- Position‹3 of 3
- Jesus Christ was an alien
- Argument‹3 of 3
Jesus' ascension to heaven marked his return to his planet
On Easter Sunday, Jesus is said to have resurrected, and 40 days later he rose to Heaven. But some say that his ascension was the Messiah making his return back home to an alien civilisation.
The argument
According to the Bible, forty days after his resurrection, Jesus called his 11 apostles together on the Mount of Olives, outside of Jerusalem. In full view of these men, Jesus rose up into the sky, and a cloud hid him from sight. Two angels in white robes appeared before the disciples and said "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11, NIV). Some people have questioned, how did Christ float up into the sky, and why was he obscured from sight? Our knowledge of science today makes it difficult to believe in angels or miracles such as Jesus' ascension; however, many scientists do believe that there are superior intelligent beings in the universe. If the human race is interested in space travel, it is rational to believe that other intelligent life in the universe may have started traveling across space long before us. There is no way that Jesus simply rose to heaven in an ordinary cloud - we know clouds do not have such properties. But Jesus often spoke of the other 'world' he had come from, so it is likely that this cloud was a UFO returning him to his planet. There are many artworks depicting Jesus that support this idea. Painted on the walls of the Svetitiskhoveli Cathedral in Georgia is an image of Christ's crucifixion with what appear to be dome-shaped flying crafts in the top corners of the painting. While art historians muse that these crafts represent guardian angels, this is not likely, as angels were depicted as human-like in the Byzantium period. Instead, artworks such as this one appear to suggest that UFO's were present at the death of Jesus.
Context
Conspiracy theorists have claimed that they have found the symbol of the crucifix on the surface of Mars. They believe that the discovery of this symbol helps prove that Christ was an extraterrestrial who sought to teach all intelligent forms of life across the cosmos about ethics and morality.
Premises
Counter-arguments
In the Bible, there are many different versions of Jesus' resurrection and ascension that contradict themselves. Therefore, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ are merely stories in the Bible and did not actually happen. This means there is no evidence that Jesus returned to an alien planet. Jesus was not an ordinary person, he could perform miracles. Furthermore, it is possible that he was resurrected by God and that he ascended to heaven with the help of angels, because he was the chosen one. Aliens do not explain his miracles, God does.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] The passage is a religious text describing a miracle, and the premise treats it as a report of an observed event. As the counter-argument notes, the accounts of the resurrection and ascension differ between books, which is not what would be expected of a straightforward record. [Rejecting P2] The reasoning grants that the event occurred while rejecting the explanation the text itself gives, then substitutes another for which no evidence is offered. That intelligent life may exist elsewhere does not make it the explanation of any particular passage, and the "world" these texts speak of is a spiritual realm rather than a planet. [Rejecting P3] The shapes in the painting are read as craft on the strength of resemblance alone. The specialists who study the work read the forms conventionally, and the argument sets their reading aside without engaging it — a resemblance is not evidence.