the cuppboard

badwolfcomplex:

Always a fun topic. Here’s a relevant excerpt from this great Catholic Answers article:

But, as C. S. Lewis points out, corporeal, non-human, created intelligent beings called “extraterrestrials” pose a problem to the faith only if we know the answers to five questions:

1. Are there creatures on other planets? Answer: We don’t know. We don’t even know if we will ever know.
2. Do these hypothetical creatures possess what we call “rational souls”—that is, the ability to know (and sin against) God?
3. Assuming rational creatures exist on other worlds, are they fallen? If not, there is no need for God’s salvific incarnation, death, and resurrection.
4. Assuming the answer to all the previous questions is “yes,” is our mode of redemption what such creatures require for salvation? If not, it merely shows that the Great Physician prescribes particular medicine for the particular illness of a particular species.
5. Finally (assuming unknowable affirmatives to all the previous questions), do we know redemption will be denied to these fallen rational creatures? A visit to earth ten thousand years ago would not have yielded much information to the outside observer about what God was up to in preparing the way for Christ. Likewise, it would probably be extraordinarily difficult for human observers to tell what God has done, is doing, and will do toward the salvation of these hypothetical creatures.

Read Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Please? So good. I always think of it and recommend it when this subject comes up.