I just read an intriguing article in the September issue of The Atlantic by Aussie philosopher Paul Davies. (Don’t ask me why the September issue just arrived now in late July.) It’s called “E.T. and God: Could earthly religions survive the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe?”

Since you’re no doubt holding your breath, I’ll go ahead and tell you the answer: Yes, of course they can.

Chewbecca Christ, meet Marvin the Martian Christ
One of the more intriquing questions Davies brings up is the possibility of multiple incarnations of Jesus on each planet with sentient life.* This presents obvious difficulties. Davies quotes Thomas Paine: “The Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval of life.” No golf between Golgothas. This god’s got dying to do.

Not only that. We also need multiple interplanetary Peters and Pauls, mutliple Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, multiple Reformations and Counter-Reformations.** Otherwise, your favorite flavor of Christian doctrine might be woefully wrong because it had to go through all that to get to 21st century (fundamentalist) Christians in the way they understand it. Less appetizing possibilities include admitting that how you understand it is only an interpretation of the truth, or admitting that interpretation is irrelevant. Once you’ve gone there, the uniqueness of Christ is soon to follow. Such is the cognitive-propositional stage of faith.

But if there are not multiple incarnations of Christ, consider poor Chewbecca. He was born into flea-bitten Original Sin but has no way of finding redemption. There are only so many possibilities:

• Christ’s death saves the entire universe, whether or not they know it. (The heresy of universalism.)
• Christ’s death is overplayed. You don’t need it to be saved. (Bordering on the heresies of Arianism and Gnosticism.)

So much for another round of “Old Rugged Cross.” Sweet wounded Jeebus.

(I know my caricatures of Christianity do a disservice to adult Christians, of whom I know and respect many. But adult Christians are not going to have a theological problem when/if little green men land.)

But can Chewbecca Christ even understand Carl Sagan?
SETI director Jill Tarter plunks down this humdinger in Davies’ article:

God is our own invention. If we’re going to survive or turn into a long-lived technological civilization, organized religion needs to be outgrown. If we get a message [from an alien civilization] and it’s secular in nature, I think that says that they have no organized religion–that they’ve outgrown it.

Yes, and if they mention multiplication tables we know they’ve outgrown team sports. And if they talk about rocket science we know they’ve outgrown public sanitation systems. Yet another “bright” insight. Our Jodi Foster wanna-be fails to notice two things. One, there are only two kinds of religion: organized and just started earlier this afternoon. And, two, outside observers have described her SETI as quasi-religious, which would make her something of a high priest herself (something she apparently hasn’t yet outgrown).

There is little guarantee that our future Chewbecca would even have concepts like “secular” and “organized religion.” The concept of “organized religion” as something separate from the rest of life is a Western concept. And the concept of “secularity” depends on there first being something called “organized religion.” Assuming an alien civilization would have these same concepts is just plain arrogant.

Of course, there is little guarantee that our future Chewbecca would be able to understand us at all. Completely alien cultural-linguistic practices may be the rule. And if we can communicate, it’s likely to lead to the kind of tragic miscommunications seen in The Sparrow and Children of God. (Highly, highly recommended.) In short, we won’t know until they get here, and any god-talk on the subject should be based first of all on that ignorance.