Extraterrestrial Jesus
After the aliens arrived and announced their intentions in V last night, the first thing we see is two priests arguing over a Vatican pronouncement that the aliens are harmless. The younger priest is skeptical:
If there is intelligent life on other planets, did God have to save them from Original Sin too?
One of the interesting things about alternative religious models like the Urantia book is that they are baby steps towards answering that sort of enormous question. These alternatives are addressing objective facts about the universe that just weren't known when the Bible was written. Genesis simply says that God created the Heavens. There's no talk of solar systems and galaxies, let alone supernovae or black holes. Why would there be? Humans had no knowledge of the Heavens beyond what they could see with their naked eye.
Now we have a healthy sense of just how vast those Heavens are, and it looks less and less plausible that we would be the only Man in it. What are the odds that there are all those suns with all those planets, but only Earth has creatures on it that God so loved that he sent his only Son to save them? Pretty slim.
The Urantia book is an attempt to adapt Christianity to this modern cosmology. It functions a lot like the old Disney idea of multiplane animation, where multiple layers of visual information are combined to form a richly detailed composite image. Underneath all that Urantian nonsense about Nebadon and local universe administration is the original narrative of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, like a matte painting.
In a lot of ways, the Bible had it coming, because those scriptures actually lay the precedent for a variation like the Urantia book. Even in the very first book of Genesis, we have multiple versions of the Creation story. In the New Testament, Jesus' life is told no less than four different times, and in four very different ways. (John's Jesus wouldn't recognize Mark's if they met each other on the street!)
The reason for including 4 different gospels (including 2 contradictory birth stories) is to enhance the study of the central mystery of Christ's existence. The 4 distinct versions of Christ's life add up to a richer portrait of a figure so complex and compelling that a lifetime is not enough to fully comprehend him.
So as crazy as the Urantia book seems at face value, sending Christ (Michael) to not just Earth but seven other planets, it's actually working out the same basic spiritual problems of existence that the Bible is. It's hard to completely dismiss a theology which has the well-being of humanity at heart.
"There's not a lot of scripture on the subject...I'm at a loss to explain how God and aliens exist in the same world..."It was fun to see that theological argument tossed in right off the bat. Science fiction doesn't deal with the issue of Christianity very often, aside from co-opting its plotines (ie Dune). And the Church is not in the habit of addressing such basic sci-fi conundrums as:
One of the interesting things about alternative religious models like the Urantia book is that they are baby steps towards answering that sort of enormous question. These alternatives are addressing objective facts about the universe that just weren't known when the Bible was written. Genesis simply says that God created the Heavens. There's no talk of solar systems and galaxies, let alone supernovae or black holes. Why would there be? Humans had no knowledge of the Heavens beyond what they could see with their naked eye.
Now we have a healthy sense of just how vast those Heavens are, and it looks less and less plausible that we would be the only Man in it. What are the odds that there are all those suns with all those planets, but only Earth has creatures on it that God so loved that he sent his only Son to save them? Pretty slim.
The Urantia book is an attempt to adapt Christianity to this modern cosmology. It functions a lot like the old Disney idea of multiplane animation, where multiple layers of visual information are combined to form a richly detailed composite image. Underneath all that Urantian nonsense about Nebadon and local universe administration is the original narrative of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, like a matte painting.
In a lot of ways, the Bible had it coming, because those scriptures actually lay the precedent for a variation like the Urantia book. Even in the very first book of Genesis, we have multiple versions of the Creation story. In the New Testament, Jesus' life is told no less than four different times, and in four very different ways. (John's Jesus wouldn't recognize Mark's if they met each other on the street!)
The reason for including 4 different gospels (including 2 contradictory birth stories) is to enhance the study of the central mystery of Christ's existence. The 4 distinct versions of Christ's life add up to a richer portrait of a figure so complex and compelling that a lifetime is not enough to fully comprehend him.
So as crazy as the Urantia book seems at face value, sending Christ (Michael) to not just Earth but seven other planets, it's actually working out the same basic spiritual problems of existence that the Bible is. It's hard to completely dismiss a theology which has the well-being of humanity at heart.
Labels: crazy ass shit, Urantia Book
posted by jodru at 22:44
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