Flying Saucers, Deep Incarnation, and the Covered Dish Dinner: Astro Theology with Ted Peters

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1:06including videos, reading plans, full audio, Bibles, interactive graphics and more. Also available in Spanish. See it for yourself at slasb.com. Hello everyone, this is Trip and today on the podcast is Ted Peters. Lutheran Theologians spend a lot of time engaging science and religion and a regular public Theologian engaging the Christian tradition and all sorts of conversations in the public square. Now he's a sub-stacker as well. And I'll say the author of my favorite one volume, Christian systematic theology text, God the future of the world. It is a form of constructive postmodernism that doesn't deflate the distinctive Christian claims at the heart of the tradition and communicates it in a very engaging way for students. So, no, very excited for you to be here Ted.

2:08Well, thank you for inviting me, Trip. It's always great to have a trip with Trip. Well, today on your sub-stack, you were pulling together a whole host of threads now that the president's former and current president decided that maybe we should release some info on encounters with extra trust real life. I'd love for someone who's been kind of thinking about this theologically and engaged it with it in the public square for years to like maybe begin by letting us know your own story with it. Like how you found interest in what it what does it look like over the years as a Christian theologian engaging different disciplines in the public square around the search for extra trust real life. Well, having two presidents suddenly say, oh, we're going to release the secret file. That will tell us about the US government's debunking and secretizing all this exotic information about flying saucers, UFOs, UAP, crashed spacecraft, the storing of the bodies of dead aliens and conversations between an alien civilization in the US military.

3:31I don't know, I'm sitting in the front of my seat, but in my fingernails, but wait a minute. This has been going on for 75 years without any change. Go back to 1950 and the down key hose book behind the flight saucer starts right off. Why won't the government release this information? And so if you think the Epstein finals and sort of mysterious, let me tell you, this is the same thing with a great deal more frustration and mystery. So why am I in this well when I was a kid, I read on a key, I read the UFO books and flying saucer books. My mom and dad were followers of George at Amsterdam's keys. Well, you're already even born during that era trip, but you was a cultist of a sword to contact you from the civilization on Venus where people look to talk kind of like Jesus.

4:34Later, we found out the surface temperature of Venus is 950 degrees, so that's a little less like heaven and we're going to deal more like the other place. Yeah, I've been active as a UFO investigator on and off now for a long period of time and I try to do an analysis of our culture. Why is it that so many people are so excited about a mystery that's unresolved and be the prospect that we share our cosmos with intelligent space neighbors. And yeah, that's what keeps me animated trip. Yeah, and you coined the term astro theology. So I wonder when, when did you realize the kind of space sciences broadly were posing genuinely new theological questions and not just illustration so we could recapitulate old answers. The term astro biology came on line about 1995 or so prior to that, Carl Sagan and others had called it exobiology and Sagan wouldn't even joke.

5:46It's a science that has no nothing to study because nobody has in their hand a living exo creature or anything, but with the discovery of exoplanets in the 1990s, exobiology came on line. I had flirted with the term exo theology earlier than reframed 15 years ago in terms of astro theology and the grounds that we want theologians to think, to think about the implications of off earth and not human intelligence. And a number of people have been able to work under the of grow of astro theology and grow ethics, sometimes called just space ethics. And in one of the things that you do in this runs not just around this topic, but generally when thinking about public theology is recognizing like what are the major low side that Christians have always kind of reflected on are a kind of most entangled in these new questions.

6:52And when it goes to astro theology, you're always wanting to help it reshape our theology of nature. And you know, and you got to make sure that especially engaging the public like I'm not talking about like a new age or a cult thing. I'm not talking about astrology because the mummy say astro, especially in California, certain things come to mind first. But I wonder if you could kind of talk having been engaged in these conversations for a while. What are we inheriting in a new way in our doctrine of creation if we start to ask these more intergalactic questions? Well, you asked that question well, am I working a definition of public theology is that it's theology that is conceived originally in the church is critically honed and developed in the academy of the university and then finally is shared with the public outside the church for the sake of the common good.

7:56And there are as you had suggested in your question, doctrines, Christian systematic theology doctrines have been carefully thought about for 2000 years. They're very enlightening, very illuminating and if we in the church share with those share those doctrines outside the church. They can help public discourse in particular sin and grace in Christian thinking illuminates the political crisis. Why isn't the public officials who plan on perpetrating violence do so in the name of justice? Well, the doctrine is sin, illuminates. As you suggested, when we deal with questions on life and other planets, what's the nature of the cosmos? Yes, the Christian doctrine of creation or it's a doctrine we share with Muslims and Jews to be sure is illuminating because believers and God, we want to see the unity.

9:07And if the cosmos is expanding almost disintegrating in terms of by the principle of entropy and the dissipation and attending towards a final state of equilibrium in which nothing happens. Try to understand that if there is a single God in the single world and that all of this is very meaningful. So there's a, there's an opportunity right here for theologians in at least these three traditions. The students in Christianity and Islam to engage the wider public, especially through the lenses shared to us, shared with us by the natural scientists. He, what is it all mean? And I have to say, I really enjoyed your conversation with Andrew Davis, who can rely on white-handed men at physics and say, you know what the beatings there? It's already there. What we need to do is we need to find it. And so I think the public theologian can help in conversations way outside the church.

10:15How do we find the meaning that holds all of this complex cosmos, all the parts of it together? You know, even there about the kind of like value of life in general being something that's not just, well, hopefully we've gotten over it just being something our species has or even life on our planet. You, you have this concept of of telio empathy, right? This felt sense of another being's trajectory is something to think about ethically that could be used towards thinking about life, even at the microbial level on our planet or like in parts of the ocean. Maybe we haven't thought through and these kinds of things. Last night, I was shaperoning a youth group trip to where we got to use a satellite. I mean a giant telescope and one of the things we looked at was Europa. And the astrophysicist there was talking about, you know, for the longest time we thought Europa is this odd moon because there's hardly any dents on it.

