Conversation w/an Articulate Atheist: Part I

February 4, 2010 in Jesus, soulpancake with 2 Comments

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Have you ever had a conversation with someone way smarter than you? Someone that made you wonder if you can even spell “book” anymore? I hate those conversations because I feel like a 3rd grader getting schooled by his uncle in basketball, but I also kinda love em because of the challenge they bring to a mere conversation. (Side Note: It’s not hard for me to find someone more articulate than me, so every conversation is a challenge)

I got the opportunity to have one such a discussion, such as.

This past summer, I was kicking it on a really shnazzy website called SoulPancake, which is essentially where people from all aspects of life are invited to answer and pose some of life’s most important questions. The people on there are from all types of spiritual backgrounds and beliefs, which is pretty sweet to see everyone’s point-of-views. So with this, I wanted to post one such discussion I had with one of the most articulate people I’ve ever come across.

The question posed was more a conversation starter since it asked about 12 open ended questions all in about 3 sentences. Here’s the question:

“If Jesus is the Son of God, did He visit other planets to save aliens as well or did God send a different son to the other life forms in the universe? Was Jesus just for us? Could God have sent his “son” clothed in another life form or do you not believe in the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe?”

Here is what DancingPlatypus (the articulate atheist) replied:

“or do you not believe in the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe?” ….orrrrrr… do you find it implausible that Jesus even existed at all, much less that he was the son of God. Despite my opinions (which I delivered tongue-in-cheek since this question REALLY makes a lot of assumptions about your audience), I really do look forward to hearing what Christians believe about aliens (and how it jives with creationism and that sort of thing). The church I once went to said that there absolutely would not be aliens. I was very sad when I had to scrape the “have you seen me” alien off my rear window.

I was intrigued by his response, and, seeing as how this is anonymous (as opposed to my Cultural Anthropology class where my blithering idiot teacher would try and provoke Christians every class) I replied with this:

I’m pretty sure the man Jesus existed, that was true and recorded in Roman, Jewish (Josephus), and the new sect of Judaism’s (Christianity’s) records of the times. So I don’t think His existence as a human is in debate. Although, I would agree the existence of extraterrestrials is implied and worthy of debate. I usually really enjoy reading your comments. So, out of curiosity, if you did believe all these things what would your opinion be? My opinion (being understood God didn’t call me on my cell and tell me specifically so it is just an “opinion”) is there is other life out there. God created the world we see, whether it happened like the Bible says or through Divine Intervention. But who is to say He didn’t create more worlds in different ways, with creatures of different characteristics or shapes or compositions. If He did, my guess is that He sent someone/something that relates to them, that would give them an example of how to live. Maybe they didn’t screw the whole thing up and He didn’t need to send a savior, or maybe we were the rough draft and He got it right somewhere else. I don’t know. There seem to be a lot of dependent variables that we just can’t plug into the equation. Overall, I don’t think the earthly Jesus went to other planets like Captain Kirk trying to tell everyone about Himself, I think they have their own story.

Our conversation continued, which I will have to post in other parts because of the sheer length of this thing alone has already lost 2 of my 3 readers (thank you Mark for sticking with it, I sincerely appreciate it).

Before I move on, however, I would like to see if anyone else has a perspective on the topic/conversation so far. Things I could have said better, things I said wrong, anything. You don’t have to leave your real name/email. Make one up and let a brotha know what ya think.

You can check out Part II & Part III if ya like.

Beam me up Franklin,

-Tanner or Tyler

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  • http://TroyAndAbed.com Thomas

    This is an interesting discussion, but I agree with your reply. The one thing that I think should have been rephrased was “maybe we were the rough draft and He [God] got it right somewhere else” It’s a poor argument to say that God messed up making earth, or was incapable of “getting it right” the first time. I understand what you’re saying, but it seems the metaphor implies human fallacies apply also to God. Other than that, I definitely like your comment. Especially the ” Maybe they didn’t screw the whole thing up and He didn’t need to send a savior” as I recall my 6th grade teacher once spurring a conversation with the class about how everyone assumes that if Aliens exist they must have fallen to sin also…

  • Anonymous

    Eh… no no no.  Don’t tell me “there are records.”  *What* records?  Birth certificate?  (Hey, it’s good enough for the Obama-bashers…)  First-person eyewitness accounts?  Or were these “records” more along the line of “Pontius Pilate tells me the Jews are restless ’cause some long-haired hippie just raised a man from the dead”?  The Gospels themselves date to several decades after his death at the earliest, and Josephus, I *thought*, turned out to be a forgery.  You know, there are lots of written records of the existence of Dionysus.  I bet you don’t believe in him, though.

    Even where the records *are* legitimate, doesn’t mean stories weren’t made up.  Look at “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”  Webster existed, but I’m pretty sure that infamous debate never happened.

    And… that’s perfectly okay.  Where people had cultural differences before the advent of the Abrahamic faiths, those were usually more about behavior than anything else.  They didn’t go around accusing one another of thoughtcrime.  And that’s my heritage and I own it proudly.  If you take my good hunting/farming land and rape my daughter and burn down my house then I might want to wipe you and your family out.  If you worship one god at your household altar rather than twelve, that’s no skin off my nose and I wish you the very best.

    It’s how you behave that really matters.  And here’s where I sympathize with your cultural anthropology professor.  How many of the cultures you studied in his class are still in existence, and of the ones that aren’t, how many of those disappearances or destructions can be laid at the feet of Christendom?  How would you like it if your lifelong dream was to study butterflies and moths and by the time you got around to your first job after university graduation, some idiot had killed off half the Lepidoptera in the world because their wings were too colorful and it offended him?  Even where Christians didn’t kill a people off outright, destroying a cultural way of life is still genocide, since culture is such an important part of what makes us human.  If you were fearlessly honest with yourself and took a good hard look at the history of your faith, a Hitler or a Pol Pot’s got nothing on you guys.  I’d be snarky too, teaching a classroom of people who are benefiting from that heritage.

    That said, I’m entirely agnostic on the matter.  God might exist and He might not, and He and I are just going to have to sort it out between ourselves–which is pretty much what the Bible says anyway.  (“Judge not…”  ”Attend to the beam in thine own eye…” and something in the NT about how only the Holy Spirit can effect a conversion.)  I just don’t believe in monocultures, that’s all.  They’re no good in ecosystems and they’re definitely no good for humans.