Reply To: Are (extra terrestrial) aliens kosher?

Ard, that’s a hard sell.

There are tribes on thiw planet that we, or anyone for that matter, has ever heard of. How is that different?

There are worlds and angels, multitudes of them, that hardly anyone in history has known of and that doesn’t contradict the doctrine of our centrality. Why would it matter whether they are material or ethereal? And why would planetary rocks make more sense than life?

Rabbeini Saadya Gaon writes in his Emunos Vedeios that being that Hashem doesn’t exert any effort in His creating things, the question of why He created things falls away for the most part. Although He wouldn’t do something for no reason at all, it is not the same question as why He went through the effort of creating it.

So, even if there is life and even if it is intelligent, perhaps He decided to prove some tiny point with their existence.

I can hear an argument against fully intelligent creatures on a planer that would be unaware of Hashem, since that would be a form of ripping away a part of creation from the Source, whereas benign beings wouldn’t be that. This planet stands on foundations, causes for its being, which are ???? ????? ??????? ?????. What would they have?