11:17Well, why is that? And then it comes to find out that Europa is running at a different angle around the around the planet and when it passes another moon, it contracts and then expands and it generates a lot of heat in Europa. When things hit it, it goes through the ice and then, you know, if the surface is minus 2000 something degrees, the water will come up freeze almost immediately, right? And that which which just at one moon is a shock to all of our assumptions as to what's out there and going, well now we have this smooth surface moon, but in the middle of it, it's a lot warmer and it's liquid, right? And so I wondered like how even thinking about those those ethical concepts like tealio empathy help us think about maybe like the ethical categories we've used for thinking about like endangered species or something on earth as a way of thinking about a life found elsewhere that may not even be as as advanced as we are now, but a site of life in the universe that gets the dignity that in our doctrine of creation.

12:22We've been wanting to give to our non human neighbors and yeah. Well, astrobiologists tend to divide their discipline into two categories, extraterrestrial non-intelligent life or as Margaret race and said he would say stupid life within the solar system and then intelligent life, which is the only type of life we're probably going to discover out of the solar system elsewhere within the milky way. And so when it comes to non-intelligent life within the solar system and astrobiologists think that Europa is probably one among the half dozen locations where we're most likely to encounter microbes, ethical questions arrive arise. How much everything? And I was at a meeting some years ago with a bunch of astrobiologists who were asking the ethical question with those microbes on the somewhere on Europa maybe writing that little Goldilocks temperature zone where it's not 2000 degrees below zero where there is liquid water and there might be a single cell organisms or maybe.

13:42Even mosquito larvae who knows? Do they have intrinsic value? Now look, it's this formula, a little more complex, a timely individual microbes don't. I mean, we wash our hands in alcohol right to kill them, but what about the biosphere? What about the whole ecosystem that makes these living creatures? Do we have a moral obligation to protect that ecosystem? This was the kind of question the scientists were asking and I'm thinking it's a theologian. I'll be still my heart. It's so wonderful to hear scientists asking moral questions. I'm such profound a date. And then there's the conversation went on and I had to go loops. They want public policy that protects Europa so that it's the sandbox that scientists can play in. They don't want Elon Musk or the Mars Society to go there with bulldozer spirits.

14:44It started mining it for profit and killing those four microbes. So here was a kind of utilitarian or for a short reason to get the philosophy provided justification for putting a fence around it for the scientists. Be that isn't me. It just shows that this kind of anticipation of new scientific discoveries provokes moral questions. And we kind of waste the gold before we resolve them, but it's going to be fun. But it's going to be power against power as it so frequently is in terms of discerning. Well, one is really the right way to go. Well, and even that's like a good example of the one of the kind of concepts you and Bob Russell developed of creative mutual interaction. When thinking about a kind of the you know, theology engaging the sciences and in different ways. Like it is someone who's kind of thought about that intersection of theology and science and done so when you get grants to bring all the cool scientists to hang out with religion scholars and such.

15:53What are some of those kind of places of creative mutual interaction that show up in the conversation about astrobiology more broadly. The two questions there are creative mutual interaction phrase coined by Robert John Russell as you as you mentioned who is a hybrid is both a physicist and a systematic theologian. He's really talking about subatomic activity where at the most most fundamental level of reality is appears. We have indeterminacy and that's sort of a clever or funny situation becomes natural scientists in general tend to be causal determinus. So here we have indeterminacy way down there at the at the basics and so Robert John wants to say this is a real opening where the theologian can talk about divine providence at works in the physical world.

16:53In the physical world in which no laws of nature are violated you don't have to appeal to a miracle in order to show how God is at work and so science informs theology and theology informs science. So that's the level of which creative mutual interaction works now at the practical level what Bob does that has really taught me a lot is he'll lock six scientists. He's six of the health theologians in a row have coffee set in and then we're just not kids. And that's that has been quite a quite an adventure from the last 50 years and I really credit Bob at the center for its its leadership and creative mutual interaction. Similarly when it comes to astro theology on the one hand at the astro theologies religious reflection on what the scientists tell us about outer space.

17:54On the other hand as I had suggested earlier. What does the theologian bring to the table here that could be of value to the scientific community and up until this point it's been finally been basically value morality ethics et cetera. But you started by asking me about about a theology of nature would the theologian construct. A theology of nature that benefits from what the scientists tell us about nature yet and something of value and I think that's the kind of thing that Andrew Davis was exploring with you earlier and he was importing white hide and metaphysics so that we could. Say to the scientists what's your value nature is telling us something about value or Hans Jonas of you discussed earlier similar says similarly an evolutionary biology says life strives to preserve itself listen y'all that's the source of value right there and you're in my moral obligation is to respond to life trying to preserve itself et cetera.

19:09So the theologian could bring in the philosopher to bring to the wider discussion of what is the nature of nature. The question of what should be valued and et cetera is this already done oh no this is a research program. It's just beginning that that's long way to go. Well you talk about how astrobiology is an almost religious science that it's hard to maintain kind of the strict scientific lines of objectivity when you get to something that entails right the kind of metaphysical and cosmological questions that come up and I wonder if there's something for people of faith to learn when engaging in those kind of you know almost religious science questions. I mean it provokes one more site for us to wrestle with the need to decenter humanity from you know the the the sole locus of divine engagement but you know there might be others that you know elements that come up for you.

