Famed Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers: Oh yeah, aliens totally exist

Some thoughts from his "Astronomical Discourses"

"Worlds roll in these distant regions; and these worlds must be the mansions of life and of intelligence." ~from this guy¹:

I was recently at the conference of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, where I heard a talk by George Grant on the “Astronomical Discourses” of Thomas Chalmers. If you don’t know, Chalmers was a presbyterian Scottish minister, born in 1780 and who, by Grant’s telling anyway, basically by himself revived true religion in Scotland. His Discourses began as a series of public lectures, and you can now purchase them as a book (or the full text is online). Grant’s talk at ACCS was really about the importance of doing anticipatory scientific apologetics - in Chalmers day, there was this growing idea that astronomy disproved Christianity, so Chalmers tried to jump out in the front of that with his speeches.

Grant mentioned that apparently his “Astronomical Discourses” were briefly the best selling book in the English language! I wanted to learn more about the arguments of Chalmers, but Grant didn’t really provide those specifics in his talk (because Grant is not really a science person, I think). But I did think, by golly I have to read that. I’ve read through the first speech so far, and it’s great. I wish I had known about it when teaching astronomy last year, it would be a great read with (sufficiently advanced) Christian astronomy students.

What is he rebutting? Chalmers says that the “Infidels” (yes, he calls them that) arguing that astronomy disproves the Christian faith are basically making two points. One, they say, “Christianity is a religion which professes to be designed for the single benefit of our world”. Chalmers says “Christianity makes no such profession”. And two, God cannot be the author of Christianity, because God would not lavish so much particular attention on this one world. To that, briefly, Chalmers says, “We can lay no limit on the condescension of God, or the multiplicity of his regards”.

I’ll probably write several posts on the “Discourses”, but I wanted here to draw out the first speech for you. The first speech is called “A sketch of the modern astronomy”, and by my reading, a big point of it was to say at the beginning, “look guys, before I get into the theology, I do understand the science too. Let me tell you about it and revel in it a bit”. I was quite impressed. And as our title suggests here, he makes some surprising points along the way.

A sketch of the modern astronomy

Chalmers begins by saying that part of his goal is:

to soften and subdue those prejudices which lie at the bottom of what may be called the infidelity of natural science; if possible to bring over to the humility of the Gospel, those who expiate with delight on the wonders and the sublimities of creation...

You see two things right off the bat here. One, Chalmers (you feel this again and again) loves the science. It helps show us the wonders and sublimities of creation. In another place, he refers to the “science of these enlightened times”, and I think he means it. Because in our day we have to contend with The Science, which often actually has little to do with science, I understand many Christians get kind of spooked by science. You don’t have to be. True science is on our side.

And then two, and you feel this again and again also, there is sort of an arrogance problem with some of these natural scientists and philosophers. They think they know a whole lot more than they do. (Surely no longer a problem! Ahem.) We need to bring them over to the humility of the gospel.

And then, it’s perfectly appropriate to extract lessons from science (or from the natural world, we might say), because even scripture does that. Behold the lilies of the field after all - an argument for confidence in God, from the appearance of a flower.

It is truly a most Christian exercise to extract a sentiment of piety from the works and appearances of nature.

Astronomy proper and our solar system

He then gets into astronomy proper. For all of human history, we have seen these lights in the sky. “But what can these lights be?” It is in our nature to wonder such things. "It has been reserved for these latter times, to resolve this great and interesting question."

What do we know (and it’s really impressive to get all this in a speech from a minister)? The stars, he says, are large, and remarkably far away, appearing as points to us only because of their great distance. The Moon has “the magnitude of a world” of itself. The Sun is really a globe, thousands of times the size of the Earth. Our Earth is a round ball, occupying its own, actually very small, place in the firmament.

And then, and the stuff I found most fascinating actually, he spends quite a while saying… would God have made these vast heavens, and us the only intelligent creatures around to admire it? Seems unlikely. He says:

But when we explore the unlimited tracts of that space, which is every where around us, we meet with other balls of equal or superior magnitude, and from which our earth would either be invisible, or appear as small as any of those twinkling stars which are seen in the canopy of the heaven. Why then suppose that this little spot, little at least in the immensity that surrounds it, should be the exclusive abode of life and of intelligence?

Would the “great Architect of nature”, he asks, really “call these stately mansions into existence and leave them unoccupied”? Is it reasonable to say that “to this Earth alone belongs the bloom of vegetation, or the blessedness of life, or the dignity of rational and immortal existence”?

