What If ET Phones Our Home?

Implications for Christian Thought

By Ken Yeh

Ó Ó Ó Ó Ó Ó Ó
The search for meaning and significance drives seekers to look far beyond
themselves for answers. Theists look up to heaven and praise God for His magnificent
Creation, while those who hold a worldview that rejects a divine Creator also probe the
heavens in hopes that the answers to the questions about our past origins and future
prospects may come from contact with an advanced, extraterrestrial intelligent
civilization. The influx of new private funding into more powerful tools for the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)—such as the new Allen Telescope Array—expands
the range and scope of the search. And though several decades worth of searching
have been fruitless up till now, the possibility still exists that one day we will receive an
undeniable signal that we are not the sole intelligent civilization in this universe, and if
that day comes, the effects will doubtless be monumental. Astronomer Robert Jastrow
imagines that contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence will be a “transforming” event.
He states, “I do not know how the Judeo-Christian tradition will react to this
development, because the concept that there exist beings superior to us in this universe,
not only technically, but perhaps spiritually and morally, will take some rethinking, I think,
of the classic doctrines of Western religion.”1
What affect will this contact, if it ever occurs, have on the Christian faith as we
know it? Will it shatter the core Christian belief in the significance of human beings
within the universe and the importance of the Incarnation of the Son of God? Or is
there room within the Christian view of Creation and God’s salvific plan for a plurality of
intelligent beings within the universe? It is very likely that SETI will continue to find
nothing, in which case we may never need the answers to these questions, but as
Catholic theologian and professor Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti states, “I believe that the
theme for the possibility of an intelligent life of extraterrestrial origin, that is outside that
experience of unity of the human family which is common to all the biblical message,
represents one of the major speculative efforts that Christian theology might be faced
with.”2 Though Scripture offers little to guide us in our speculations, my position in this
paper is thus: I affirm the validity of the “classical” position—that Earth is the unique life-
bearing planet in the universe—in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, but I
believe that it is worthwhile to survey historic Christian thought in this area and
speculate on possible Christian responses in the hypothetical situation that intelligent
life on other planets is discovered.

Extraterrestrial Life in Historic Christian Thought

The concept of extraterrestrial life has flourished and floundered at various times
in historical Christian thought. We begin our survey in the Medieval Ages, during which
Thomas Aquinas provided a synthesis of Christian doctrine with Aristotelian cosmology.
Aquinas maintained the Aristotelian idea of placing Earth at the center of the universe,
establishing a positional significance of human beings within the universe. However,
challenges to Aristotelian ideas which potentially limited the powers of God soon arose.
In 1277, the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, issued a condemnation of 219
propositions that he considered restrictive of God’s omnipotence, including the
proposition that God could not make more than one world. Though the purpose of this