20:16There are actually two questions there why is astrobiology and almost religious science and the second one is do we need to decenter the de-entiprocentrize let me deal with the first one first I guess the answer is all I don't know if you're a teenager laying on the beach like I was looking up at the sky you know Charlie Brown used to do this in the cartoons. And you look beyond the clouds. What do you see it's kind of like it's there but it's not there it's intimate and in the ancient arcade cultures the sky was sacred it was powerful the sun could make a live or destroy the clouds could fall meant and raw with thunder and spark with lightning and when I heard that as a kid I'd run and hide under my bed.

21:17My mother would say why are you under the bed I said I'm afraid of the thunder and she would say oh don't worry it's just for up in heaven rolling his bowling ball. So the sky had this enormous sense of power and infinity and then in the mind world we are this enchanted we have weather reports tell us what the sky is going to do all we and we fly in airplanes we look down on the rain. And oh my gosh the sky lost this new in this quality but surprise of all surprises right behind the sky was another one namely outer space and once we discovered outer space that has almost the we are almost experience infinity when we look at the stars at night or if you look at the galaxies through telescopes. And the scientists can capitalize on this Carl Sagan brutal atheist.

22:20Oh my gosh astronomy and speculation about space gave him all the religious meaning he needed to read religious now think of the contact drama and even to his resurrection of the dead. In there so I want to say that astronomy astrophysics astrobiology these are scientists that intrinsically excite us and when I watch in a new show and they say well there's been a new discovery. That you know the new plan or something that I'm going to sit through the commercials are to get to the discovery so that's what I mean is the sky picks up a new in this quality that we've inherited from our ancestors and that's got nothing to do with the facts of astronomy that has to do with just the confrontation of the finite with the infinite. What is up I want to invite you to theology beer camp 2026 look most religious conferences are let's be honest horrible bad coffee weird carpet breakout sessions that make you question life choices we do things differently at the

23:38theology beer camp three days of incredible speakers honest conversations craft beer a community of people who actually want to wrestle with big questions. We laugh we learn we argue we pray and yeah we drink really good beer while we do it in this October the 8th to the 10th we're headed to Kansas City and I would love for you to come be with us. Whether you're a pastor a professor or someone who's just tired of checking their brain at the church door this is your peeps come hang out with us. The tickets are available at theology beer camp dot com social where you find details so come on out the camp it might just be your favorite part of 2026. Is someone who's not just engaged in the kind of for the larger academic conversation but someone who spends a lot of time both writing and speaking to congregations and in larger public what what are the like most frequent questions that you get asked around extra terrestrial life and these kinds of things that you think oh oh that is an excellent question and let's talk about it.

24:53And let's talk about it in the ones that you go was a there's a theologian of the church let me help you reframe it like what if you learn from so much time interacting with so many different people in the public about it. Well if the subject matter happens to be UFOs I talked to a 12 or 13 year old boy because they got it almost they got it locked in their mind there's it's almost like a set of troops that these they're like fight saucers are kind of like airplanes your spaceships that travel from planet to planet. And of course that's partially informed by science fiction which I happen to think is almost irrelevant to the larger question of extraterrestrial intelligence and UFOs etc but there's a certain kind of mindset that puts it all together and then you debate whether it's true or false so the largest set of questions comes from that and most grownups that I know never actually.

25:55Had a new thought after they were 12 anyway about this particular subject matter I think when it comes to grownups. They're trying to put together a number of disparate pieces you said earlier you want to talk about serious science, serious theology and new age and stuff but in terms of what's available for you and me in the culture on the one hand we've got the serious scientific question. And the only hand or you got claims in the paranormal you got life after life experiences and these things sort of come together in people's minds and it's not automatic it's just there are the culture and we want to get them all together and I remember talking with the UFO experience here one time a woman and she said that after her UFO experience an alien. And has entered her mind through her brain and he's there with her all the time and she can consult with him about daily life and how to sort things out.

27:06So I just want to say I think that there's a propensity that we have to take a disintegrated set of thoughts and integrate them. In speculation about ETI is one of the places in which that happens Andrew Davis doesn't in light of white hide and metaphysics say Thomas Aquinas didn't in light and say Thomas Aquinas is metaphysics and they shot her all together in the package and you're in my natural imagination and thinking is trying to put her all together. And that's why the public theologian I think is in the job in my opinion of worldview construction it's our task to try to put it together but all these things don't fit easily. One of the things that I've experienced is in these kind of conversations that certain part of the church especially the kind of more biblical literalist types insist oh the Bible the Bible is clear like there's not extraterrestrial life and such and you call you call your stance the Bible welcomes alien stance.

28:12And knowing that we're going to have increasing situations where congregants go up to their clergy or their nerdy friends and ask about this like where where's the ideal place of beginning to make space for it for those that they could just kind of a priori eliminated by scripture. Let me say I've done it run into the kind of person you're talking about I did do a survey some years ago of religious people and what they fought in terms of their faith about extraterrestrials and evangelicals and fundamentalists including a number of Christian fundamentalists. They said again and again and again God is the creator of everything that is and if God created civilizations on other planets. Well that's the kind of powerful God I believe in there was not a general the least that I could perceive a general rejection of the possibility of sharing our universe with space neighbors on the part of the fundamentalist there is a small group however.

29:22Of Christian fundamentalists and a little billion in the Islamic traditions as well who believe that flying saucers UFOs are demonic and Satan actually is tempting you and me to believe there are aliens why would Satan want to do that. Well I tell you I'm a researcher so I investigated these people come on tell me tell me tell me tell me tell it and bottom you know what it is. Evolution evolution because those Darwinists believe that evolution happens on earth and everywhere else. And if you and I believe there are highly evolved space aliens we are going to be susceptible to believing in evolution and we know the Charles Darwin evolution came from Satan.

