No, Adam Had No Human and No Sub-Human Parents And Aliens Are Probably Not an Option

Does Believing in Aliens Undermine Christianity?
Brian Holdsworth | 7 June 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPrXqHlOP6s

[On Brian's suggestions about a Tolkien scenario]

5:55 Numenoreans aren't paradisal.

More like pious (and later on less pious) descendants of Seth, except their lifespans better match post-Flood patriarchs.

If you think of the Deluge as "large-regional" or "continental" rather than global, one could even compare Elendil, Anarion and Isildur to Noah and his sons.

Obviously not a good idea to deny the world was global, but still.

[Back to my first comment, with ensuing debate]

1:57 Suspecting a holy bishop, subsequently canonised, of heresy because one of his terms was misread as implying parallel humanities is not a formal pronouncement?

I'm from Vienna, birth and parts of my childhood, and in Salzburg, close by, I participated in the Rosary for the first time in my life, more than a year before my conversion.

One holy bishop of Salzburg was St.Virgil.

And once the then Pope asked him to clear himself of heresy. The reason was he had used the term antipodes. Now, St. Virgil just meant a place such that, were you moved there, your feet would point in the exact opposite direction. For Salzburg, that would be 47°48′0″N 13°2′0″E, that's Salzburg itself, the Antipode would be 47°48′0″S 166°58'0"W. (It's in the Ocean East of New Zealand, by the way, so if you stand there, you are probably on a boat).

But the Pope took it as meaning people living there, and as back then the consensus was that stretch couldn't be crossed, somewhere West of the British Isles, that would to the spontaneous reaction imply a parallel humanity, one not descending from Adam via Noah.

Again, part of what Giordano Bruno was burned on the stake for believing was parallel humanities in "other worlds" (meaning "on exoplanets" and possibly "on other planets of the Solar system"). If a man who as Inquisitor delivers someone to burning on the stake, either he's a pretty poor Inquisitor, which St. Robert Bellarmine was not, or he's right, parallel humanities are wrong.

Ante 397

@ante3979

The two cases are not quite relevant for this discussion. The reason why the belief in the existence of people on the antipodes in the case of st. Virgil was such a problem is that it implied the existence of other humans (!) that would not have been the descendants of Adam. And those humans could not have possibly descended from Adam because an aristotelian-ptolemaic view of Earth postulated that the equatorial regions could not be crossed by humans due to their inhospitability. The question about the existence of humans that are not descended from Adam is distinct from the question about the possibility of other non-human yet rational (!) beings who are not descended from Adam and who have not fallen due to the sin of Adam or who might not have been fallen in the first place.

Also, according to Bruno scholars such as Blum, Martinez etc the more important propositions that got him killed were those about the Holy Spirit being a World-soul that quite literally animates the planet Earth, and the plurality of worlds containing inhabitans being not merely metaphysicaly possibile (as Oresme and Cusa believed who were not only not persecuted for such believes but who held high church offices) but a necessary effect emanatong from God's nature, which would negate God's freedom and (to a certain extent) His omnipotence. His belief in the transmigration of souls was also essentialy tied to his belief in the plurality of inhabited worlds. Schoppe (being close to the curia at the time) while writing to a lutheran about Bruno's demise, calles him a simonian while mentioning his belief in the plurality of worlds. And it was believed at the time that the simonian worldview held to the transmigration of souls. Mercati also mentions his belief in the worlds necessarily containing inhabitans.

Again, neither case is relevant for the possibility of aliens in the contemporary context devoid of any theological presumptions about their nature and status within the created order. At the end of the day I find the belief in aliens to be nonsensical for other reasons than it being theologicaly problematic....

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@ante3979 "other humans (!) that would not have been the descendants of Adam."

That's pretty equivalent to non-human rational creatures in bodies.

By the way, I hope you abstain from Swamidass' position about "people outside Eden" ...

Ante 397

@hglundahl well, not quite. There is certainly a distinction between beings with a human nature (who would need to be descended from Adam due to their humanity) and beings that don't have a human nature but whose nature is just of a rational kind (like in the case of angels) or of a rational as well as corporeal kind (like the one aliens, or mythological creatures of old, would have if they existed).

I don't think that Swamidass' view is compatible with the traditional and imho biblical position on the fall. It never made any sense to me for various reasons and to hold it one would need to explain the reality of suffering and death among non-edenic humans prior to Adam's fall without engaging in some pretty ad hoc "philosophysing"......

I myself hold that all humans descent from Adam, either via an ex nihilo act of creation or Bonnett's view of ad nuovo descent from irrational hominids. I am not a YEC but I firmly hold to a historical first human pair whom all humans arw descented from.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ante3979 "or Bonnett's view of ad nuovo descent from irrational hominids."

