Why the Existence of Extraterrestrials is Implausible: A Theological Argument

C.S. Lewis posits in his Space Trilogy that God MAY have created other rational beings but that the Incarnation changed forever that which He created.

From The European Conservative

By Robert Lazu Kmita, PhD

The nature of the entire creation underwent a wholesale ontological mutation with the fall of Adam and Eve.

Stimulated by the hearings in the American Congress that took place last year, to which the voices of well-known media personalities like Tucker Carlson were added, the debate about UFOs and the existence of extraterrestrials has reached cosmic proportions. For a Christian, the issue is just as acute as it is for any other inhabitant of these times of great confusion. Because the crucial question, uttered by so many mouths, on so many media channels, cannot be avoided: do extraterrestrials exist? In order to introduce my argument, I propose a slightly more nuanced reformulation: could extraterrestrials exist?

Before responding to such a challenging question, we must clarify what we understand by ‘extraterrestrials.’ Usually, those who discuss such a possibility refer to rational beings, similar to us, living in the same physical universe as our own. So, by ‘extraterrestrials,’ we mean physical beings–not angels or demons. Of course, I’m not saying that the so-called UFOs could not be supernatural (or, more precisely, preternatural) manifestations of angels or demons. Although this hypothesis is also worthy of attention, I will set it aside in this article. What I will discuss here strictly pertains to the possibility of the existence of rational, physically embodied beings somewhere in the cosmos–meaning within the limits of the same physical universe in which we, humans, live.

If that is the case, then the answer to the question posed above—‘could extraterrestrials exist?’—is negative: no, in this physical cosmos, there cannot be other rational beings besides humans. I emphasize that I am strictly referring to non-human beings that we, as humans, could directly know, much like we can know a tribe of natives in Papua New Guinea or the Amazon rainforest. Therefore, such beings cannot exist on other planets within our universe. The rationale for my answer is not empirical or experimental in nature. It derives from certain teachings of the Christian supernatural Revelation, which provides us with knowledge beyond what we can access through our ordinary faculties of understanding.

Concretely, there are two Christian teachings at play. The first relates to what traditional theology, both in the East and the West, calls ‘original sin.’ The second pertains to the notion of ‘monogenesis.’ These provide us with a comprehensive intellectual framework, consisting of two theological axioms that will enable us, through a process of deductive reasoning, to establish an answer to the question at hand. First, I will explain the two above concepts that will supply us with our premises.

The doctrine of original sin, described in the Holy Scripture in the third chapter of Genesis as the consumption of the forbidden fruit by Adam and Eve, represents the act that produced the most terrible imaginable consequences: from being immortal, as they had been in Paradise, humans became mortal. This fact, recognized in various forms by numerous ancient religions, is often termed the ‘fall.’ The difference between the state of humans before the fall, which we can only imagine vaguely, and the state after the fall, which we all directly experience, is immense. Before the fall, humans were not only immortal but also free from disease and aging—in short, free from all the evils of our fallen state of nature. The revealed teaching about original sin has been a constant subject of meditation for all the Saints and Doctors of the Church, a province of theology that was perhaps most thoroughly detailed during the Council of Trent (1545–1563).

This teaching is necessarily associated with that of monogenesis (or monogenism), which asserts that the entire human race descends from a single couple, consisting of a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, created by God at the beginning of history. The fall of these two original beings had as its primary consequence the loss of the grace of original righteousness—that supernatural, divine light which not only adorned them but also endowed them with all the preternatural qualities accompanying the most invaluable gift, immortality. Losing divine grace, they immediately lost both immortality and all the attributes of that privileged existence. In essence, they became just like us—or, at any rate, we have ever since been like them: fragile, prone to illness, entangled in the mud of an earthly existence dominated by death. In a word, the human nature that Adam and Eve originally possessed was not completely destroyed, but severely corrupted. And what they transmitted to their descendants was and is precisely this human nature affected by original sin. This is the primary reason why the authentic Christian Church, of apostolic origin, has always practiced the baptism of children (through which the fallen human nature is cleansed of original sin). Therefore, all human beings originate from the first couple, consisting of the man Adam and the woman Eve, making it easy to understand why their fallen state has been passed on to all their descendants.

But if things are as described, then we can understand why we cannot conceive the existence of extraterrestrials: firstly, because only humans could result from Adam and Eve. However, someone might raise the following objection: how do we know that God did not create other couples besides the one formed by Adam and Eve? Simply put, Divine revelation, contained in the canon of the sacred books of the Bible, clearly states that there was only one couple. Then another question could be posed: why couldn’t God create, on another planet somewhere else in the cosmos, another couple from a different species of rational beings than humans? Theoretically, it is evident that God, being omnipotent, could do such a thing. However, this is excluded concerning our cosmos. Let’s see why.