30:27I can never just not my socks off to hear that argument because it violates principal parsimony I mean it's so unnecessarily complex. But I really felt that to be a fringe argument a few of Protestant fundamentalists at least one or two orthodox people I'm not seeing it the wrong Catholic position yet. I think you're right that if you were convinced that life evolved and is evolving in a multiplicity of different inhabitable planets or moons and such that it it's not just a threat to a kind of anthropocentrism and a kind of narrow account of salvation or or the incarnation and these kinds of things it also has the the side effect of going well that really does problematized without Darwin's help a kind of narrow. A kind of narrow account of humanity is the crown of creation. Let's take up the anthropocentrism and you and Andrew Davis had a nice discussion of it and both you and Dr Davis assume there's something wrong with anthropocentrism.

31:36Let me elaborate a little bit. Where does that come from? It comes from the so-called Copernican principle and allegedly and there are many sciences. I think Bondi might be the guy who coined the phrase Copernican principle and go something like this before Copernicus the Catholic church and the human race thought that the human being was the center of everything. Then when we put the sun in the center of the heliocentric universe and earth became marginalized it deflated human pride in such a way that we found ourselves to be marginalized. Therefore it follows morally ethically who terms of our value system we should feel insignificant and Bondi says and this is a fundamental principle of science pardon me there's a fallacy there.

32:38The fallacy is that being geographically marginalized means philosophically that we're marginalized and significant. That's a naturalistic fallacy you don't get an art from an ins nature doesn't tell you what the value is even though certainly white headed metaphysics what would suggest. Given the way modern science developed modern science is supposed to be value free that's both its problem and its glory because you know it's so powerful this discovery caused that physical causality. But if science is value free then the Copernican principle is clearly fallacious and the scientists cannot tell us whether human beings are in the center or peripheral it because it doesn't deal with value so that's one of the reasons why I want to demote the Copernican principle that's not an argument for human centricity.

33:43It may turn out to be the case that we will meet extraterrestrials on an exoplanet who are superior to us morally intellectually artistically and we may then find out hey we really are second rate. We haven't done that yet and I don't think there's a good philosophical reason for leaping to that position without the empirical evidence to back it up so my bottom line is put anthropocentrism in brackets let's look and see. How does that shape the way you think through the incarnation if and especially in the uniqueness of self revelation in a particular human in a particular time on this particular planet and these kinds of things does how does understanding the incarnation change the way we would think through the God world relationship on say other biological timelines of sorts elsewhere.

34:51There are two different kinds of answers to that the first one is I'm a disciple of meals Henry Gregorson I don't know if you know him with the University of Copenhagen he has in light of these issues given us what he calls deep incarnation so. In Jesus of Nazareth God is incarnate not just in this mind not just in his conscience not just in the color of his hair but every physical biological component of Jesus is made up of the same stuff that the whole cosmos is including the star does. And whatever elements we're going to find on an actual planet and that's where when he's thinking about say like the prologue of john it's the word became sarks not so much that's right the most becomes sarks flesh and he wants to emphasize that with a sledgehammer and so the redept of power of God incarnate in Jesus.

36:03Applies everything in the cosmos no matter how far away it is your home how separated it is in time and God loves the physical world as well as the mental or conscious the conscious world so let me just say that's the first answer all the second answer has to do with a slightly different formulation of your question. That we have run into a lot is by we I mean my colleagues at the center for theology natural sciences are doing Astro theology and that is is there warrant for believing that God would have multiple incarnations one for each intelligent civilization on another planet. Or there's the single inclination in a Jesus Christ in the history of life on earth suffice for the cosmos so in our book on Astro theology I got people on both sides argue with each other about which view is better I turned aside and I think Niels Henry Gregor said gives me good reason with deep incarnation to go with the single incarnation for the whole cosmos how God connects it all together.

37:16There is God's business but Paltillic no minor league theologian will go through the multiple incarnations on the grounds that every intelligent species needs to have an experience of revelation the God who created us is also a gracious. And so note that's a revelation kind of a told me theory so. I think the the argument is still roaring I don't know how to resolve it definitively but I think it's probably healthy for theologians to get the boxing reading and punch each other on this particular issue yeah yeah okay I'm asking something nerdy that I'm just thinking of so I didn't write this question down. So one of the things that a lot of process thinkers will do when thinking about this right they would be framing the possibility of you know I like John cop talks about got Jesus internalizing the primordial nature of God like the full fidelity of Jesus so he makes material the divine insistence such that his life is the image of the invisible God and because of that because of the metaphysical framing of process thought you have a way of telling

38:36thinking well he's the exemplification and the full participation of the divine lower moment to moment and if we think life evolves to have that kind of deep aesthetic possibility elsewhere the invitation and in every moment of the coming would have its own history there right and so one analogy we might think of in a process framing of thinking about other life would be similar to how we think about engaging other wisdom traditions that had these huge histories apart from each other. For much of human history and so when you think of kind of like the Christian Buddhist dialogue there's the there's these spaces of creative mutual transformation where kind of the the gifts and focus within the Christian tradition on the particular the material for justice these kinds of things become a gift to give to one in the same way that the Buddhist tradition has spent time honing and practice and narratives and thought the kind of a responsiveness to our interconnectivity to to the whole creativity and whitehead and and you know that could be a fruitful way of thinking it and I wonder as someone who in their kind of the principle of possibility that comes to each moment is in a proleptic frame like in your own work like what are the kind of residences of similarity there and what does

40:00the invitation of possibility moment to moment being from the world's future and not just our planet in God how does that how does that create kind of a contrast for maybe you know if if you and Andrew were hanging out arguing about this or something in which we can arrange we can arrange these Yeah, Andrew and I probably agree in 97% of these kinds of commitments and I have and that's why the 3% is fun to argue about with my wife. I have a anonymous admiration for the white heavians but I never convert it completely a couple responses to your disposition there. John Cobb Schubert Ogden white heavians of this nature tend to have a revelatory or revelation a told me theory that is to say the task of Jesus Christ is to reveal to you and me the truth that is everlasting about God.

