Other Writing

really cool sci-fi premise

Humans have achieved faster than light travel and entered into communication with beings from many other planets, who are generally friendly.

Across the galaxy, most beings have a spiritual understanding of God. Their pre-space-travel religious traditions say that there is a “chosen people” who are able to be redeemed and enter the next life, but that these are beings who live far away. They fit into their theology sort of the way angels fit into ours - beings that are important to God but in a way that is relatively alien to us.

There were two known planets whose sentient beings had religious traditions naming themselves as the chosen ones who could be saved and enter the next life. They live in an uneasy truce, enforced by the other planets. It is generally believed that one of them is correct and the other has been deceived by the evil one to confuse the world, and that the answer will be revealed during the end times. When humans join the larger Milky Way community, they become the third.

For the most part, the residence of the other planets are not interested in having souls, and their theology is not centered enough around sold beings for them to have strong opinions on which planet is correct. The question arises primarily when things get political. When a planet allies with one of the candidate planets, their leadership might develop a theology emphasizing that this candidate planet is the true in sold planet.

As for souls… Think of it this way. A soul is what a human has that lets it do the things that humans do –be saved, live forever in a way. Angels would have to have some type of essence as well that lets them do the things that angels do. Say we called this morpiglorp. Are humans disappointed that we don't have morpiglorp? Not really, because we're not supposed to.

Sometimes there are esoteric colts on other planets that claim to be able to do some form of alchemy or meditation practice that transforms individuals from that planet into one of the sold group, or imbue them with a soul. This is generally thought to be very weird by most of the other inhabitants of the planet.