1
Quoted in Fred Heeren, “Home Alone in the Universe?” First Things 121 (March 2002);
available from http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0203/articles/heeren.html.
2
Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, “Extraterrestrial Life,” trans. by Ruan Harding, Interdisciplinary
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Science; available from http://www.disf.org/en/Voci/65.asp
was to affirm God’s omnipotence and not the existence of multiple worlds, this
statement had the effect of opening the Christian community to conjecture on the
possibility of a plurality of life-bearing worlds.
The 14th century Franciscan friar and philosopher William of Ockham declared
that God could certainly make an infinite number of worlds like ours, and could possibly
create a world that was better than ours. The 15th century cardinal Nicholas of Cusa
argued that “life, as it exists here on earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to
be found, let us suppose, in a higher form in the solar and stellar region.”3 Nicholas
speculated on the existence of solar beings who were more spiritual than the material
creatures on earth, and also beings who inhabited the moon, whom he called—pun
possibly not intended—“lunatics.” However, soon after this time the Protestant
Reformation, with its emphasis on the authority of Scripture, caused a swing against
belief in the plurality of worlds. Lambertus Danaeus argued that life on other planets
should not be accepted because it was not taught in Scripture; however, since other
planets themselves are not mentioned in Scripture this argument did not hold up well.
Lutheran theologian Philip Melanchthon noted that Genesis described God resting on
the seventh day after creating the world, and argued that this meant that He did not
create any other worlds. Reformation theologians also pointed out that a plurality of
worlds might have dire consequences for the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ and
the efficacy of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
But then the Scientific Revolution brought back more speculation about other
worlds, at the expense of a decreasing emphasis on the doctrine of the Incarnation and
redemption. In the 16th century, the acceptance of Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the
solar system displaced the Earth from its central position within the universe and
caused people to consider that there were possibly many other stars like our sun in the
universe. When Johannes Kepler observed the four moons orbiting Jupiter, he
concluded that there must be life on Jupiter. He reasoned that as God had made the
Moon for our benefit here on Earth, therefore the moons of Jupiter were made for the
benefit of the inhabitants of Jupiter. Other Christian astronomers such as Richard
Bentley of England and Christian Huygens of Holland believed that since there were
many stars that could not be observed from Earth, they must have been created for the
inhabitants of other solar systems to see. These early Christian scientists believed in
God’s ability to create life anywhere He pleased, and that the universe did not exist for
the sole benefit of humans but for God to reveal His glory. Later astronomers almost
unanimously held to a belief in life on other planets, including Sir William Herschel,
discoverer of Uranus, who claimed to have seen near-certain evidence of lunarians, and
Johann Bode, who reasoned, “The most wise author of the world assigns an insect
lodging on a grain of sand and will certainly not permit… the great ball of the sun to be
empty of creatures and still less of rational inhabitants who are ready gratefully to praise
the author of life.”4
At the same time, theologians could be seen trying to reconcile Christian
doctrines with the speculative visions of the astronomers of the day. In the face of such
belief in solarians, lunarians, martians, Venusians, mercurians, and jupiterians, what
was a Christian thinker to do? For the most part, theologians accepted the pluralism of
the astronomers. The Anglican theologian John Wilkins argued in his book Discovery of
a World in the Moone that the existence of life on other worlds did not clash with
Christianity, but rather was an expression of God’s creative power, which had been up

3
Quoted in Benjamin D. Wiker, “Alien Ideas: Christianity and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,”
Crisis Magazine (November 2002); available from
http://www.crisismagazine.com/november2002/feature7.htm.
4
Quoted in Wiker.
till now restricted by believers only to the Earth. He proposed that extraterrestrial
beings might not be fallen from grace like humans, but even if they were, Christ’s
atonement could be effective for them also. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle’s 1686
book Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds argued that beings on other planets were
not descended from Adam and hence were not subject to the Incarnation. John Ray
believed that extraterrestrial life revealed the wisdom and power of God’s creative work
in the same way as the multitude of species on Earth. The concept of extraterrestrial
life also made its way into the beliefs of the Mormons, who held that the universe was
populated by many gods, angels, and inhabitants on multiple planets, while the founder
of the Seventh-Day Adventists, Ellen Harmon, claimed to have seen visions of the tall,
sinless inhabitants of Jupiter.
Thus, it can be seen that in 18th century Christian thought, the acceptance of a
plurality of worlds allowed the doctrine of God’s creative freedom to dominate over
concerns of redemption and the Incarnation of Christ. At the same time, a growing
number of deists began to use the concept of extraterrestrial life as an argument against
the beliefs of classical Christianity. The deist poet Alexander Pope composed “The
Universal Prayer” to replace the cosmologically provincial Lord’s Prayer. Thomas Paine
made the clearest statement about the incompatibility of Christianity and the plurality of
worlds: “[T]o believe that God created a plurality of worlds at least as numerous as what
we call stars, renders the Christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous and
scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.”5 To those who tried to hold to both
Christianity and pluralism, Paine commented, “He who thinks he believes both has
thought but little of either.”
Thus, science and theology professor Benjamin Wiker observes two overlapping
but opposing trends that occurred during this time over the issue of extraterrestrials: one
led by Christians, the other by deists. He writes, “Both sung endless paeans to a might
God, creator of heaven and many earths, and both chiseled away at the doctrine of the
Incarnation to make it fit such pluralism.”6 Christians striving to stay relevant to the
scientific opinion of the day chipped away at the “embarrassing particularity” of the
Incarnation, while the deists simply deemed this doctrine unfit for their new universal
theology and eliminated it altogether. In the 19th and 20th centuries, deism quickly gave
way to atheism, and while the belief in extraterrestrial life maintained its important status
in the new naturalistic worldview, the belief in a divine Creator was left behind as an
obsolete relic from the past.

