I recently read astronomer David Weintraub’s book Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It? He spends the first section of the book discussing the recent discovery of thousands of exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars). He points out that it may not be long before astronomers’ more sensitive and sophisticated tools allow them to also detect evidence of life on some of those planets, particularly through measuring things like atmospheric makeup that are unlikely to arise through inorganic processes. This section is just motivation for the second, larger section where he reviews what leaders and theologians in various religions have said about extraterrestrial life and extraterrestrial intelligence and what these statements might mean for how churches and believers would respond to discoveries like these. I was fascinated to find that there’s such a rich tradition of discussing this possibility among some Catholic thinkers, for example, and also unsurprised to find that American evangelicals are likely to think of aliens as demons, and of the universe as having been created only for humans.
Of course I was most interested in Weintraub had to say about Mormons. First, he clearly considers us interesting, as he devotes an entire chapter to us, in contrast with Unitarian Universalists, Quakers, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Scientists, all of whom he lumps together in a single chapter. In discussing Mormon theology, he gets into the idea of pre-existent materials being organized rather than created ex nihilo, and, leaning heavily on the King Follett discourse, God as once-man and humans as future gods. (I think he clearly overstates how important this text is for rank-and-file members today, but I know this can be a difficult fact to suss out as an outsider.) As you’d expect, he also quotes passages from Moses—”and worlds without number have I created”—and Abraham. He also quotes some D&C verses on multiplicity of worlds, and of inhabited worlds, like 76:24: “That by him [Jesus], and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.”
Weintraub also points out that our scripture has humanity being the most wicked of all of God’s creation, from Moses 7:36, “and among all the workmanship of mine hands there has not been so great wickedness as among thy brethren.” This relates to a question that he raised with several other Christian religions, which is whether Original Sin would apply to aliens, and whether they’d therefore need to be saved by Jesus or not. I can’t find a reference to support this, but I’m quite sure I’ve heard the idea taught that the statement in 2 Nephi 10:3 that “there is none other nation on earth that would crucify their God” could be generalized to say that there’s no other planet than Earth that has inhabitants bad enough to do this.
Weintraub even pulls out some 20th-century statements from Joseph Fielding Smith—”We are not the only people that the Lord has created. We have brothers and sisters on other earths.”— and Neal A. Maxwell—”We do not know how many inhabited worlds there are. But certainly we are not alone.” Weintraub concludes, “We can assume that Mormons would embrace, without any concerns, any future announcement made by astronomers regarding the discovery of extraterrestrial life.” But in a little subsequent discussion of the possibility of intelligent life, especially life that’s clearly not human, he qualifies, “While Mormonism appears to be ready to fully embrace extraterrestrial life, whether those extraterrestrials are in human form or are easily labeled as lesser beings, Mormonism nevertheless will have some theological issues with which to wrestle.”
I think Weintraub has a pretty good take overall on where the Church stands on the idea of extraterrestrials. I do think, though, that in this chapter (and throughout the book), he often elides differences between different kinds of evidence of extraterrestrials we might find. I can think of at least five levels of contact that might yield different responses from Mormons (and from people in general):
- Evidence of extraterrestrial life. This could be just finding bacteria on Mars or noticing that the concentration of various gasses in some extrasolar planet is more consistent with life than inorganic processes alone.
- Evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. I’m thinking here of finding an alien artifact, like maybe something really big and far away, or perhaps just a monolith on the Moon.
- Communication from extraterrestrials. We receive a signal that seems to clearly be evidence of intelligence.
- Translated communication from extraterrestrials. We receive a signal and we can decode it.
- Two-way communication with extraterrestrials. We can send and receive.
I’m thinking #1-3 would provide no difficulty whatsoever. GAs would issue statements about the greatness of God and the vastness of the universe. They would also pull out the same Joseph Fielding Smith and Neal A. Maxwell statements that Weintraub did, and would be clear that they always knew this day would come. Needless to say, they will not bring up Brigham Young’s ideas about the Moon and the Sun being inhabited. (Weintraub actually brings these up and points out that these were common beliefs in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but by the time Young made his statements, they were falling out of fashion.)
#4 and #5 would provide far more difficulty for the Church and for individual members, I think. Our theology sure seems to think that aliens should look like us and be like us in fundamental ways, and if we get hard evidence that they don’t and aren’t, it seems like it could be seriously challenging to a lot of testimonies, no matter how many GAs claimed that they had always known the universe would be like this.
I’m curious to hear what you think, though. How do you think GAs and rank-and-file members would react to extraterrestrial contact at various levels? (Or if you don’t like my list, what characteristics of evidence or contact do you think would be important?) Also, if you’ve been a member of a different church, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how they would respond too.