The fall of Adam and Eve entailed the fall not only of human nature, but also of the nature of all creation. In other words, the whole cosmos suffered and is suffering because of the fall of the first men. This is highlighted by Saint Paul the Apostle, who states the following:

The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us. For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope: Because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even till now (Romans 8:18-22).

This curse on the earth is interpreted by Saint Macarius the Great as representing creation, which, along with Adam—captured by the devil through original sin—was also unwillingly captured. Saint Maximus the Confessor comments on the swallowing of the prophet Jonah by the sea monster, indicating that, symbolically at least, it represents the swallowing of both human nature and the entire nature of creation by the devil. Saint Augustine shows how, from the ease of immortal life in Paradise, where everything was given to Adam and Eve effortlessly, life transitioned, after original sin, to a life where everything became hard to attain, requiring great effort. That is the deep meaning of God’s words to Adam:

Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life (Gen 3:17).

In other words, the nature of the entire creation underwent a wholesale ontological mutation with the fall of man. That having been said, let’s return to the question of the existence of extraterrestrials.

In the cosmos created by God for humans, they could not exist. Be assured that the Bible would have told us something, even indirectly, about such created beings, just as it tells us about angels and demons. Of course, as has been noted, the Bible does not say a thing about “electricity” or other things discovered in the past century. However, the existence of other rational beings in the cosmos is not of the same nature but is directly related to all the fundamental notions of the Christian religion. Therefore, it is justified to expect, in the case of extraterrestrial existence, that the Bible may have told us something about this subject. But the Bible tells us nothing. On the other hand, for the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that extraterrestrials could exist in our universe. The next question immediately arises: are they affected by the original sin committed by Adam and Eve? The answer can only be negative: because, as the sacred teachings of Christian theology tell us, original sin is transmitted only through direct generation. So, it is strictly limited to the human species.

Alright, but an insistent ufologist might ask something else: what if, on another planet in our universe, God created other rational, non-human beings? In this case, either they did not commit original sin, or they did. The practically nil probability that another species of rational beings would commit the same sin as the first humans compels us to exclude this hypothesis. So let’s examine the main claim in our insistent ufologist’s question: might God have created another rational species in a fallen universe, severely damaged—though not directly implicated in—by the sin of the first humans? This would mean that God created rational, mortal creatures—because, as I explained in my short theological-metaphysical argument, in the fallen physical cosmos everything is mortal (so those extraterrestrials would also have to be mortal, or else their existence would not be possible in a fallen world under the penalty of death incurred by original sin). But wouldn’t this be unjust? Because we see that all creatures created by God at the beginning, as Genesis tells us, were “very good”—and, of course, immortal. Being not only the origin of life but life itself (John 14:6), God cannot include death in the equation of creation for any rational being not guilty of such punishment. Therefore, the possibility of the existence of rational beings, other than humans, created mortals without having committed original sin is excluded.

And yet, if we admit that extraterrestrials cannot exist in our world, then do UFOs exist or not? Yes, it is possible that such ‘unidentified flying objects’ exist. However, testimonies must be treated with a great deal of caution. What could UFOs be? First and foremost, the fruits of self-deception on a large scale. Is such a thing possible? The incredible spread of superstitions in some cultures of other historical epochs, superstitions that today we consider hallucinations, prove that many members of the human family can believe in the strangest and most absurd things. 

On the other hand, mass manipulation is no joke. With today’s media, this has become not only plausible but very real. However, there are cases that seem quite real. What do we do with them? Here we can think of another kind of ‘extraterrestrials’: fallen angels, i.e., demons, who exist in what the Christian creed calls ‘the unseen world.’ With divine permission, they can act in our world. The disturbing book of Job clearly shows us this. Most likely, however, the actions of humans thirsty for wealth, fame, and especially power can offer a much more plausible explanation than the interventions of occult, demonic powers. If we think about how ufological literature was used for anti-religious and materialist propaganda purposes by the Communist Party in Romania, we have the most concrete example of the way political power could operate. Here’s why, in a post-pandemic context like ours, the value of the classical virtue of prudence can never be emphasized enough.

Pictured: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (1791), a 186.8 x 278.1 oil on canvas by Benjamin West (1738-1820), located at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.