An Open Christian Consideration of ET

After surveying the theme of extraterrestrial life in historic Christian thought, we
have observed a broad range of views, from outright rejection to overt acceptance.
Especially towards the end of the millennium, it has been noted that some Christian
thinkers may have overly compromised the critical doctrines of Christian belief in an
effort to stay relevant to popular scientific opinion, but even this did nothing to curb the
secularization of the worldviews of many scientists. From this the lesson should be
learned that Christian theology should not strive to keep up with the latest popular trend
at the expense of ignoring what the Bible reveals. So, in light of this warning from
recent history, we ask the question, Is there room for extraterrestrial intelligences in
Christian thought? Can core Christian beliefs be consistent with the concept of life on
other planets in the universe? Again, in the absence of any evidence that we are not

5
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part First (1794); available from
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/ reason/reason12.htm.
6
Wiker.
alone in the universe, any possible answers to these questions remain open and
hypothetical.
The first issue of consideration is whether the discovery of life outside of Earth
will diminish the Christian belief in humanity’s special status within the universe. Paul
Davies states his belief that, “Still, the discovery of just a single bacterium somewhere
beyond Earth would force us to revise our understanding of who we are and where we
fit into the cosmic scheme of things, throwing us into a deep spiritual identity crisis that
would be every bit as dramatic as the one Copernicus brought about in the early 1500s,
when he asserted that Earth was not at the center of the universe.”7 He lists a series of
scientific discoveries in the past 500 years that have “incrementally diminished” the
status of humankind from “the pinnacle of creation.” However, there is a different way of
looking at these scientific discoveries. Rather than incrementally diminishing our status,
each new discovery establishes just how special Earth is in relation to the universe.
This has been called the “Goldilocks principle,” and is recognized in books such as
Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, and Rare Earth by Peter
Ward and Donald Brownlee. Also, even if life is found somewhere other than Earth, this
would not explain the apparent “fine-tuning” of universal cosmological constants, without
which there would be no life of any sort in the universe. The anthropic principle does
not offer conclusions about the singularity or plurality of life within the universe, but
states that the very existence of life itself requires an explanation.
Also, the Copernican revolution was not an assault against the significance of
humanity, but rather it was an attack on the Aristotelian universe, in which position and
status were integrally linked and Earth had its established position at the center of the
universe. By placing Earth in orbit around the sun, Copernicus actually raised the
status of Earth from its Aristotelian position as the cesspool of the universe. Also, the
biblical concept of the value of humanity is not associated with position, but in the gift of
relationship that God extends to humanity. Mankind is not special in God’s eyes
because he is intelligent, but because he has been given the capacity for relationship
with God. And this relationship can be special without being exclusive, as can be seen
in the example given by David Wilkinson, “I have a special relationship with my
daughter, but that is not devalued by the fact that she has a brother with whom I also
have a special relationship. Extraterrestrial intelligence does not pose a problem to
Christian belief that men and women are special in the eyes of God. It may even
increase the sense of awe at how great this God is who creates with such diversity and
extravagance.”8 Even if we are not alone in the universe, this would not mean that we
are not special and significant before God.
Catholic priest Kenneth Delano offers a reminder that God’s creation is much
richer than we can imagine, and that we need to have “a genuine humility with respect
to the transcendence of divine plans, that must be brought to avoid geocentric or
anthropocentric attitudes, so respecting the silence of the Scripture on the theme of the
plurality of intelligent creatures in the universe.”9 Passages offered by Mormon
apologists to the contrary, the Bible is silent on the possibility of additional non-
