Was Jesus's resurrection performed by aliens?

• Clarifying the question

  

  • Gary DeMar: “Among some UFO enthusiasts, Jesus was an alien who was able to manipulate nature with His superior alien technology.”¹

  It seems that Jesus had died by crucifixion, and later was raised from death. Rather than God miraculously raising Jesus, however, could it be instead that Jesus’s resurrection was caused by the extraterrestrial technology of aliens? The most popular naturalistic explanation for the appearances-of-Jesus evidence for the resurrection is that the apostles hallucinated.² Is genuine resurrection by aliens a better naturalistic explanation?

  1. Aliens as Cosmic Saviors, TheAmericanVision online website (2009)
  2. Gary Habermas, “Explaining Away Jesus' Resurrection: The Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories” in CRJ 23.4 (2001)

• Space-traveling aliens do not exist in the Universe

  

  Space-traveling aliens do not exist in the Universe.

  See 4 arguments: [Most forthcoming.]

  • The likelihood of another planet existing which is capable of supporting/evolving life is low.
  • Contra abiogenesis, life cannot come to exist on its own.¹
  • Existing microbes cannot naturally evolve complexity.
  • Existing complex life cannot naturally evolve intelligence.

  No,

  • ~6.25^18 stars with planets exist.² (That is a lot of opportunity!)

  1. It can be argued that an unguided origin of intelligent life is impossible. For example, proteins in the simplest forms of life (Achaea) range from 156 to 283 amino acids in length. However, the likelihood of even a 153-amino acid protein forming by chance is only 1 in 10 to 74th power. (Douglas D. Axe, “Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds,” Journal of Molecular Biology 2004 Aug 27;341(5):1295-315.)
  2. There are 125 to 250 billion galaxies in the observable universe [Temming, M. “Galaxies in the Universe: How Many are There?”. Sky & Telescope. (18 July 2014)] Moreover, about 10% of Sun-like stars have orbiting planets. (Marcy, G.; Butler, R.; Fischer, D.; et al. (2005). “Observed Properties of Exoplanets: Masses, Orbits and Metallicities”. Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement. 158: 24–42.) Lots of planets exist in the universe, which is a lot of opportunity for evolved aliens to exist. By way of response, however, the chances of life originating naturalistically is arguably far lower than 1 in [insert the number of planets on offer]. See the evidences that life cannot naturalistically originate in the universe. Moreover, even among evolutionist naturalists who think microbial life is common in the Universe, the judgment is often that nevertheless intelligent life is rare or nonexistent. (See the popular book by Peter Ward & Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth (Copernicus, 2000)). Ward and Brownlee only consider the improbablity of metting the planetary pre-requisites, but one must also also add in the improbability of life actually evolving complexity given ideal conditions (e.g. metablism, multi-cellularity), and then actually evolving an intelligent conscious mind.

• Space-traveling aliens would not know we exist.

  

  Space-traveling aliens would not know we exist.

  • Our radio signals have only reached .0011% of our own Galaxy.¹

  This is relevant because if aliens exist (see challenges above), it is unlikely that they are within this nearly microscopic pixel-sized range within the Milky Way that our signals have reached.

  1. That is to say, even if literally hundreds of civilizations existed throughout the Milky Way, likely none of them would have an clue of our existence yet. See, Jay Bennet’, “Galactic Map of Every Human Radio Broadcast Reveals How Isolated We Are” (Popular Mechanics Magazine).

• Aliens would have no desire to come and raise Jesus.

  

  Aliens would have no desire to raise Jesus.

  See 2 arguments:

  • The cost: 23,000 years just to travel .001% of the Milky Way.¹
  • Resurrection aside, Jesus had no prospect of influence. Other candidates for their resurrection project would be overwhelmingly more attractive.
  • Jesus would reject alien values that would inevitably compete with Judaism. (Jesus remained a Jew.)

  This is relevant because any proposed alien resurrection of Jesus would require a heavy investment on their part (see above). Aliens are mysterious, but no proposed evolutionary survival advantage would lead to aliens having values that result in their desiring to travel to Earth, raise Jesus, and let him teleport to just a few followers at a couple sporadic times.

  1. “By conservative estimates, any reasonable sized spacecraft transporting intelligent physical beings can travel at velocities no greater than about 1 percent the velocity of light.” [Hugh Ross, Kenneth Samples, Mark Clark, Lights in the Sky & Little Green Men (NavPress, 2002).] How do we know this? First, it is physically impossible to travel faster than the speed of light (requiring infinite energy), but “At even half the velocity of light, the energy needed to propel an object is 170 million times greater than NASA’s fastest spacecraft requires.” [Ibid.] A multitude of engineering problems plagues speeds far lower than this. One is that, at these speeds, even a micrometeorite (fractions of a millimeter across) would rip the shuttle apart [Ibid]. Radiation damage also escalates beyond control with increasing speeds, quickly eroding any craft. Hugh et. al. explain, “By conservative estimates, any reasonable sized spacecraft transporting intelligent physical beings can travel at velocities no greater than about 1 percent the velocity of light” [Ibid].
     From here, it is worth noting that there is reason to believe no aliens exist within our .001% patch of the Milky Way (i.e. 155 light year radius).** After all, SETI scanned all 202 of the relevant stars within 155 light-years of Earth. (Christopher F. Chyba, “Life Beyond Mars,” Nature 382 (1996), 577.) No possible intelligent communications have been intercepted, which we would arguably expect because interplanetary crafts would likely be sending out optical signals for years to maintain communication with the home planet and vice versa. “This finding translates to a minimum alien travel distance of 155 light-years plus hard avoidance maneuvers—at total of roughly 230 light-years (or 1.35 quadrillion miles).” [Hugh Ross, Kenneth Samples, Mark Clark, Lights in the Sky & Little Green Men (NavPress, 2002).]

• Aliens would not have the technology to resurrect humans

  

  Aliens would not have the technology to resurrect humans.

  See 3 arguments:

  • Such technology is in principle infeasible.
  • They’d have no experience with cellular life on earth.
  • They’d have no experience with human anatomy.
  • They'd be incapable of re-producing Jesus's psychology and memories (for both rapid corpse brain-decay and mind-body problem reasons.)

  This is relevant because without the requisite technology, aliens could not raise Jesus even if they wanted to.

• Jesus attributed the resurrection to God

  Jesus did not mention or attribute his resurrection to anything mysterious or alien-like, but to the God he proclaimed during his earthly ministry. This is relevant because if aliens raised Jesus, then it is unlikely that Jesus would be so confident that God raised Him from the dead. After all, Jesus was ostensibly able to ascend, appear, and disappear when and where he wanted. He was also apparently able to empower his disciples with the Spirit and ability to perform miracles.

• Aliens could have done much more

  In addition to raising Jesus, such powerful aliens with their given purpose would likely be able to perform far more wonders to enact that purpose. This is relevant because aside from Jesus's resurrection and relatively hidden miracles in the early Christian sect, nothing particularly flashy quickly drew the world together or influenced it in a discernably valuable way to extraterrestrials.