Jeff Schapiro is reporting in the Christian Post, that a professor asked, ‘Did Jesus Die for Klingons Too?’ Go ahead, read on. This will hurt your brain:
During a recent conference that focused on the possibilities and implications of long-term space flight, a German professor made an attempt at applying Christian theology to extraterrestrial aliens, leading him to ask the question “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?”
Christian Weidemann, a philosophy professor from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, gave the lecture on theology and aliens as part of the 100 Year Starship Study symposium in Orlando, Fla., this past weekend . . . [at a conference], which was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. He addressed some of the problems that finding life on other planets could present to theologians who have to explain the Christian faith.
"According to Christianity, an historic event some 2,000 years ago was supposed to save the whole of creation," Weidemann said during his presentation, according to Science.com.
The question he raised goes something like this: Should advanced civilizations be discovered in other parts of the universe, why would God save Earthlings and not the rest of His intelligent creatures?
One idea he presented was that humans were the only “sinners” out of God’s creation, and are therefore the only ones that require a savior, but he considered other possibilities as well.
“If there are extra-terrestrial intelligent beings at all, it is safe to assume that most of them are sinners too,” Weidemann said. “If so, did Jesus save them too? . . .
. . . In order for that to be possible, however, he said multiple incarnations of God would have to exist at the same time. Assuming each incarnation took about 30 years, and based on how long civilizations are expected to survive, he estimated there would have to be approximately 250 incarnations of God present in the universe at any given time to cover the sins of each civilization.
Did we mention that this conference was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense?
It got me thinking. (I have not yet had my morning coffee). Now, I don’t know when advanced civilizations started. Let’s say it was 60,000 years ago, give or take a few billions years for some galaxies that are more advanced than others. For some reason the incarnation on earth did not happen until 2,000 years ago; we must factor that in. Assume that each incarnation is like the one on earth, with some exceptions for body size, shape and color. (Have you seen those photographs of the grey aliens? There must be some little green ones, too.) By my reckoning that calculates to roughly 452 billion Shrouds of Turin, so far. Several more, in various sizes, are being created as you read this. Go ahead; check my math. Of course, they are not all called the Shroud of Turin. That would be too strange.
Christian Post: Professor asked, ‘Did Jesus Die for Klingons Too?‘
according to Frank Tipler of Tulane there are an infinate number of shrouds but they are in different universes.