terrestrial creatures created by God. States evangelical astronomer Owen Gingerich of
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “In Genesis there's a sacred story
being told that focuses on us. But there is nothing that precludes intelligent life
elsewhere in the universe. It would be extremely arrogant to limit God's creativity to
7
Paul Davies, “E.T. and God: Could earthly religions survive the discovery of life elsewhere in the
universe?” The Atlantic Monthly, September 2003.
8
David Wilkinson, “Missionaries to Mars? The religious implications of the search for life in the
Universe,” The Plain Truth, Apr-May 2004; available from
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1711.htm.
9
Quoted in Tanzella-Nitti.
human beings as the only contemplative creatures in the universe.”10 God’s creative
freedom is linked with our understanding of God’s omnipotence. This can be stated in
the form of a truism: God is omnipotent, therefore God can create anything. Therefore,
because of God’s omnipotent will and unfathomable freedom, we must not preclude
outright the possibility that there can exist a plurality of life-bearing worlds. However, an
important caveat: the fact that God is omnipotent and can create anything does not
mean that God must create extraterrestrial life, any more than He is required to create
unicorns, dragons, and fairies.
Non-intelligent, non-“image bearing” extraterrestrial life seems to pose no
problem to Christian theology, no more than the discovery of previously unknown life
around deep sea vents or bacteria buried miles within the Earth’s crust. The clear fact
that God has created our planet with an abundance of non-human life exemplifies His
creative extravagance, and the discovery of life on other planets “would simply be yet
more of the tapestry of creation,” in the words of Wilkinson. Evidence of life on other
planets would not detract from the possibility that God created the universe and
designed it for life, just as the billions of species living on Earth do not rule out the
conclusion that God created the world and everything in it. The discovery of non-
terrestrial life forms would still testify to the extravagant creative ability of God, who
delighted in creating billions of unique species on Earth, even creatures that have not
yet been discovered, and even some that perhaps will never be seen by man. We can
understand from this that the universe and all the creatures in it was not created for the
sole benefit of man, but for God’s pleasure and to reveal His glory. Thus, if NASA
announced the conclusive discovery of non-intelligent alien life on Mars, this should not
result in much of a theological stir within the Christian community.
On a scientific and philosophical level, the discovery of non-terrestrial life does
not automatically mean that naturalistic evolution is true. The existence of many varied
species of life on earth may be a necessary condition for belief that Darwinian evolution
is true, but it is not necessary and sufficient evidence that naturalistic evolution is the
only valid explanation. The existence of life on other planets is not sufficient to disprove
the conclusion that God created the universe, for there is nothing in Scripture or
Christian doctrine that precludes the further creative work of God outside the bounds of
Earth. On the other hand, extraterrestrial life could be considered to be almost a
necessary condition for belief in a non-theistic explanation of the origin of life. It would
be hard for a naturalistic evolutionist to explain why conditions on Earth—out of all the
possible stars and worlds in the universe—happened to be just right for life to emerge
and develop. It seems to me almost necessary that evolutionists would have to believe
that life is not uncommon and that natural laws caused life to emerge in many other
places in the universe, else they would have to somehow come up with an explanation
for the questions, “Why Earth? Why us?” Thus, the continuing lack of evidence of
extraterrestrial life weighs in favor of a design explanation for why life exists on Earth.
However, what of the possibility of intelligent alien life existing somewhere else in
the universe? The addition of the factor of consciousness and self-awareness does
lead to more difficult questions on issues such as redemption and salvation, the imago
Dei, and our place in the universe. But there is a wide variety of Christian thinkers who
do affirm the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrials in the universe. According to
Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, Roman Catholic theologian and former president of the
University of Notre Dame,