41:01Christ doesn't do any work in the way of forgiving sins or something like that or right rising from the dead Christ simply reveals what's always true about God that God is boundless love and you're right that great wisdom or knowledge that leads to wisdom is principle available anywhere within any historical setting. I have to tell you and this probably applies to you as it does me I have such admiration for John. He was so creative and I didn't attend a couple Buddhist Christian dialogues where John was a leader. He was open to learning from the Buddhist especially Japanese Buddhist et cetera while sharing and it is true that he felt it was his Christian responsibility to know and understand in a terrible empathetic and loving way and he modeled that as a person as well.

42:07He took the not bearing false witness part very seriously and in art cultural crisis as you well know why truth and authenticity these things are hard to trim by in a post truth false facts lying to the public a kind of error so John and Schubert in all the process thinkers really that I know I really do exhibit the answer. They're own narrow stature the qualities that our whole society benefits from it by the way I don't have any stock in their company or that's where I need to have a slight shift and this is why I am not a white head yet. The white head and metaphysical principles are always at work and that's why you can't have an eschatology if you are white head you can't have anything that happens that's really new everything is relatively new but not really new.

43:11So I use the category of history rather than metaphysics for fundamental reality and with history there is an every event is going to be unique all yes and share some structures with past events but it's going to be unique God who created the world from the beginning out of nothing. Is in the business of transforming it even right now in this minute and trip you are contributing to God's transformation the cosmos with every puff of that cigar by the way I want to do you know you got a cigar for North Carolina tobacco I wanted to hold up a glass of Cabernet seven young for California but it's really it's a little early. The promoting view is that God is going to do something in the future that is radically new so transformative that some of what God does does not have press some notes and looking for the precedence of God's future action now that's what I mean it might mean by paralysis so like the white headians reality is dynamic it's becoming as you pointed out.

44:23It's not being it is becoming and the future is going to be different from the past okay okay but there's a certain fundamental change that God has promised one either of which is resurrection of the dead right now the dead stay dead but when God raised Jesus from the dead on Easter Sunday the guns promising by the way sometime in the future. The dead don't stay dead anymore and God's going to have to act in a way contrary nature but then the new laws of nature God's going to have to act for redemption and so that's kind of the vortex there or hands that distinguishes me from the white headians even though I think both myself and Andrew Davis believe that the world we live in is dynamic and not steady. Yeah yeah so you know oftentimes there's a conversation around the need to prepare people for right the recognition of extraterrestrial life right right it's you even mentioned the Spielberg's upcoming movie which basically on the you know what we what you discover online if you're pumped about him making and science fiction film it is there if you if you think about that conversation and like what would it look like.

45:49To a congregation or prepare a church like what are the if we think of that conversation about preparing the public and and and the questions that will arise in the tradition people of faith and the more just existential ones the show up what kind of advice you give say when you're working with future clergy and stuff around this topic well I think the first thing to do is when planning. A covered dish dinner in the church basement have a few extra chairs in case some aliens show up or to say it a little bit more abstract play I think our disposition should be good hospitality and I know that the Americans and some Europeans these days don't like aliens crossing their borders. But the Bible says welcome the soldier and we should think of any visitors that step out of a flying saucer on their road scholar tours here should be invited to a covered dish dinner in a jealous salad et cetera now there is a reasonable issue reasonable thoughts scenario that should give us some caution.

47:06As I pointed out in my research and study by and large people who have UFO experiences and who speculate about what kind of creatures those intelligent aliens are going to be it's almost always positive and it has to do with another giant fallacy and are thinking namely that. More highly advanced intelligences will be more highly advanced in science and also more highly advanced morality they're going to be loving and so if you think that science is a savior civilization extra terrestrial science it's more highly advanced will really save us. For myself I call that the ETI myth so that's widespread and I would be a little bit cautious about that until we meet them we don't know we don't know. And it is possible not likely but it is possible for them to be violent for them to become persons well and if so there might be some good reason to have defense defense all sorts of.

48:14And work but like I say at the one answer I'm going to give to your question is. Be hospitable not hostile. So it one of the one of the kind of like fun places of thinking about kind of theology and ethics in this is the question around colonizing Mars or terraforming Mars. You know when you've discussed terraforming Mars this one of the places you think about the created co-creators of God and so I wonder if reshaping it at least currently based on what we know more or less dead planet into a living one. Like how do you understand that theological like you could imagine people like what a great act of worship participating in God's ongoing creation this new place or. It could be like the ultimate Promethean overreach and so like if we're just you know thinking about what to do in reaching out beyond our own planet like what comes to mind.

49:15Well I love the fact you mentioned the risk of Promethean overreach we need to be cautious about that. That notwithstanding I admire the Mars Society or Elon Musk or those who think about suddenly a colony on Mars or you mentioned terraforming that's the idea of Christopher McKay at NASA who thinks that if we were to put plants on Mars. Then give off oxygen enough of them we can make the Mars habitable for human beings in less than a century and then it could become a second earth and I love that big thinking we need more really big things that's going to be easy. No but why not try some difficult things one of the areas that I some of my colleagues have been looking out of the last 10 years is what would it take to make human beings adaptable to for life on Mars well more than likely.

