This is a section of objections that I have found or heard to what I have written. Where appropriate, the question is given as a link to the original source. The question is followed by my response. I do not mean any disrespect for any persons or institutions mentioned here, and I am offering these as alternative points of view so the reader can see the other side of the discussion and make an informed decision for himself or herself.
Most of these objections were all written before I wrote this paper and were thus not specifically in response to my explanation. Instead, they are against the topic in general.
I encountered most of these while researching this topic. Since I could not include everything within the body of the paper, I will attempt to respond to these in more depth here.
If you have an objection or comment, please e-mail me at ricky_duval@hotmail.com.
Thank you!
I explain this a little in the footnotes, but I'll go over this again briefly: According to Genesis 4, Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain, then Abel. Then Cain killed Abel and went to the Land of Nod. And it's only AFTER that when Adam and Eve had another child!! (Seth was born to "replace" Abel and it wasn't until after Seth Adam and Eve had more children. So Cain had already left for the Land of Nod before Adam and Eve had a third child.) So there is no way Cain could have married "a descendant of one of his siblings"!
First of all, this is a judgement call, whether God would have done something or not. But secondly, the Bible says "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, ... As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9) And He has purposely not revealed things to us even in the Bible (see the verses listed with Justified Omission Principle). So I think it is quite acceptible for God not to tell us if an alien race existed. (Especially with the original readers of the Bible having no idea what "aliens" or "extraterrestrials" are.)
First of all, there is a lot of ambiguity about the phrase "the sky will be rolled up like a scroll". But it seems to signify some sort of universal catastrophy. However, it cannot mean the total destruction of these stars and worlds, becuase just a few verses later (Revelation 8:12, and later in Revelation 12:4) it still talks of the stars being in the sky!! So there must be some other explanation. My explanation is simply to say that this catastrophic event is simply a part of the Tribulation that affects the rest of the universe, also showing that the "Tribulation" is NOT specific to earth!
First of all, the Bible never says sin was passed down from Adam. It only says "Sin entered the world through Adam" (Romans 5:12). So once Adam and Eve sinned, it DESTROYED the perfection in the universe. Now death and decay had become a natural part of everything (Romans 5:12 again). So ANYTHING and EVERYTHING was affected! Even "the ground" was cursed by Adam's sin! (Genesis 3:17) So the "Curse" of sin came about because of this, and not by being directly descended from Adam!
Besides, if you wanted to argue this you would also have to say that the people in the Land of Nod shouldn't be affected by the Curse either, and that they died for no reason when God flooded the earth.
As far as Jesus and salvation, I'll repeat what I said in my footnotes: The descendants of Israel were God's chosen people (see Deuteronomy 7:6, Deuteronomy 14:2, Isaiah 45:4, etc.). They were chosen out of everyone else! And God intended for His "religion" to start with His chosen people and then spread out. The only way for this to happen is for Jesus to visit His people -- on earth.
Another key point -- humans were the first ones to FAIL, (see Genesis 3). So sin "began" on earth, and so the cure for sin needed to be on earth. But the sin itself infected the entire universe, and the cure (Jesus' sacrifice) covered the entire universe.
The purpose of creation is not focused on the earth or any part of it. However, the focus of the creation story (Genesis 1-2) is. The Bible does focus on the creation of man, and more importantly focuses on God's chosen people. However, the "Gentiles" are also allowed to take part in "salvation" (in fact, I am one of those Gentiles, and any non-Jewish Christian is a Gentile! So does that mean we are not saved? Of course not!!) So salvation is NOT just for the people the Bible focused on.
And the "Bride" is the church, which includes all Christians. And as I have previously stated, aliens WOULD be covered under salvation and thus WOULD be Christians! So they are part of the "Bride" (and not another, separate "Bride").
