serve to humble people a little more, let them not think that this planet is the center of the universe,”said Arthur Green, professor of Jewish thought at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
But he declined to speculate on God’s work with other species.”I can only talk about the covenant I know, because I stand within it,”he said.”God has a relationship with dolphins I don’t understand. Why shouldn’t God have a relationship with Martians I don’t understand?” (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS)
The notion of alien life also”fits in quite nicely with traditional views”of Buddhism, said Richard Payne, dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, Calif. Buddhist cosmology puts the Earth as”just one small part of a larger inhabited reality”filled with a variety of sentient beings, he said.
Payne added that the core Buddhist truths, pointing the way to overcoming universal suffering through correct thinking, ethical behavior and meditation, would hold true anywhere in the cosmos.
But Buddhism would not foster interplanetary missionary activities.”Certainly there is the notion of making the teachings available,”Payne said.”But there is no big motivation to go out and convert people.”
MJP END SMITH
