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{"id":39596,"date":"2012-11-06T00:22:54","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T07:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=39596"},"modified":"2014-12-30T11:01:52","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T18:01:52","slug":"you-could-hardly-ask-for-anything-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/you-could-hardly-ask-for-anything-more.html","title":{"rendered":"You Could Hardly Ask for Anything More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u2026than the delightful prospect of Mike Flynn holding forth on the problem of Fermi\u2019s Paradox <\/a>(\u201cIf the universe is crowded with alien civilizations, then where is everybody?\u201d).<\/p>\n

My own view has been expressed in this space several times. Do I believe in non-human rational beings? Of course. They are called \u201cangels\u201d and some of them have rejected God and become devils. Do I believe in non-human corporeal rational beings? I think they are certainly possible. God under carefully controlled laboratory conditions can do whatever he feels like, including making hrossa, Krenken, Klingons, Vulcans and even, in his inscrutable will to allow suffering, Gungans. But has he? We have no evidence of that and I, personally, do not think we will ever make contact with any other such beings before the Second Coming, if then. I think our dreams of star travel and contact with ET are a modern and debased form of Christians eschatology<\/a>. They point to something deeply true about us, not about the inevitability of our conquest of the galaxy or our coming alliance with Centauri Prime. We\u2019re never getting off this rock in any meaningful way. It will be interesting to see what happens to our civilization when that really finally sinks in and it must abandon false hope and return to the only real hope: Christ.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"