Living with Tiny Aliens
The Image of God for the Anthropocene
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Astrobiology is changing how we understand meaningful human existence. Living with Tiny Aliens seeks to imagine how an individuals’ meaningful existence persists when we are planetary creatures situated in deep time—not only on a blue planet burgeoning with life, but in a cosmos pregnant with living-possibilities. In doing so, it works to articulate an astrobiological humanities.
Working with a series of specific examples drawn from the study of extraterrestrial life, doctrinal reflection on the imago Dei, and reflections on the Anthropocene, Pryor reframes how human beings meaningfully dwell in the world and belong to it. To take seriously the geological significance of human agency is to understand the Earth as not only a living planet but an artful one. Consequently, Pryor reframes the imago Dei, rendering it a planetary system that opens up new possibilities for the flourishing of all creation by fostering technobiogeochemical cycles not subject to runaway, positive feedback. Such an account ensures the imago Dei is not something any one of us possesses, but that it is a symbol for what we live into together as a species in intra-action with the wider habitable environment.
God’s light is not reflected but rather refracted among those who bear the divine image on Earth. What about God’s image on other planets and moons, those simple microbes? Adam Pryor is unique in exploring the theological implications of tiny aliens.—Ted Peters, co-editor, Theology and Science
Living with Tiny Aliens makes substantial contributions to literature at the interface of science, theology, and the Anthropocene. By rethinking the human as a living being whose vitality is dependent on its place in a planetary milieu, he is able to enrich the notion of the imago Dei by expanding the ontological limits of Anthropos.—Gaymon Bennett, Arizona State University
Adam Pryor's new book Living with Tiny Aliens identifies a key theme of astrobiology—framed as intra-action—and applies it to Christian ontology and ethics in a way that is both meaningful and accessible... Tiny Aliens makes a significant contribution to the new field of astrobiology and theology.—Dialog: A Journal of Theology
Living with Tiny Aliens: The Image of God for the Anthropocene represents an excellent exposition on how astrobiology influences the notions of Anthropocene, the idea of planetary and the artful Planet.... This book represents an intriguing astrotheological approach in an astrobiological context, so I enthusiastically recommend reading it.—Octavio Alfonso Chon Torres, Politics, Religion & Ideology
Introduction: Being in Outer Space | 1
1 Exoplanets and Icy Moons and Mars, Oh My! | 15
2 Astrobiology’s Intra-Active Aliens | 32
3 Being a Living-System | 46
4 The imago Dei as a Refractive Symbol | 62
5 Conceptualizing Nature | 86
6 The Anthropocene as Planetarity in Deep Time | 104
7 An Artful Planet | 128
8 Living-Into Presence, Wonder, and Play | 146
Epilogue: Ad Astra Per Aspera | 188
Acknowledgments | 201
Notes | 203
Bibliography | 241
Index | 263
