Ken Ham says Aliens will go to Hell

And if he can't then he doesn't. Thus the thread title is wrong.

Not so fast. Ham implies that they require salvation. That in turn implies a soul. Salvation bestows entrance through the Pearly Gates of Heaven of the soul. The alternative to going to heaven is going to hell, thus a being with a soul but without salvation is going to hell.

Thus the thread topic is correct.
 
If the only people who get to go to heaven are humans, that is going to give Satan one hell (excuse the pun) of an army when it comes to end times, not only in numbers but also in technology.

God is going to get his butt kicked
 
Creationist Ken Ham, who recently debated Bill Nye the Science Guy over the origins of the universe, is calling for an end to the search for extraterrestrial life because aliens probably don't exist -- and if they do, they're going to Hell anyway.

"You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe," Ham wrote on his blog on Sunday. "This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation."

The post was driven in part by NASA experts saying that they expect to find evidence of alien life within the next 20 years.

Well, it's not like I needed even more evidence that the God that Christians worships (or claim to at any length) was an irredeemable douche, but damn.

Maybe by "aliens" he was referring to the xenomorphs of the "Alien" movie franchise? If so, I'm cool with them going to hell. If you ask me they're a bunch of bad eggs.

I can certainly understand that.
 
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I guess that's the thing about faith-by-assertion, though- even an assertion that makes no sense in the context of the rest of the theology (like "Adam’s sin affected the whole universe") must be accepted as an equal part of it; any assertion is as good as any other when the only basis for comparison is how it serves the conclusion.

Well, to some extent, but that still doesn't mean a reasoning based on it has any merits or justifies a conclusion at all. And in Ham's case, that's even on more than one level.

For a start saying that the aliens were affected by Adam's sin, therefore they're going to hell for it, is like saying that the Amazonian jungle tribes were affected by the nuclear tests, therefore let's make them pay for it. Affected does not mean responsible.

Second, it undermines his own other argument against catholicism. He contended that if there wasn't a literal Adam and Eve to sin and bring death into the world, then it makes no sense to hold on to the rest of the doctrine that flows from there, and basically a big case of 'then how do you explain it all?' But here he argues that it's possible for God to punish beings on planet A for something that happened on planet B. So then that argument works in reverse too: God punishes humans for what some gray 'Adam' did on Planet X.

Sure, it feels unfair if WE are on the crap end of that stick, but then it's equally unfair when applying it to other beings anyway. But in any case, he just provided a way out of his other dilemma, making that other argument worthless.

And essentially going by postulates or not, you can't have two mutually contradicting arguments both be true.

Third, the argument that we shouldn't go there because we can't save them is illogical in any case. We can't convert oil to worshipping Christ, but we dig for it anyway, don't we? I doubt Mr Ham would be very happy if we took that thinking to its logical conclusion and stopped looking for coal and oil because we can't proselytise to them.

The fact is, there are tons of other reasons to look for stuff, and crossing one off the list -- even by bare assertion -- is still not doing much to the rest of the list.
 
Well, to some extent, but that still doesn't mean a reasoning based on it has any merits or justifies a conclusion at all. And in Ham's case, that's even on more than one level.

For a start saying that the aliens were affected by Adam's sin, therefore they're going to hell for it, is like saying that the Amazonian jungle tribes were affected by the nuclear tests, therefore let's make them pay for it. Affected does not mean responsible.

Second, it undermines his own other argument against catholicism. He contended that if there wasn't a literal Adam and Eve to sin and bring death into the world, then it makes no sense to hold on to the rest of the doctrine that flows from there, and basically a big case of 'then how do you explain it all?' But here he argues that it's possible for God to punish beings on planet A for something that happened on planet B. So then that argument works in reverse too: God punishes humans for what some gray 'Adam' did on Planet X.

Sure, it feels unfair if WE are on the crap end of that stick, but then it's equally unfair when applying it to other beings anyway. But in any case, he just provided a way out of his other dilemma, making that other argument worthless.

And essentially going by postulates or not, you can't have two mutually contradicting arguments both be true.

Third, the argument that we shouldn't go there because we can't save them is illogical in any case. We can't convert oil to worshipping Christ, but we dig for it anyway, don't we? I doubt Mr Ham would be very happy if we took that thinking to its logical conclusion and stopped looking for coal and oil because we can't proselytise to them.

The fact is, there are tons of other reasons to look for stuff, and crossing one off the list -- even by bare assertion -- is still not doing much to the rest of the list.

Maybe we should get Ken Ham to start raising money to fund a mission to the stars. He could be the saviour to whole planets full of souls. If he can get them to let Jeezus into their circulatory organs, he can save them from this damnation of theirs, can't he? Isn't that how it works?
 

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