So, one baby Adam was human, but was born to a couple of irrational beings?

How is that not child abuse on God's part?

Or, if he became human only on reaching physical adulthood ... how was it not abusive that he recalled a life as basically, though with human anatomy, an ape? Or if he didn't recall it, how was memory privation not an act of overreach to an as yet unfallen man?

Ante 397

@hglundahl I don't see how this would be abusive since by growing up Adam would progressively be aware of his uniqueness and would walk his own path as any other adult human being (the difference being that he would have a more direct experience of God and that he would have preternatural gifts that his descendants would lack after the fall), but again, this is just one option, Adam could have been created ex nihilo or one could hold to the ensolment view etc. That's realy not that relevant for the discussion at hand....

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ante3979 If his parents were not human, they could not transmit human language to Adam.

He would have been a feral child.

"the difference being that he would have a more direct experience of God"

Being an image of God and having an experience of God are two different things.

Not being an image of God doesn't mean being a Disney cartoon character with some very clear humanity (sometimes shining through animality), it means not being able to think and to speak.

Check out on what happens to feral children who, during the months when they should acquire a native language, or start the process, are instead raised by wolves or apes or monkeys. They don't learn how to talk by being restored to human society. They have a condition which could only have been merited by the fact that Adam already has sinned.

And if you think otherwise of non-humans with human anatomy, you are not taking seriously that Adam is the first man.

Ante 397

@hglundahl 1) why would his parents need to transmit to Adam a human language? In this scenario Adam could have concepts and linguistical skills inherent to his unfallen nature as much as if he were created as an adult ex nihilo, ir God might intervene in this regard.

2) I never said that having an experience of God and being created in His image are the same thing. The former is a phenomenological, the latter an ontological category that grounds the former. I assumed that Adam was the bearer of God's image, I merely made an oversimplified distinction between his pre-fall state and our current state, hence I don't see the need for your note in this regard.

3) The characteristics of feral children would not apply to Adam in this proposed scenario bc feral children in virtue of either being in a fallen state or in virtue of them lacking the intrinsic capacity to themselves actualise their own development of linguistic and conceptual skills are dependent on socialisation in this regard. Adam would have preternatural gifts in this scenario as much as in the scenario where God creates him ex nihilo, not to mention that God could intervene in this regard.

Again, I never said I believe that Adam was created in this way. I am merely not excluding it as a possibility, noting that there are other possibilies, even more plausible ones, than that.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ante3979 I don't think there are "other more plausible ones" apart from Adam created as adult with God infusing the knowledge of language.

"In this scenario Adam could have concepts and linguistical skills inherent to his unfallen nature as much as if he were created as an adult ex nihilo"

An adult created ex nihilo would need infused knowledge and skills.

So, Adam didn't start to speak because God gave him linguistic skills and an as yet unfallen nature, but because on top of that, God gave him infused direct knowledge of language.

It's not because we are fallen, it's because we are born, that we need to learn language at a certain age after birth.

As a child, one is dependent, and needs some kind of harmony with one's group, and being able to speak while having no one to speak to, well, that's again something which I consider child abuse.

"I merely made an oversimplified distinction between his pre-fall state and our current state,"

I mistook your distinction for that between his pre-fall state and the state of his non-human relatives.

While I misrepresented you, I think there legitimately are people who think this is what "Adam's being in God's image" meant by contrast with "people outside the Garden" in Swamidass' scenario.

"feral children in virtue of either being in a fallen state or in virtue of them lacking the intrinsic capacity to themselves actualise their own development of linguistic and conceptual skills are dependent on socialisation in this regard."

Feral children occur because we are fallen. Adam as UNFALLEN lacked the capacity to himself actualise the development of linguistic and conceptual skills from a lack of language, and Adam as UNFALLEN depended on God (who from eternity spoke The Word) being his very first socialisation.

The naming of the animals only could occur after Adam had already spoken with God.

"as much as in the scenario where God creates him ex nihilo"

The charism of infused language is not a preternatural gift, and whether God intervened or there was a preternatural gift, for baby Adam to enjoy this, surrounded by beings which did not, it would have been a ruinous strain on his natural love of self and of close ones, because they would have been, objectively, in conflict.

God doesn't intervene with a miracle in order to have to intervene with a second, third or even fourth one to make it work. He's not a Doctor of Medicine, they sometimes do that, create problems when trying to solve them.

Given that Adam was the first real man, and given that he could not be exposed to suffering before sinning, the only miracle that creates no problems to be solved by other miracles would be the one described in the Bible: created as adult ex nihilo, and infused with language.