50:33And here I work with a friend named Arvin Gauss of geneticist more than likely we would have to modify the genomes of the earthlings who go to Mars because they're going to have more gravity artificial oxygen for a period of time and their bodies are going to look different there the muscles will. And they won't be able to come home again once they go to Mars and look there and adapt they're not coming home where they still human. Or are they a different species and you know that'll keep the philosophers earning it on us living I think for a period of time but let me just say I'm kind of gun hole for people with really big ideas. The Promethian overreach risk that you mentioned would be if we expect too much if we really expect that some or other Martians will become. More moral than we are or more interesting than we are were then then you might end up with the kind of overreach that would produce a tragedy.

51:43In one of the things that I think it's pretty easy to worry about if we just imagine for the colonization of Mars is that the those doing it are going to be driven by the kind of profit motive and these kinds of things that in getting there and I wonder what are the gifts. A religious traditions or kind of theological ethics and such can give for like intentionally trying to design a new society under a new space to have kind of a more just framing for it than is often will at least we experience here especially thinking of our history as a species on even the church has often you know discovered new worlds shown up and and brought way more than the good news of Jesus Christ. With them they brought a lot of death pestilence domination and all sorts of other stuff. Well I certainly hope that if we discover living microbes on Mars that some visiting Earthling will tell them that Jesus loves them.

52:49I think as you suggested in your question reviewing our own history could be very enlightening. If we take a look at Western civilization in the 18th and early 20th centuries Christians wanted. Everyone on earth to enjoy the kingdom of God could we. Restructure society. So that the blessings of the kingdom of God could. In view all the social structures and benefit everybody especially the poorest of the poor and those who are marginalized so things that we took for granted for a while justice democracy equality dignity. I mean even those who work Christian a top of these as their mission so to speak and they're et cetera and it really has had a transferring effect.

53:53Did the kingdom of God arrive well not in its full list no basically it arrived like the prophet who says. Society on earth is falling short of the kingdom of God we still have a lot more work yet yet to do so. I think this is one of the positive thrusts within the long story of Christian mission oh yes there are many factors involved here but that is the positive thrust. And then as we look back all my gosh can we see the failings of our ancestors they failed to combat slavery they failed to combat the use of creation of human dignity by kings and we can render a harsh judgment even on our own tradition and I think that's the prophetic part of interpreting all history not just Christian history. So again with regard to Mars colonization or settlement settlement settling Mars we probably should try to design a society that maximizes justice equality dignity freedom et cetera would design it design it with those values but we'll probably also have to have a police force hopefully small one but we're going to have to have a police force why.

55:19Well what we've learned from history is that self interest in individuals groups can rob the common good so that other people suffer and so far other you need you need to police that activity on behalf of the common good of the of the whole body policy. Have you read Brian McLaren's recent fiction book the last voyage I have not sorry oh well you there say it it's the first of a trilogy of the first human settlement on Mars and one of the characters in it has what sounds like the coolest job description of all time is being hired after they started settling it and they're having all these troubles like suicide among people there they kind of. Arca type of rationalist community is having meaning problems on the last group going for kind of the doors shut on the community they hire a philosopher of religion to go.

56:26And it's one of the main characters and it but it has been thinking like the book as a sense of the kinds of tasks we think of or something like that is missing really the gift of the humanities religious traditions these kinds of things the need for rituals narratives communities of meeting this stuff and and I just kept thinking that I was like I bet I bet Ted would like that job. Yes, I would like that job it reminds me of some years ago I was talking with a NASA engineer in the late I don't know what when that's in the other than Atlanta but. But he came in a soapbox sermon even though we're the only two in the room he says when we send the first calling the Mars will make sure that nobody on his religious way me by that. Well now in the history of the life on earth is religious people are responsible for all the violence of by being in the warfare and if we won't have peace on earth until people stop being religious so all the astronauts we select have to be on religious when they start life on Mars.

57:41And I said to okay well that's good you can have all these nine religious astronauts but. And I want to have after they've landed on Mars I'll create their own religion. So I hope we have more than just engineers deciding who goes to Mars and you're right they have to have at least one philosopher. Who is it with with you know thinking about your subset post from today well today we're recording those view listening later they give tomorrow NASA announced the confirmed contact with an extra terrestrial intelligence. What do you think the first thing you would say theologically would be do you have a draft of of the post boy you know that's a good question because of course I'm going to have 100 questions through this. Space alien that will probably exhaust them about all of that kind of thing and yeah I don't know what may trip what would be your first question you're going to ask that space visitor.

58:51Oh I I was I want to know what was what was the last time they did the equivalent of crying like what animated it so you want to get to their heart and their soul. It moves you right like we have like I I couldn't it's hard to imagine a culture that develops technologically and socially that could move go between planets not having something that binds communities right where you have. Possibility activities to develop it and all this kind of stuff right and but when we look at. Like the emergence of religion at our species we were doing shamanic shamanic dancing rituals all sorts of stuff before even had language no and and and if we look at the big history of us as a species. The we wrote we hit a wall when our narrative structure culturally doesn't match the challenges we face and then they have to you know develop and so there's always a sense of like what is seized you in some sense be it.

59:58You you could say like oh I was cuddling with my kid or grand kid and we watched a Disney Pixar film and there's this beautiful like love and that made me start tearing up or it could have been forgiveness or it could have been. Like the sheer like they could be their first contact with someone else and going like. Life is so much bigger it could be this big joy of all like but like knowing. The they there's so many elements of communication and culture it's like how do you move it past well what was the thing that seized you right and then maybe the next one me like. What made you say yes to this journey right was it a necessity because of the conditions you're coming from was it they asked someone to raise their hand no one did for five minutes and then you're like alright I'm doing it. They got like the existential drivers will would be like the most fascinating thing to me and if they do have music I want to listen like and then I want to know like you know knowing like.

