Alona Stewart asks: I know this is a bit of a weird question but I'm going to ask in anyway, in the pursuit of knowledge and whatnot. It's about aliens... I mean, the universe is enormous. Hundreds of billions of miles wide, with countless galaxies and stars and planets and other large chunks of space matter. Is it really possible or even probable that we are the only planet out there that supports life? (I'm not talking about green slimy things with big black eyes and four fingered-hands-- it could be single-celled organisms or those weird blobby things in the ocean that were apparently the first complex life forms... anyway.)
So I was just wondering if the Torah mentions anything about our planet being the only one with life or... I don't know, anything. Have any modern poskim had anything to say about this topic?...
Rabbi Lamm refers us to his article on the subject here.
Here is a condensed answer that he e-mailed in:
First, if there is intelligent life elsewhere, it is probably we who appear as ‘aliens’ to them... Second, the Torah was given to human beings, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – not to inhabitants of other worlds or universes. Since the Torah does not directly speak of “aliens,” it is safe for us to accept the findings and even well-based speculations of cosmologist and other scientists whose ideas and theories are not in contradiction to Torah. Moreover, there are views of great Torah authority which, when extrapolated, can very well support the idea of a creation of many worlds. If many worlds, why not populated worlds
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