SIGH.
Those of you who read my material (especially the biblical stuff) know I don’t bash Catholicism, though I have serious disagreements with it. (I’m here to irritate everyone, not just Catholics). 🙂
I have no doubt that this pope has a good heart, and I love his distaste for celebrity status. But this is loopy. Then again, it makes sense given the deeply flawed (in terms of biblical exegesis) Roman Catholic teaching about baptismal regeneration. But wait . . . people need that in Catholic teaching because of Romans 5:12, which pertains to the descendants of Adam, who are . . . people . . . not extraterrestrials . . . . So how does this make sense again?
This is a common Roman Catholic position in the ET life discussion. It just doesn’t get more any coherent with repetition.
I am so glad you brought this subject up Mike.
Have you noticed that most (if not 90 % of alien sightings involve light? I remember you talking about luminescent beings in scripture.
The pope accepting alien theories into the catholic religion , goes hand in hand ,with what the roman/catholic rulers have done for ages bro.
The catholic religion is the epitome of religious amalgamation.It is no surprise that the pope has, publicly twisted the scripture again, to fit with the times.
To be honest, I don’t think the pope is really thinking about this very deeply at all. Baptism is just the solution to just about everything.
I wonder just how far the Pope is willing to take this? I mean would he have granted last rights to the unfortunate victim of this particular incident?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_hanger
Alternatively it might just be an example of hyperbole. Along with, for example, the incoherent loopiness of expecting anyone to get a camel through the eye of a needle.
There is metaphor and then there is flawed theology. The latter applies here specifically because of Romans 5. While the affects of the atonement are “universal” (Col. 1), animals, plants, and (potentially) Martians aren’t morally represented by Adam (federal headship) and didn’t sin in Adam (seminal headship). Consequently, there’s no point to catholic doctrine thinking aliens need to have original sinned removed. The reason this sort of poor thinking is even out there is because aliens are intelligent beings. Intelligence someone gets linked to depravity – for which I know of no chapter and verse, so to speak. (It also isn’t the image of God – and watch out for that one if you’re pro-life; defining the image as intelligence leaves with no pro-life defense for most of pregnancy).
Only here would we start with aliens and get to abortion!
Jesus’ death and Resurrection laid the groundwork for the renewal of all creation, incl. animals, not just us. that would incl. aliens. If my theory is correct, they are descended from Adam anyway via genetic engineering millennia ago.
Resurrection is linked to renewal (agreed). And so why would aliens need to have original sin taken care of when animals don’t?
My point is that you’re arguing apples and oranges. The concepts you bring up (along with the baptism thing) are related but not interchangeable.
Your apples and oranges analogy appropriately catered to that comment by offering something edifyingly digestible but it left so many layers of disparity and incongruence of the issue untouched, it was as provocative as seeing my toddler parading before me with untied shoelaces. But after trying to tie this together in a better analogy, I realize the necessity of and wisdom in your choice to leave them untouched for purposes of detangling error to edify. There isn’t a better analogy for someone who doesn’t get it… but since I gave it some thought, here’s what I came up with for someone who does:
Because apples and oranges are both objectively real, non-toxic and even an atheist could discern them as scripturally safe, I think the analogy of photo negatives and the color ecru do the issue more justice.
A photo negative is an inverted image of the real thing, can not be resolved in black & white, is objectively and is substantively real, but in fact is an illusion, just like RCC’s theology in contrast to biblical Christianity. Ecru is simultaneously a definitive and an abstract, intangible, and subjectively identified, just like an aliens. Both the RCC theology and alien theory subsist in shades of gray. By the time you arrive at the supposition that aliens are real, mere neighbors we’ve never met, AND need baptism by the RCC, you have gone so far beyond the black and white boundaries of biblical theology and modern science, that a Christian really should realize they are damn near enemy territory.
This didn’t address the main issue for biblical theology – how you get aliens in Eden (or Adam) to sin and thus need the removal or original sin. It’s about the biblical text – what it affirms. By definition, if an idea cannot be traced back to the exegesis of the text, it isn’t biblical theology. I like my biblical theology to be biblical.
ALIEN, is this not the serpent in the garden who caused the fall, and are now re emerging in there UFOs, possibly as a false second coming