1:01:01Our music scale that we're most familiar with and have learned to listen to is not the only one that humans have ever had and if you hear. I give you hang out with the ethno music colleges they'll play music that you to us just sounds completely wrong because the their scales are so different so like just like that would be one way of just going like. Even though what are their kind of aesthetic principles of valuation like how unique could they be like what makes you cry what is what is music that you sing something like that. I think trip that you are a disguised form of Friedrich Schlimacher. You want to get into their psyche and get to the experience that he would call the called the feeling of absolute dependence right there with the metaxi where we finite creatures are wondering about the infinite. I think what you want to do is get that get to that question through what they cried about most recently and you know I think I do too I would want to follow that path might start off differently but that's where you want to end up.

1:02:14Well I take a Schlimacher that's a compliment. You know one one way we might encounter intelligence that's new is either our own kind of post biological creation of life that we are part of you know some more advanced form of AI might evolve that way or the first encounter is not with the species itself but technology. They send which may have you know much more adaptive intelligence in the species itself like if it technologically they I wonder if someone who has spent so much time in this conversation but also plenty of engagement around AI and things how does our own kind of current fascination with artificial intelligence in the cultural consequences kind of help you think about encounters with intelligence beyond just life be it native to our planet or beyond. That's a very pertinent question trap physicists such as Paul Davies and Mark Maurice alert us to the likelihood in their opinion that we're the first off earth intelligence we're going to confront will be post biological in character and they do make that argument on the basis of what they expect to be the advance in artificial intelligence here on earth on official general intelligence super intelligence.

1:03:37Hmm or what have you in this interesting in the UFO vocabulary or the last eight years since 19 or 2017 shift in ufology now use the term not a human not human intelligence so that dealing with extraterrestrial intelligence dealing with artificial intelligence now have a nice overlap and we can learn something about the other from for what. The debate within artificial intelligence these days is a GI or artificial general intelligence human equally the intelligence level equal to the human is it possible or more the optimist should say it is within a year some of them are saying or others ten years then when you and I are talking to our computer. And we think there's a self there talking back to us what are we going to think and I'm glad that a lot of philosophers are pandering this one but they don't have an answer at least they don't have an answer that's been very persuasive to me my argument up until this point has been following most philosophers of intelligence dealing meet something essential from their understanding and that is the existence.

1:05:04It's the existence of self that if you have just data processing no matter how fast it is if there's no self there you're not talking to what we're used to talking to when we talk to another human being or maybe our pet husky or a dolphin and so I haven't really seen that issue address sufficiently and I don't smart enough myself to figure it out but I think that question needs to be answered and I don't see mark research called babies addressing it sufficiently so post biological intelligence could be a great big computer like hell and then 2001 Odyssey and I think it's the logically it's going to be a non issue now if it turns out that we meet a non human intelligence who is a self. Then you got a theological issue and immediately about today or the image of God in this comes to play there are a few logians and you're certainly aware of this with think.

1:06:12That the divine image in us is our mind or rationality and certainly play don't thought that it's that around but you know that's highly disputed within the Christian tradition what really is the image of God that you and I carry around. Every day so I think the emotions will be earning an honest living to cut what they've done but right now it's speculative but it might not be speculative day after tomorrow. Yeah yeah I know you know that the concern of not being able to identify a self is something that there's a quiet quite a few members of the brain sciences that I'm not sure they could spot us they're able to spot or at least notice itself. In their neighbor there's still they might they might decide it's a useful fiction when thinking about ethics but they aren't willing to say anything scientifically. Right right well one of the other things you talk about is the need to have a single planetary voice and the situation of like encountering another you know develop life from another place and.

1:07:26You know I might have thought maybe if we went back 50 years we might had a better we might have had a better chance of cooperating just as a species on this planet to have a single voice for interacting with extraterrestrials but that seems more under stress right now just given the way our different nation states are are relating. So they how does something like the the cooperation of even within our species on our planet need to develop and in a way that we could even be a trusted conversation partner with another species since you know we're not even necessarily a good one right now as America with Canada you know until they become. This is a hum digger of an ethical question I think for the last 10 years you saw I've been getting a lot of mileage out of the concept of the common good. When it comes to earth looking at a civilization that's off earth.

1:08:34Our doctrine such as human equality social justice et cetera I think mandate. That whatever relationship we earthlings have to extraterrestrials has to be for the best the well being of all persons on earth. And the common good which if we find increasingly a really good idea I think requires that and so if for no other reason than we have to relate to on earth civilizations. We kind of get our act together on this planet so that China doesn't. China you lateral after the agreement with a planet orbiting Zeta to rescue I that will. Provide goodies for China and deny them for goal or something like that and I grew up in the air of the United Nations oh my gosh we had hopes because United Nations were driven by liberal ideals human dignity equality.

1:09:43And justice and economic development all of these beautiful ideas that you know make make a liberal progressive person sleep soundly each each evening. But now we're seeing all coming unravel because some of the global leadership lies about supporting these ideals while underneath engaging in. Unheard of levels of corruption and power hungry jingle wisdom et cetera so it is apparently disintegrating now these really good ideas. Justice equality dignity and freedom didn't go away and there may be a number of people in one another or a number of nations who still believe in them strongly enough to try to make them work et cetera. But you know what trip I don't know of an alternative other than trying to make them work one more time I mean they they're not dead there they're about to live.