10
Quoted in Joseph L. Spradley, “Religion and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,”
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 50 (September 1988); available from
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1998/PSCF9-98Spradley.html.
 It is precisely because I believe theologically that there is a being called
God, and that He is infinite in intelligence, freedom and power, that I
cannot take it upon myself to limit what He might have done. Once He
created the Big Bang... He could have envisioned it going in billions of
directions as it evolved, including billions of life-forms and billions of kinds
of intelligent beings.11
Nancey Murphy, in an article entitled “Jesus and Life on Mars,” states that it is
“theologically conceivable that God's creative intentions should include the evolution of
other life forms, wherever possible, with comparable intellectual and emotional
capacities.”12 However, what does this possibility do to the biblical account of the
Incarnation of God in the form of a human being on Earth? Three possibilities have
been offered within Christian thought.
First is the possibility that other civilizations have not fallen in sin and thus do not
need atonement. Christian writer and apologist C.S. Lewis believes that our experience
of the Incarnation on Earth need not necessarily be a universal experience. He argues
that mankind’s need for atonement is real due to our fallen state, but that this might not
be the case for other beings in the universe.
We know that God has visited and redeemed His people, and that tells us
just as much about the general character of the creation as a dose given
to one sick hen on a big farm tells us about the general character of
farming in England…. The doctrine of the Incarnation would conflict with
what we know of this vast universe only if we knew also there were other
rational species in it who had, like us, fallen, and who needed redemption
in the same mode, and they had not been vouchsafed it. But we know of
none of these things.13
But if these alien civilizations have fallen and do need atonement, the two possibilities
are that either God has been incarnated in alien flesh in each place where this has been
necessary, or that Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on Earth was a unique event that is
somehow efficacious throughout the universe.
The view that God may have been incarnated multiple times is tentatively
suggested by Oxford philosopher and Anglican priest E.L. Mascall, who properly points
out that this is a matter that we are almost completely ignorant about: “There are no
conclusive theological reasons for rejecting the notion that, if there are, in some other
part or parts of the universe than our own, rational corporeal beings who have sinned
and are in need of redemption, for those beings and for their salvation the Son of God
has united (or one day will unite) to his divine Person their nature, as he has united to it
ours.”14 This view is also held by theologian Paul Tillich, who states that, “Man cannot
claim to occupy the only possible place for Incarnation.”15 Mascall argues that the
significance of the Incarnation is the hypostatic union of God and the people that He has
come to redeem, and thus when the Son of God was made man, he became the Savior
of man, but not of other non-human beings. Thus, he sees “no fundamental reason why,

11
Ibid.
12
Nancey Murphy, "Jesus and Life on Mars," Christian Century 113 (October 30, 1996), 1028.
13
C. S. Lewis, “Dogma and the Universe,” in The Grand Miracle and Other Essays on Theology
and Ethics from God in the Dock, ed. by W. Hooper (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990), p. 14.
14
E. L. Mascall, Christian Theology and Natural Science (New York: Ronald Press, 1956), 39;
quoted in Spradley.
15
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 96;
quoted in Spradley.
in addition to human nature being hypostatically united to the Person of the divine Word,
other finite rational natures should not be united to that Person too.”16
But this view seems abhorrent to some Christians, including Oxford Cosmologist
E.A. Milne, who asks, “Was [the Incarnation] a unique event, or has it been re-enacted
on each of a countless number of planets? The Christian would recoil in horror from
such a conclusion. We cannot imagine the Son of God suffering vicariously on each of a
myriad of planets.”17 Milne holds that the Incarnation was a unique cosmic event, and
suggests the possibility of interstellar radio evangelism to share the gospel message to
intelligent beings beyond Earth. Instead of the Far East Broadcasting Company, we
would have the Far Outer Spiral Arm Broadcasting Company.
Though the idea of a galactic gospel broadcast station sounds a bit preposterous,
the thought of a multiplicity of Incarnations throughout the universe and the repeated
sacrificial atonement of the Son of God seems to slide away from biblical revelation.
The Bible does seem to establish that Christ’s atonement was a one-time event, not just
here on Earth, but for all time. As it says in Hebrews 5:25-28:
Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high
priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own.
Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the
world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do
away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die
once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to
take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not
to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Though the question remains of how Christ’s death here on Earth can be efficacious to
fallen creatures on other worlds, I believe that suggestions of multiple atonements
would damage too greatly the centrality of Christ within Christian belief. In the words of
Catholic theologian Tanzella-Nitti, “A universe where… many possible incarnations of
the Word were possible, would no longer be a Christocentric universe.”18 To be faithful
to what has been revealed through Scripture, Tanzella-Nitti maintains that Christians
must “continue to believe that the incarnation of the Word constitutes the greatest self-
communication of God to creation, it means to consider the greatness of such
communication also against the background of all other possible creatures, and finally it
means, for us humans, to assume the corresponding responsibility.”19 The importance
of the Incarnation is cosmic and universal in reach, and not restricted to geocentric or
anthropological terms.
The most analogous situation to this position, in my opinion, is the issue of how
the Christian gospel applies to unreached people groups in this world. The Incarnation
was a very specific historical event in human history. Jesus was born as a Jew and not
another race. He was crucified in Jerusalem at a certain moment in history and not in
any other location or period in history. The spreading of the gospel message about
Christ has been through the medium of missionaries who are limited in their means of
reaching all peoples living on Earth. How the limited scope of human evangelism fits
with the implied global efficacy of Christ’s atonement and God’s justice is a mystery,
and the inclusion of the possibility of extraterrestrial beings simply expands the scope of
this mystery. Again referring to Tanzella-Nitti, “As it happens in the Earth’s salvific
economy, the Spirit would again lead to the Son and would render him in some way

