Posted on 12/22/2003 7:28:53 AM PST by dead
This may be the last Christmas it is possible to celebrate confident in the assumption that life is unique to planet Earth, that therefore human beings with their consciousness, intelligence and moral sensibility are the culmination of creation, and that thus they enjoy a special relationship with their creator.
All going well, on Christmas Day a probe aboard the first European mission to Mars will touch down on the Red Planet and begin searching for what scientists call "signatures of life". The probe, Beagle 2, will measure the ratio of different types of carbon found in Martian rocks. As explained on the European Space Agency's website (www.esrin.esa.it), biological processes on Earth favour the lighter isotope of carbon, carbon-12, over the heavier carbon-13 and so a high carbon-12 to carbon-13 ratio will be taken as evidence that life in some form either exists on Mars or at least has existed in the past.
If such evidence is found, it will not only extend the frontiers of scientific understanding of how life came to evolve; it will also impact on religious belief in ways comparable to the 16th-century Copernican revolution in cosmology which removed the Earth from what had been assumed to be its central position in the universe.
But what would this impact likely be?
To some extent, that depends on which religions one has in mind. Monotheistic religions which propose a direct connection between human beings and God (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) would be more profoundly challenged by the discovery of extraterrestrial life than Oriental religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism which are more flexible in this regard and essentially propose a form of salvation based largely on individual enlightenment.
The concern for the former religions would be that if life exists or has existed on Mars, it is reasonable to conclude that it is fairly common in the universe (especially as we now know that there are several planetary systems circling other stars even within our neighbourhood of the galaxy and that our galaxy is only one of innumerable galaxies whirling around the universe).
That in turn would suggest that life arises wherever conditions are favourable to it and is not the product of a discrete creative act on Earth in which, according to the Book of Genesis, God made man in his own image.
Theologians have anticipated the discovery of even intelligent life "out there" for years and have prepared a defence of sorts. It basically takes the form of arguing that the discovery of extraterrestrial life would only deepen our understanding of the wonder and mystery of God.
Thus in Many Worlds, One God, a book first published in 1977 and carrying the official "imprimatur" of the Vatican, the Catholic priest Kenneth Delano argued that no person of faith should be afraid "to examine the implications of intelligence in the universe" because it would simply demonstrate the "limitless love and care God has for all his intelligent creatures".
Delano even envisaged that "any one or all three Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity may have chosen to become incarnated on one or more of the inhabited worlds in the universe".
Rabbi Norman Lamm, of New York's Yeshiva University, took a similar view with respect to the problem extraterrestrial life might pose for the Jewish notion of the uniqueness of humanity. "A God who can exercise providence over one billion earthmen can do so for 10 billion times that number of creatures throughout the universe," he argued, and none of this would necessarily affect humanity's unique "spiritual dignity".
But it would alter the understanding of God within these religious traditions and strongly suggest that this understanding (of a personal, loving, father-like God) was little more than a human projection.
Of course, Beagle 2 may find nothing and so confirm the findings of the 1965 Mariner 4 space probe that Mars was a barren planet that supported nothing more interesting than rocks, dust and unbreathable carbon dioxide.
The same may be true of the two US probes that land on the surface of Mars to conduct their own investigations in the coming weeks and of the forthcoming mission to determine if three of Jupiter's moons - Callisto, Europa and Ganymede - harbour signatures of life beneath the ice that covers their surfaces.
And as C.S. Lewis argued in 1958, religion did survive Copernicus as well as Darwin and Freud.
"A Christian is sitting pretty," Lewis argued about the speculations that accompanied the space age, "if his faith never encounters more formidable difficulties than these conjectural phantoms."
At least we are about to find out whether we are dealing with phantoms or not.
Almighty God can create anything He wishes...
True, but Man likes to blow stuff up.
Asa devout Christian. I dispute this contention. It's not even sound reasoning. Nothing in our Christian beliefs rules out life elsewhere.
Anytime from noon on -- it's an open house!
I'll clean out the back of my fridge to serve the little green guys, they won't know any better. Here's hoping they bring along some out-of-this-world alcoholic libations!
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I better get ready to jump ship on my religion...
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