1:10:49But right now it's the bullets of bottoms and the threat of bullets and bombs in order to make a small number of people extremely wealthy. This ruling the day and so planet earth is unprepared to meet extra terrestrial so either are benevolent or violent either what or under prepared. Do you think you know something that has come up in a number of conversations have had around this has been the kind of grieving that are space program has become privatized both in the sense of. The the then the you know the responsibility for the organizations to the you know the shareholders in that side but also. It's it's ceased to be like a collective dream for you know particular nation and eventually like us cooperating with Russia and stuff for the space station and these kinds of things. The the the dream of of kind of exploration of space and everything and stuff that entails is something that you know has become increasingly swallowed independent upon individual companies within the market.

1:12:04Do you do you find that does that give you different ethical concerns than when you know they were they were accountable to nation states that are cooperating for the research and exploration. This was an important issue I have a couple of friends who are lunch smarter than I am working on this Richard Randolph bioethan system Chris McKay NASA and. I think they're going to try to do scholarly article on on this in the next year or so I think the first thing is let's point out the lie. That is privatized big lie the private space companies are still spending taxpayer dollars they didn't earn those dollars. They didn't make a profit off of product no the taxpayers dollars they're just picking the blankets. Of the national budget at least in the United States so privatized no this is just grants it's it's just.

1:13:08You know it's it's not which is very trendy these days to it's very trendy and so the idea of that and we do have the policy of technology transfer in America where whereby government funded programs that develop a new technology can transfer it to private enterprise it's been a wonderful thing medical research and other areas and that could have happened here but in this case is just the government giving out. taxpayer largest to their buddies now haven't said that I do want to say that the people who get that graph. Pretty smart we want their intelligence we want their experience we want their organizational ability we want their vision and so there could really be a very positive contractual relationship between the tax paid public on the one hand and these very smart people. On the other and to one again I just want to say that's the first ethical issue is this giant game of pretend but then secondly I just don't know how those people think.

1:14:21About their sense of social responsibility when it comes to a moon shot or a Mars settlement etc so that's the one way of saying G trip I don't know. Yeah well the impact of does on our international support all sorts of people made me increasingly wary of the decision making process. You're saying so much yeah. It's better than screaming. Are there particular topics around this that I haven't brought up that when talking about it come up on a consistent basis. You know you've drawn upon the whole encyclopedia is a side can tell I think yeah there's just one is a small one. And as you let everybody know that my work in Berkeley with my colleagues there at the Center for theology and the National Sciences we work diligently trying to put scientists and theologians and ethosists and white Indians and Thomas.

1:15:29In a cooperative situation where we should work together on trying to build a world view that takes all of these things into account. But there are sectarianism within science just as there is elsewhere one of my concerns recently has been the division between the euphologist who study UFOs or UAP on the one hand and the astrobiologist on the other. And I have a friend that study every summer is a it's a barbecue. And when I go there there's nobody there who studies UFOs. Why not? Well we don't want those people here they don't do science. Well if you go to the UFO people such as Buffon mutual UFO network and others. They see themselves in scientific organizations pursuing the study of UAP toward the benefit of humankind that's the self understanding.

1:16:30And since over the last eight or nine years a large number of university and industrial scientists have really taken seriously the UFO matter. Ising methods of research in order to gain more and more knowledge etc. And they're serious scientists. So my question is why don't you follow just an astrobiologist go with the same barbecues. And in fact I'm going to have to hold my little barbecue right get out the webber and invite my UFO friends my astrobiology friends. And we'll just see if they eat the same hot dogs and pepperers I'm not sure. Well it sounds like a great party. And I'm and you got to make sure you got to make sure you get the really nice local wine there. Oh yeah well we'll try to tell personal value and we'll get the white out now. Yeah it's after the second glass then you know they might get along.

1:17:30Yeah the fraternity reminds with each class of white now. Yeah and you can just say look this is just a very time-honored Lutheran tradition. We'll have Joel Salad. This has been a lot of fun. Do you want to let people know where they can check out the center and your stuff like that. I'm a professor retired at the Graduate Theological Community in Berkeley, California. And we have a center there called the Center for Theology and the National Sciences. You have confined both of them on the website quite quite easily. Yeah tune in. I know. And let them know the issue. Let them know your your sub-stack title and such. I have a sub-stack news letter called The Voice of Public Theology Newsletter. And in there I do some of the things that are fuller down. I like to do science and religion. The question of advancing technology especially artificial intelligence

1:18:31and what its impact will be on society. I have a lot to say about the worldwide political crisis prompted by road America at this particular juncture. And I try to keep to the gossip to a minimum but you know a little bit of gossip always had salt and pepper and so. Yes yes. Well this has been a real treat Ted always good to get the interact with you. And well thank you again for your leadership tripped. And if I may just say your treatment of right-hole neighbors children of right children of darkness applied to the contemporary situation and the kind of insight that our public discourse really really needs. And as I think I mentioned my pastor Tom Gabel and I are so excited about your work there. We're going to try to lead a discussion in our conversation based upon your insights. So please keep up to find work because you're making a general

1:19:32a genuine contribution to public discourse here through your research, your conversation, your writing. Well thank you very much. That's awesome. Artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of communication, including the art of preaching. How can people of faith use this emerging technology with wisdom, creativity and integrity? Join us this February for a webinar to explore the ethics of AI. How to use it in sermon preparation and learn more about what AI resources can help. Register for this webinar and more through the Garrett Collective. A new learning platform available through Garrett Seminary. Visit GarrettCollective.org to learn more. That's Garrett, G-A-R-R-E-T-T, Collective.org.