I paraphrased the title to be able to fit it in, the full quote is:

From Ken Ham's blog, he starts by saying:

Extraterrestrial life, not extraterrestrial intelligence, but I'll come back to that in a second..

I think the article is riddled with errors and bad logic, but most of that aside, I'm curious about whether or not anyone here agrees with his conclusion that there can't be any intelligent aliens because they wouldn't be the sons of Adam. He says "And I do believe there can’t be other intelligent beings in outer space because of the meaning of the gospel.", then presents an argument that seems to go something like this:


P1) The Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe
P2) This means that any intelligent aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation
P3) Jesus died for our salvation
C) Since intelligent aliens couldn't be saved, there cannot be any intelligent aliens.

Whilst he's relying on this argument to show that searching for what he called 'extraterrestrial life', in the first paragraph, is a waste of money, he seems to be missing the point that extra terrestrial life doesn't have to be intelligent to show that life could evolve elsewhere than Earth. Such life could be bacteriological, of the type that we envisage might exist in places like Europa or Enceladus. So, there could be aliens, but those aliens would not be intelligent, like bacteria on Earth aren't intelligent and also won't be saved, proving (or at least providing more evidence for) the evolutionary hypothesis that life will occur wherever the conditions are right for it, but without disproving Ham's hypothesis that intelligent aliens wouldn't be saved. I don't think they're even inconsistent positions to hold.

I think that halfway through his article he forgot that he was talking about Extraterrestrial life and started talking about extraterrestrial intelligence. Doh.

I do agree with one thing he said though, that "The answers to life’s questions will not be found in imaginary aliens" or anything else that's imaginary, I'd imagine.

Coming from a Christian, Ken Ham is an idiot.

He makes it pretty clear he's talking about intelligent beings. Not sure that I agree or disagree, but it's an interesting question.

Whats the point of this thread. so lame. bleh whatever.

Well gee LZ, the point is clearly explained in the OP plus the difference between me and 'that thread' is if you ask me what a thread is about I'll happily explain. Not that you'd ever need to ask because, heck, I'll even present opinion and/or argument in the OP, it'll be obvious. I'll even try to pick subjects where people can express opinions that aren't limited to 'that's awful, I think we all agree'...

Not amused.

you missed the

in the edit then

No, hence the 'not amused'.... if the situations were comparable I'd have taken the dig in the spirit in which it was meant but they're not.

ah right okay though if the threads were comparable it wouldn't be a joke

Whatever. This thread has a clear topic for discussion, can we stay on it now?

I'm pretty ignorant about space exploration, but doesn't it have much to do with technological and scientific advancements? I think Ham assumes that the only reason is to search for intelligent beings, which doesn't seem correct to me.

It's fairly dumb, but it isn't dumber than denying people rites because they have flat noses.

Yeah, this.

Plus there's the whole thing about trying to ensure the survival of the human race. It's likely that something will happen (before the Earth gets swallowed by the Sun) that will force humans to either leave and find a new home, or die and cease to exist.

Reading the blog post now...

"The search for extraterrestrial life is really driven by man’s rebellion against God in a desperate attempt to supposedly prove evolution!"

This is just so dumb I don't think I can bring myself to continue reading. Evolution doesn't need any more proving, sir, and finding life on another planet wouldn't strengthen the evidence of evolution. It was just add to the sample size that we already have.

I doubt anyone here has ever agreed with anything Ken Ham says. The ignorance of some men know no bounds.

me and jibs back to back posts!

lol, just like the old days!

At least you began to read it, I couldn't even get my self to start

doesn't it also say in Leviticus not to trust people with pork-themed last names?

The issue isn't really how dumb Ken Ham is, that wouldn't be much of a conversation starter, it's his argument that intelligent aliens wouldn't be saved because they're not sons of Adam and therefore can't exist.

Make sense to anyone?

Shame cos you'd have got to the bit where he completely forgets that he started out talking about extraterrestrial life and starts talking about extraterrestrial intelligence instead.

No. This is the typical self-important type views of too many christians. The bible does not concern itself with life outside of the life here on earth and says nothing about it. He will undoubtedly pick out one word and extrapolate from there. Oh, and that one word will be an English word, lol.

OP. How can you possibly ask serious questions about the universe and the possibility or extraterrestrial life whilst at the same time mentioning that idiot Ken Ham!?

I think it's important to note that the bible speaks of human beings, or man. Man was created in the image of God. God also created angels, animals, birds, fish, etc. that are not necessarily under the same covenant as people, but are presumably considered intelligent life.

Theoretically, we could discover intelligent life on some planet, and everything would still be consistent, no different than finding some species of fish in the ocean we didn't know was there.

I don't think Ken Ham is an idiot, he is intelligent and knows exactly what he is doing.

This. Someone I'm Facebook friends with posts articles he writes sometimes and they're so obviously misleading and dishonest that the only conclusion one can come to is they are written as propaganda pieces.

The Choir eats it up, but then, as long as you mention "Jesus" to some people you can basically get them to agree with anything you say, no matter how absurd.

There's more, everyone who's reporting on this seems to be completely misunderstanding what Ham said, here's an example from the Huffington Post - Creationist Ken Ham Says Aliens Will Go To Hell So Let's Stop Looking For Them

Unless I'm wrong, and that's what I started this thread to find out, Ham presented an argument for why aliens don't exist, not for why they'd be going to hell.

So Ham screws up his own article, forgets he's talking about Extraterrestrial life and presents an argument that relies on extraterrestrial intelligence, then everyone gets that wrong. What a mess.


You really think he's smart given the mistake he makes in that article? What would he gain from doing that on purpose? Why not just start with 'intelligence' in the first place?

Also, see this 1 min vid:

And they won't be saved. However, they can't be what Ham is thinking of when he refers to 'intelligence' because otherwise they wouldn't exist, and clearly they do.

But what about the argument that they're not 'sons of Adam' and therefore can't be saved?