Frank Turek on Aliens: If Extraterrestrials Exist, Christianity Is Still True

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Apologist and author Frank Turek says he doesn't know whether intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, but if aliens are out there, they don't undermine Christianity.

Turek shared a video clip on Instagram this week of himself fielding a question from a young man who believes it’s “statistically improbable” that intelligent life exists only on Earth.

The topic has gained renewed attention following the release of Steven Spielberg's new film Disclosure Day, which imagines a world in which evidence of extraterrestrial contact has been concealed from the public for decades.

“Christianity doesn't say anything of whether or not there are lives on other planets other than angels, but we're talking about organic life,” Turek answered. “So we don't really know if there's other life out there – if there's intelligent life out there.

“I'm not sure there's intelligent life here [on Earth],” Turek said to laughter, “but I'm open to there being life out there.”

Turek noted that the common acronym “UFOs” simply means “unidentified flying objects,” which he said means only that something has been observed in the sky but not yet explained.

“Do we know what they are? We don't know. So, could there be other life out there? Sure, [but] it's not going to affect Christianity.

“If that other life is fallen, too, and God has a plan of salvation for them – fine. Maybe they're not fallen – I don't know.”

Turek referenced the 2000 book Rare Earth, whose authors concluded that even in a vast universe, the fine-tuned conditions necessary for intelligent life may be so rare that Earth could be alone in hosting it.

Apologist Jeremiah J. Johnston of the Christian Thinkers Society also recently touched on the issue, saying he believes unidentified objects in videos released by the Pentagon could be demonic in nature.

“Here is what concerns me as a pastor and as a New Testament scholar,” Johnston wrote. “The apostle Paul warned the Thessalonian church that the man of lawlessness would come ‘with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception’ (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10). The book of Revelation describes demonic spirits performing signs that deceive the kings of the earth (Revelation 16:14).

“A generation conditioned by Hollywood to expect cosmic visitors is a generation primed for deception,” Johnston wrote. “If the enemy of our souls – who Scripture says masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14) – wanted to engineer a worldview-shattering event for the modern secular mind, what better stage prop than a sky full of unexplained lights and a culture desperate to believe in something, anything, beyond itself?”

Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/ferrantraite

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel. 

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