Ancient Astronautical Creators

Many today believe that human life was created by alien species, sometimes called ‘ancient astronauts’. The idea first appears in the science fiction of the early 20th century and was increasingly popular from the 1950s. The odd piece of archaeology, showing beings floating or wearing spacesuit-like apparel, supposedly lends credence to the theory. The approach is a great way of rejecting the atheistic nihilism of modern cosmology without having to embrace traditional theism. We were created, so the theory goes, by ‘advanced beings’ who benevolently watch us from the stars, though they occasionally pop by for quick visits and a chat. Some like to combine the hypothesis with evolutionary theory, claiming that their more advanced evolution enables them to supervise and plan ours. Quite what or who created these advanced races is yet to be successfully addressed.

Sir Ridley Scott’s visually impressive 2012 film Prometheus deals with this interesting concept. Drawing upon the Alien franchise, a human spacecraft in 2093 lands on a planet to investigate the ancient astronauts. One of these creatures, referred to as the Engineers, is found preserved and brought back to life. Rather than giving the inquiring humans the answers to their questions, the Engineer promptly kills them and then seeks to fly his giant craft to earth to destroy the rest of humanity.

Interestingly, Scott flippantly identified the race of Engineers in an interview with Sean O’Connell as the demons of Judaeo-Christian theology:

“In a funny kind of way, if you look at the Engineers, they’re tall and elegant … they are dark angels. If you look at [John Milton’s] Paradise Lost, the guys who have the best time in the story are the dark angels, not God.”

Bizarrely, he then goes on to classify Jesus Christ as a potential emissary of our ‘Engineer’ fathers whom we foolishly killed.

Scott is closer to the truth than perhaps he realises. These ancient astronauts, if they exist, are deceiving, lying spirits, hell-bent on humanity’s destruction to accompany their own. Awaiting judgement, they seek to claim credit for God’s creative genius, and lead fallen humanity further astray from divinely revealed truth. Similarly, Jesus Christ was indeed more than just another victim of rough Roman justice. He entered earth from eternity, not another planet. This Man is the very Creator whom the alien theorists seek, but refuse, to accept:

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.

Colossians 1:16

Image by Pawel86 from Pixabay