What Does the Bible Say About Aliens?

You’re in a conversation and someone says, “The discovery of intelligent, alien life would disprove Christianity.” What would you say? Though hard evidence of flying saucers and little green men is still tough to come by outside of Hollywood and social media posts, there seems to be a widespread intuition that if aliens ever did turn up, it would disprove God, or at least debunk the Bible. Is that true? Well, no, and not just because aliens ever turning up is still an enormous “if.” There’s nothing in the Christian view of the world that excludes the possibility that God created life on other planets. In fact, the Bible teaches there are other creatures out there, just not the kind that UFO hunters expect. The next time someone says, “The discovery of intelligent, alien life would disprove Christianity,” here are three things to remember: Number one: Despite the hype of science fiction and decades of searching, there is currently no evidence for life on other planets. “The Star Wars bar room scene,” said paleontologist Peter Ward in an interview with Astronomy.com.1 “That’s how it all started.”2 Ward, the co-author of the book Rare Earth, thinks that the idea that the universe is teeming with aliens “has been foisted on the public.”3 Even before the “galaxy far, far away,” audiences were steeped in Star Trek mythology, in which every new planet visited by Captain Kirk was home to a race of humanoid creatures in makeup and prosthetics. Some scientists are guilty of reinforcing this fanciful picture. Famed astronomer Carl Sagan asked in his Cosmos series: “[W]hat is the likelihood that only one ordinary star, the Sun, is accompanied by an inhabited planet? Why should we, tucked away in some forgotten corner of the Cosmos, be so fortunate? To me, it seems far more likely that the universe is brimming over with life.”4 Yet after decades of looking and listening and exploring the heavens for that life, we’ve come up empty-handed. So much so, in fact, that physicists and astronomers have named the emptiness the Fermi Paradox, which refers to “the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence.”5 In other words, if life happens easily, “Where is everybody?”6 Ward and his co-author, Donald Brownlee, argue in Rare Earth, that life doesn’t happen that easily, and assuming that it does is the real mistake. At least a dozen special conditions found on our planet are probably necessary for the existence of intelligent life, including a precise orbital distance from our star, heavy elements, liquid water, a moon, a magnetic field, not too much gravity, a nearby gas giant, and having a star like our Sun, which, as it turns out, is anything but “ordinary.”7 We know of no other planet that meets all of these conditions. If the universe is teeming with life it means that places like Earth are common. But all the evidence we currently have says Earth is special. Number two: Even if intelligent life were found elsewhere in the universe, it wouldn’t necessarily present a problem for Christianity. Before Star Trek or Star Wars existed, C.S. Lewis wrote his Space Trilogy. In it, he famously imagined alien races that never fell into sin. And in a few essays, Lewis wrestled with whether the existence of real-life extraterrestrials would threaten Christianity. According to Lewis, the Bible never says God created the vast cosmos only for humans: “God loves man and for his sake became man and died. But that does not prove that man is the sole end of nature. In the parable, it was the one lost sheep that the shepherd went in search of: it was not the only sheep in the flock, and we are not told that it was the most valuable. … The doctrine of [Jesus’] Incarnation would conflict with what we know of this vast universe only if we knew also that there were other rational species in it who had, like us, fallen, and who needed redemption in the same mode, and that they had not been [given] it. But we know none of these things.”8 (“Dogma and the Universe”) For Lewis, intelligent aliens created and loved by God posed no problem, nor would they contradict the Bible. In the same essay, he cautioned that the Bible was not intended to satisfy our curiosity about such things but as an instruction manual for salvation. But he also warned that humans are in no position to tell God what He can and cannot do with His vast universe. Number three: The Bible teaches that there are other beings in the universe, but they’re not what materialists expect, and they do not always come in peace. The bias toward materialism in the modern world lead many to assume that, if true, reports of alien encounters and abductions must be the work of flesh-and-blood creatures from another planet. Science fiction has bolstered this view. However, long before people dreamed of a universe full of green men in saucers, they believed in a cosmos teeming with spiritual beings. Pagans called them “gods and goddesses,” and worshipped and feared them. The Bible calls them angels, demons, powers, and principalities, and assures us that they are very real, created by God. Some of them love and serve Him, and throughout Scripture, carry messages to people and fight on their behalf. Others are in rebellion against God and are hostile toward people. Some biblical scholars, like the late Dr. Michael Heiser have suggested, that some alleged alien encounters may be the result of demonic activity and possession.9 After all, in 2 Corinthians 11:14 Paul warned that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. This means that Christians need not believe every story of alien abductions or close encounters, but we need not immediately dismiss them as jokes or conspiracy theories. Christianity teaches that we are not alone in the universe, that it is full of intelligent entities, both good and evil, and that all were created by and remain under the power of God. The existence of extraterrestrial life is still speculation, but the Christian worldview has more room for mysteries than our secular, materialist age does. It offers a bigger, more thorough, and more satisfying explanation for the universe. So, the next time someone says, “The discovery of intelligent, alien life would disprove Christianity,” here are three things to remember: Number one: Despite the hype of science fiction and decades of searching, we still have no evidence for life on other planets. Number two: Even if we discovered intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem for Christianity. Number three: The Bible teaches that there are other beings in the universe, but they’re not what materialists expect, and they do not always come in peace.

Merchant, Nomaan. “Whistleblower tells Congress the US is concealing ‘multi-decade’ program that captures UFOs.” Associated Press, July 26, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/ufos-uaps-congress-whistleblower-spy-aliens-ba8a8cfba353d7b9de29c3d906a69ba7 

Sagan, Carl. Goodreads. “Quote by Carl Sagan.” Accessed November 7, 2023. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7813993-w-hat-is-the-likelihood-that-only-on-ordinary-star 

Adler, Doug. “Rare Earth hypothesis: Why we might really be alone in the universe.” Astronomy, July 29, 2022. https://www.astronomy.com/science/rare-earth-hypothesis-why-we-might-really-be-alone-in-the-universe/.  

Wikipedia. “Fermi Paradox.” Accessed November 7, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 

Lewis, C.S. God in the Dock. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2014. 

Heiser, Michael. “Aliens and Demons: Evidence of an Unseen Realm - documentary film featuring Dr. Michael S. Heiser.” October 12, 2022. Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThmF7OErkxY&ab_channel=Logos