First of all, I agree with these premises, I just don't agree that these are the only reasons the stars and planets and galaxies exist. The stars are useful for man, but that is not their only purpose. And they do glorify God, but so does all of creation, so the stars aren't unique in that sense. Also, care should be taken when describing exactly how man "uses" the stars. The Bible does not say that "even the heavens are subject to mankind". The verses used to support this false idea are quoted exactly as follows:
"Thy heavens, the work of the Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou has ordained... Thou dost make him [man] to rule over the works of Thy hands, Thou has put all things under his feet" (Psalms 8:3,6)
and
"And take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage" (Deuteronomy 4:19).
These verses are taken out of context. If you read all of Psalm 8, you get a much different interpretation. First, the part about the stars in verse 3 is the first half of a sentence completed in verse 4 -- "what is man that you are mindful of him"!! Man feels insignificant against the awesome power of the heavens! So man doesn't seem to be a very good ruler if he is nothing compared to them! But what about verse 6? If you read the context, Verses 6-8 actually say that man is over birds, livestock, and fish!!
And what about Deuteronomy 4:19? First of all, if you read the context of the entire chapter, it's talking about worshipping idols, and that you should not worship the stars any more than you should worship an animal or any "god" you can create. It's not about man's dominion over the stars. However, that one particular verse simply means that everyone in the world (or the universe, for that matter) can see the stars and appreciate them!
And the rest of the question, about whether the stars are made to glorify God, is not in question. Yes, God made the heavens to glorify Him. But that does not imply anything, because all of God's creation (including man!) was made to glorify Him! So that does not mean the stars are only there for that purpose!
While it may possibly be "hard to imagine", it is not impossible to believe. Sin began on earth. (Genesis 3), and God's "Chosen People" live on earth. (Deuteronomy 7:6, Deuteronomy 14:2, Isaiah 45:4, etc.). And the Bible was given to "earthlings". So it seems that earth does have a central role in history. What happens to God's chosen people will also affect non-Christians, so why is it so amazing to believe what happens to God's chosen people wouldn't affect those not living on the earth, if in fact there were any creatures on other planets?
Genesis 6-7 describes a Flood that covered the entire world and killed every living thing on earth. There is absolutely no way to claim that the Flood affected the entire universe. Every verse about it says the flood affected the entire earth but says nothing about the universe! And of course there is no way for rain and the "springs of the great deep" to affect the heavens! However, that does not present a problem with this theory!
The Bible never claims God was mad at all of the inhabitants of the universe, nor does it say the Flood would wipe out all life. In fact, the Biblical account of the Flood makes it a point to specify that God was going to destroy all life on the earth! Every time the story mentions the wickedness of creation, it specifies "on the earth". (Genesis 6:1, Genesis 6:5, Genesis 6:6, Genesis 6:11, Genesis 6:12) And every time it mentions destroying all life, it specifies "on the earth" (Genesis 6:7, Genesis 6:13, Genesis 6:17, Genesis 7:4, Genesis 7:21-23) The only time the Bible mentions destroying life and does not say "earth" is Genesis 6:17 (and actually, earth is mentioned later on in the verse.) This verse says "all life under the heavens". "Under" in Hebrew (tachath) means everything from "below" or "under" to "in place of" or "instead of" (Genesis 4:25, Genesis 22:13) A more important word, however, is the Hebrew word for "heavens" (shamayim). While this word can be translated "sky" or "Heaven -- where God dwells", it is (with the exception of two verses) the only word used to mean "the place of the stars". So this verse could be translated:
"I am going ... to destroy all life below where the stars are" or
"I am going ... to destroy all life except for where the stars are"!
But however you translate it, it clearly implies that not only would aliens not be affected by this, they weren't supposed to be involved in this! It was only man that God was angry at and only the life forms on earth, and not in the heavens that were to be destroyed.
The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The versions we have now are in English. Therefore, there could be several translations of a single word from the original language to English. That's part of the reason we have so many different translations of the Bible -- KJV, NKJV, NIV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, etc. So to avoid the ambiguity that comes from multiple interpretations, I have gone back to the "original" version (well, the earliest reliable sources we have) and translated directly from these.
Granted, my Hebrew is worse than my Greek (and my Greek isn't that good), but I thought direct translations and interpretations of the Greek and Hebrew would be better than translations and interpretations of someone else's translations and interpretaions of a particular text.