>>12050941In theory, I don’t think the existence of extraterrestrial life would necessarily contradict anything in the Bible. There isn’t anything in the text about life outside of earth, it only claims to be relevant to humanity living here on earth. I’m sure one could easily enough argue for the case that aliens aren’t relevant to the salvation of humanity. I’m sure they could even say things like “perhaps Jesus visited other planets as well” like in that one Ray Bradbury story.
In practice? Who knows who religions would deal with such a thing. At least with Christianity, they preach all sorts of ideas that are nowhere to be found in the Bible or rely on playing fast and loose with the interpretation of it. This is perhaps me being pedantic, but for example the Bible says absolutely nothing about people going immediately to heaven or hell after dying. There is only a few paragraphs in the entire book about a lake of brimstone and fire, and afaik absolutely none about humans going up to heaven after death. Rather, it states something about two different “resurrections”, where the entire universe will be destroyed and recreated, and those who received salvation will live on “new earth”. It’s actually a good deal more involved than what is usually advertised. But you would never know this if you talked to most modern Christians, because most of them don’t never actually read the Bible, only a few selective excerpts at best.