16
Mascall.
17
E. A. Milne, Modern Cosmology and the Chrisian Idea of God (Oxford University Press, 1952),
153; quoted in Spradley.
18
Tanzella-Nitti.
19
Ibid.
present. And all that having the logical conviction that the Creator has in each place his
own inimitable ways to make himself recognizable, and perhaps also to make himself
present within his creatures.”20 His conclusion: We must be open to the fact that the
Holy Spirit can bring about the universal efficacy of Jesus’ earthly Incarnation and
atonement.
It is my hope that this essay shows that Christian thought can be open to the
possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe. The implications that alien
civilizations can have regarding the core Christian doctrines of our significance in the
universe and the Incarnation of Christ can be resolved in a way that is consistent with
what has been revealed through Scripture. Based on what we know about the universe
and the lack of any evidence otherwise from SETI, it is perfectly rational to continue to
hold that human beings are God’s unique created intelligent creatures in the universe.
However, if one day we do establish contact with another of God’s creations, we can be
ready to accept a fellow cosmological sibling in the awesome universe that God has
placed us in.

References

Conner, Sam, Guillermo Gonzalez, and Hugh Ross. “A Spectrum of Views on ETI.” Reasons to
Believe: Facts and Faith (2nd Quarter, 1998). Available from
http://www.reasons.org/resources/faf/ 98q2faf/98q2awsi.shtml.

Davies, Paul. “E.T. and God: Could earthly religions survive the discovery of life elsewhere in
the universe?” The Atlantic Monthly (September 2003). Available from
http://www.ufoevidence.org/ documents/doc1689.htm.

Heeren, Fred. “Home Alone in the Universe?” First Things 121 (March 2002). Available from
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0203/articles/heeren.html.

Lewis, C. S. “Dogma and the Universe.” in The Grand Miracle and Other Essays on Theology
and Ethics from God in the Dock, ed. by W. Hooper (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990).

Murphy, Nancey. “Jesus and Life on Mars.” Christian Century 113 (October 30, 1996).

Spradley, Joseph L. “Religion and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” Perspectives on
Science and Christian Faith 50 (September 1988). Available from
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/ 1998/PSCF9-98Spradley.html.

Tanzella-Nitti, Giuseppe. “Extraterrestrial Life.” Interdisciplinary Encyclopaedia of Religion and

Science. Trans. by Ruan Harding. Available from http://www.disf.org/en/Voci/65.asp.

Wiker, Benjamin D. “Alien Ideas: Christianity and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life.” Crisis
Magazine (November 2002). Available from
http://www.crisismagazine.com/november2002/feature7.htm.

Wilkinson, David. “Missionaries to Mars? The religious implications of the search for life in the
Universe.” The Plain Truth, Apr-May 2004. Available from http://www.ufoevidence.org/
documents/doc1711.htm.

20
Ibid.