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What about the other planets?

So, my son was walking through the living room and Sen Kennedy of Louisiana said something stupid about how Democrats not giving the Republicans exactly what they want on the funding issue was "the reason why aliens won't speak to us." Presumably, the man believes in advanced extraterrestrial life of some form. I mentioned that this seems odd to me, given that Kennedy's positions on things in general indicates to me that he's probably in the "intelligent design camp." That led my son to ask me a theological question that I've never really thought about or researched....how does the Bible address the issue of other planets? Would theologists realize how inadequate their book is if alien life is discovered? If god divided the day and the night and the earth was without form and void, why is there water just below the surface on Mars? Seriously, someone page me a priest! I have questions!

MsOliver 7 Jan 17
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7

Hopefully this picture is legible, in short, the sun and moon are in the sky and above that is water, because obviously that is where rain comes from. This was what a lot of iron aged folk assumed, it was a good guess but a little wrong.

Dav87 Level 6 Jan 17, 2018

@SteveB on a flat earth, under water, and no mention of any other planets. yes. looks like the all seeing god creator didn't have a telescope.

One day while I was sitting in a park with a clear blue sky above I saw the firmament. I live in a rather flat valley and looking out I noticed that I could see about the same distance in every direction. The sky was a vivid blue and did appear to be solid a structure covering “a circle of the earth.” This is exactly what bronze age people saw when they were trying to describe the earth. The heavenly bodies were embedded into that seemingly solid structure thus they saw “raqia” a solid dome-like structure. As it was blue it would be easy to imagine water being held back by it. In the flood myth the waters above were held back only to be released through the “floodgates of the heavens”

A Babylonian tablet fragment mentions an Upper Tiamat (or ocean) and a Lower Tiamat (or ocean) similar to Genesis’ the waters above and below the firmament. Mesopotamians believed visible heavens were thought to be circular in shape, since the clear sky appears to be a giant circle. It would be probable for the Israelites to adapt creation myth from their neighbors.

So what the Biblical writers ended up with was “a circle of the earth” covered by a solid dome-like structure which they called the firmament. It makes all the sense in the world looking through the eyes of a primitive people but it makes no sense when people try to reconcile the idea with modern astronomy as a lot of religious folk do.

@SteveB on top of a giant turtle.

@GipsyOfNewSpain hi hi hi

@Janakiraman Many native american will tell you.

@GipsyOfNewSpain it's in Hinduism too..
remade religions. ????????????

@Janakiraman Maybe there is a simple logic in a turtle shape and slow movement to be a steady platform instead of a "body builder with broad shoulders named atlas."

0

Aliens meaning alienated nations on earth? Or aliens in the sky? Just asking... ild like to read that.

@MsOliver. Lol... It's funny how i miss on things that are right under my nose.... People are so crazy around me that i just started overlooking what they say.... your right... that's crazy.

@MsOliver. Oh welll.... I guess we got what we got...lol.

1

Last year I read – I should say, heard, as it was an audiobook – a book by one of my favorite sci-fi authors, Robert J. Sawyer. The name of the novel was Calculating God. In it, Sawyer imagines humanity coming face-to-face with an alien species, and the aliens are completely taken aback when they learn to their amazement that the majority of Earth’s scientists don’t believe in a creator god. They, and one other alien species that makes its appearance later in the book, can’t fathom how intelligent beings can fail to accept a truth that is so self-evident to them. The author was playing a “what if” game in his novel by imagining a twist on the old 'aliens are amazed to see how primitive the beliefs of Earthers can be' story line. It all started from a thought experiment in which Sawyer imagined what would happen if the creationist proved to be correct in their assumption that God created the universe. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the biggest push back against his story was from believers, notably creationists. Perhaps that’s because He tried to create a god whose attributes were those a reasonable person could believe in (for example, his god was neither omniscient nor infallible). He presented some interesting food for speculative thought, but as he’s happy being a writer and has no interest in becoming the next L. Ron Hubbard, he doesn’t pretend that his book is anything but a flight of fancy. A wonderful book for folks like me who enjoy playing with such ideas.

I think, like Sawyer, if there was/is a god, god is nothing like we've read about in any book.

I like Sawyer and have read quite a few of his books. When asked why he wrote books about god and the soul he answered: “I'm not a religious person. It would take proof to convince me that souls, or God, exist -- so I wrote books in which scientists found proof of those things to play with the notion of how skeptical people might react.” They certainly make you question yourself. My favorites were the WWW series as I enjoy considering AI.

@gearl His WWW series is my favorite as well. I read the entire trilogy on my Kindle.

2

What an excellent question!

1

If an advanced alien civilization landed here with the exact same mythos of ANY of our religions, that, my friends, would sincerely bring me pause. I admit i find the likelihood of that happening remote, to say the least.
If they came with the concept of a "creator-being", that too, would bring me pause, but not nearly on the level of the previous scenario.
All of that being said, I find no reasonable proof that this planet has been visited by E.T.'s up until now. No Alien Architects, no "Lizard-Beings", no BEM's. But, if they did come a'callin' it would be an amazing thing, my friends. The questions & answers that would be provided just by their very appearance would leave scientists enough to work on for decades, let alone any knowledge or advanced tech they may have!

2

Going to be an eye opener to them when ET`s tell them their demigod is a false misrepresentation of reality.

1

I don't believe the bible mentions any other planets, but Earth.

5

"and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind."

If stars are the size of figs, planets will fall from the sky like snowflakes.

2

Didn't the Bible just place planets in with stars. I don't think the folks writing the Bible had an idea of what a planet was. On the 4th day god placed the sun, moon and stars into the firmament to provide light. No mention of planets. Venus, the morning and evening star was spoken of as Lucifer.
I'm still hoping for life on either mars or a moon of Jupiter. and I agree it would cause them a real problem. Just some one-celled life, that's all. Something that everything else could evolve from.

gearl Level 8 Jan 17, 2018
1

Just heard Kennedy live on MTP Daily on MSNBC. What an idiot! Stupid Man! We are going to have a shutdown. Extraterrestrial life out there-Louisiana should send him o next space shuttle.

3

I think the discovery of intelligent extraterrestial life would be handled by theologians just like it was last time, when they discovered the New World. "Let's convert them and then kill them for their valuables."

0

You should read some of the stuff coming from those crazy people from Ancient Aliens. They connect some of the Jewish prophets to alien technology. It’s far fetched, of course. As for other planets, my friends mpression is that they were unaware.

3

The bible does not consider life on other planets. When the myths that make up the bible were written down, planets were lights in the sky, not bodies of comparable size to our own world. The bible and most churches solidified their thinking hundreds of years ago, while serious discussions of life on other planets mostly happened in my lifetime.

1

Written when the world was flat ..when speculating it may be as spherical as our closest neighbor could get you stoned…

Varn Level 8 Jan 17, 2018
1

I would think the document would be all encompassing if it was written by men who were narrated to by "God". That's another flaw in it's writing. When they saw the moon or other planets in the sky, I wonder what they thought they were. Is there ANYTHING in the bible that speaks about something that humans knew nothing about back then that we actually have evidence of now? Would that be too subjective like a Nostradamus prediction?

0

watch the film Paul with him trust me

1

When the Bible was written the idea that the lights in the sky were anything but lights on a celestial ceiling hadn't ocurred to anyone yet. In fact the idea that the Earth, Sun, and planets were travelling through a vast void didn't occur to anyone until the 1500s. So no, nothing about planets in the Bible as we know them.

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