And then he focuses in on our solar system and argues that it is reasonable to think life exists even on other planets here. After all, those other planets behave similarly to Earth. They have their own rotation. They perform a yearly revolution of the Sun. They have seasons. The comments in Genesis 1 about the purposes of the Sun, Moon (or moons), and stars would seem to apply to other planets in our solar system as well.

To each of them the heavens present as varied and magnificent a spectacle; and this earth, the encompassing of which would require the labour of years from one of its puny inhabitants, is but one of the lesser lights which sparkle in their firmament.

These planets seem to have other similarities with Earth as well. One (he’s relying on the science of the time here) has mountains and valleys. Another has an atmosphere which may support the respiration of animals. A third has clouds, which may minister to vegetation. One has polar ice caps that grow and shrink, suggesting snow. Who knows but that future telescopes will spot clear signs of cultivation, or great cities. (The thought of space travel itself, actually visiting these places, seems not in his thinking.) Just because we cannot see any other life, should we really:

conceive, that silence and solitude reign throughout the mighty empire of nature; that the greater part of creation is an empty parade; and that not a worshipper of the Divinity is to be found through the wide extent of you vast and immeasurable regions?

This justifies the exclamation of the Psalmist that “what is man, that thou art mindful of him?”. Indeed, our own planet is small, “among the least of those” in our solar system. If our own Earth were to “sink into annihilation”, this event would go entirely unnoticed on these other worlds. (Cheers!)

We should learn not to look on our earth as the universe of God, but one paltry and insignificant portion of it; that it is only one of the many mansions which the Supreme Being has created for the accommodation of His worshipers, and only one of the many worlds rolling in that flood of light which the sun pours around him to the outer limits of the planetary system.

What purpose have the other stars

Having discussed our own solar system, he then says, and what about all the other stars? Do they really exist just to provide a tiny bit of light to the planet Earth, or “do they serve a purpose worthier of themselves”?

The other stars, he says, are very far away. A cannon-ball fired off from Earth would take hundreds of thousands of years to reach the nearest star. No human mind can really comprehend this immensity.

We see distant stars not because they reflect light, but because they are luminous in themselves. In short, they “are so many suns, each throned in the centre of his own dominion”. And he actually notes that some of them show a periodic variation in their light intensity! He suggests (and this is not right) that this is the result of sunspots. Our own sun has sunspots, and if they were all grouped on one side of the sun, our sun also would display a periodic variation in light intensity.

And then (and let me remind you the first exoplanet wasn’t actually discovered until 1995), he suggest the other stars have their own planets too.

Why may not each of them be the centre of his own system, and give light to his own worlds?

And then offers our starting quotation.

Worlds roll in these distant regions; and these worlds must be the mansions of life and of intelligence.

Creation by divine fiat or natural processes?

Then, it’s sort of a side comment, but he notes that all the planets in our solar system have a dual motion - they rotate, and they revolve around the Sun. He suggests that such dual motion to a planet could be imparted by an off-center impact with another body (and this is true). But I found it interesting, because this means he is quite open to the idea that God did not just make our planets “as they are”, with the rotation and revolution they have, but rather these things developed later by natural processes. He does also say, it could just be “divine fiat”, but maybe also not. Interesting.

Toward the end, he alludes to the then recent discovery of the nebulae, perhaps the stars also are arranged into groups! He notes that “the mansion that accommodates our species might be so very small as to lie wrapped in microscopial concealment”. And therefore,

Is it presumption to say, that the moral world extends to these distant and unknown regions? that they are occupied with people? that the charities of home and of neighborhood flourish there? that the praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness rejoiced in?

After all,

The universe at large would suffer as little, in its splendor and variety, by the destruction of our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a dull leaf.

Cheers again. After all, “the fire which rages within” our planet might lift to the surface and turn the whole Earth into “one wide and wasting volcano”. (I need more sermons suggesting that possibility.) Or a comet could strike us, and launch us into the Sun, or off into deep space.

But there is hope

So therefore we may be grateful that,

The God who sitteth above, and presides in high authority over all worlds, is mindful of man.

And that,

I am as much known to Him as if I were the single object of all his attention.

But wait a minute, after all of that,

Is it likely, says the Infidel, that God would send his eternal Son, to die for the puny occupiers of so insignificant a present in the mighty field of his creation?

Well that, I’m afraid, is answered in his second discourse. So go read it yourself or wait for post #2 in this little series.

THE END

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1. Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons