Space invaders?
- deansimpson7
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
BY BARRY GITTINS*
Sixty years ago, in the 15 May 1965 War Cry, The Salvation Army’s Brigadier Harry Dean cited the belief that there was intelligent life beyond Earth and millions of inhabited planets.
Those beliefs were expressed by Bruno Friedman and published by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation).
The brigadier added a question mark to the statements.“Science used to say that intelligent life on other planets was ‘improbable’,” wrote the brigadier. “It has now altered its tune.”
Brigadier Dean further pondered questions such as, “What makes scientists so sure today that there is intelligent life in space? ... Where do we locate such living beings? ... Are they more intelligent [than us], just as [intelligent], or less intelligent than we [are]? ... How can we communicate with them?”
The intriguing aspect of a church periodical is that The Salvation Army, like many Christian denominations, inherited an old cosmology and theology that presumed a heaven and angels, along with a loving Creator who existed ‘way up high’ in the sky, far beyond the blue.
Could we travel to that Beulah Land beyond the clouds? Would we be welcome, or would such an incursion be a no-no for the Almighty?
For the brigadier, such thoughts were of no great import, and ultimately, such questions as the existence of intelligent life were “only of academic interest”.
While hoping that if such creatures did exist, we wouldn’t hurt them, and they wouldn’t hurt us, he declared, “It isn’t really intelligence that matters, finally, but goodness.
“Brilliance and competence are all very well, but if used destructively [they] can bring hell on earth – as they have done in the past … If there are intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, I only hope their characters aren’t blighted [or] that they’ve had the sense to accept whatever kind of redemption a good God must have provided for them.”
Four years after the article, on 20 July 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon.
Sadly, there was no evidence of little green humanoids.
Launched in 1977 to suss out Jupiter and Saturn, NASA’s Voyager 1 became the first vessel from Earth to go into ‘interstellar space’ in 2012, and it’s still going.
As far as we know, human beings are the only form of life in our solar system, at any rate.
Whether we can be classified as intelligent remains to be seen!
*Barry Gittins is the Assistant Manager of The Salvation Army Museum in Melbourne
