Posted on 07/01/2011 6:19:36 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Veritas Riff is a group of friends who combine deep faith with world-class expertise in subjects ranging from politics, science, culture, business, medicine, and more. They offer their informal take on the big questions facing us all. I'm the host of the Veritas Riff, Curtis Chang.
For centuries, humans have asked whether life exists on other planets. In the last decade or so, astrophysicists have made actual progress in answering that question. As more exoplanets—planets outside our solar system—are discovered, the chances of locating extraterrestrial life rises. But how would the discovery of extraterrestrial life impact religion, and particularly Christianity?
Today we're talking to an expert uniquely suited to address this topic. Jennifer Wiseman is Chief of Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics at NASA. She's also the director of the Dialogue of Science, Ethics, and Religion for the American Association of the Advancement of Science.
Jennifer, where are we headed with this current pace of discovery? Is science on track to discover the presence of extraterrestrial life any time soon?
My personal opinion is that if we get the support we need in the next twenty years to build more sophisticated telescopes, we'll find several planets that are earth-sized, perhaps in our neighborhood of stars, that support atmospheres similar to earth's atmosphere. I don't think that's enough time to do what we would like to do, which is actually to find incontrovertible biomarkers, as we call them. A biomarker is a chemical signature in a planet's atmosphere that is a telltale sign of life. I think there will be so much ambiguity at first that we won't be able to say such a thing.
Now, if you ask me about fifty years instead of twenty, then I would say at that point we should have a great inventory, including all the spectroscopic studies, of hundreds of neighboring stars, including a detailed study of their atmospheres, and we should be able to say whether or not there's at least simple life on those planets. And now I'm getting into my true speculation, but I really believe there's a chance we'll find a signature of simple, single-cellular-type life somewhere out there. If Earth is as abundantly full of life as we think it is, then I have to think that other planets could be the same.
Take off your NASA hat for a moment and speak to me as a scientist who happens to be a Christian. If we got the news flash that there is intelligent life out there, how do you imagine that would impact Christian thought?
I imagine two steps in the Christian response. The first has to do with the idea that creation is good. That's set forth clearly for both Jews and Christians in scripture. Creation is a good thing, and God has created abundant life. Now, "created" could include evolutionary processes, but the point is that since God is the author of all of it, whatever is there is good.
So, with that theology when we see the abundance of life flourishing on this planet, we could simply broaden our view of God to include life elsewhere. If God is the author of life on countless other worlds, it increases our sense of wonder and appreciation.
The second step is this. In Christian thought, humans have a problem in their personal relationships with God. We're separated from God by our own sin, we need restoration of that personal relationship, and that restoration has been provided by God becoming human. God became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ and walked the surface of the earth, guided us, and then died and rose again. That restored our relationship with God.
So if there are other intelligent civilizations out there, how has God interacted with them? Have they sinned? Have they needed redemption? Did Christ visit them in their forms? Or did his work here on Earth suffice for all life everywhere?
We get into a conundrum about the exact work of Jesus Christ on this planet and how it could pertain to life all over the cosmos. That's particularly important in Christianity, because it's really only humans in Christian theology who have this problem of sin. That's where we get into a really interesting theological case.
This is the sort of territory C.S. Lewis explored, of course, in Perelandra. What if we drill down beyond this abstract level of theological reflection to actual Christian communities? What is their range of reaction to news of extraterrestrial life?
I suspect the range of reaction, if we find simple life elsewhere, will be mostly positive. It's similar to when we found unusual life forms at the bottom of the ocean. It simply broadens our view of life and creation. If we find intelligent beings, that requires more thought. But if they're there, they're there, so it has to be incorporated into the theology.
I have some quotes from theologians and believers across the spectrum of Christian belief. Billy Graham said, "I firmly believe there are intelligent beings like us far away in space who worship God, but we have nothing to fear from them because, like us, they are God's creation." That would be one reaction. Another Christian leader in a ministry here in the United States felt that if we found extraterrestrial life it would actually make a mockery of our Christian faith, since the entire focus of creation, in his view, is mankind on this earth. In this person's view, finding life elsewhere would be a major shock to the way he had conceived God's work on earth.
So I'm not sure how people will react. Most, when asked, seem to think it would simply enrich their view of God, and they would be all the more awestruck. But for some, it would create this feeling of disorientation, like maybe what they've believed all along isn't right. It might strike a chord of fear and reexamination.
It seems to me that the fear and anxious reexamination might be concentrated in certain church traditions that elevate this personal God-and-me relationship over and above everything else in their teaching. Recently I drove by a church near my home, and the church had a sign: "God loves you as if you were the only one there is." What would happen if we discovered we aren't all there is? Would the discovery of extraterrestrial life threaten Christian notions of significance?
If we're looking at things from a Christian perspective, we have to examine where significance comes from scripturally. It never comes from a person's life span or location. Sometimes it's overt. The psalmist, for example, tells us that we're made of dust, and we're like grass that's here today and gone tomorrow. Yet we're constantly reminded of God's great love for us as individuals, so much that God even knows the number of hairs on our heads.
God's love is by choice, not by merit of place, time, or character. So I think we can expand that too. We already know that the universe is vaster than our wildest imagination. We have literally hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one with hundreds of billions of stars. We're looking at a universe that's been around for over 13 billion years and is still expanding. So the universe should already make us feel quite, quite small and insignificant in a spatial or temporal scale. But that does not at all translate to whether or not we're significant in the sight of God.
This should give Christians great comfort. Biblically, our significance is based on God's choice to love us.
Just because God doesn’t mention something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Do you not believe that modern medicine exists because God didn’t reveal it in Scripture?
However, there is enough in the positives affirmed in the Bible to know extraterrestrials do not exist by virtue of them being contradictory to Scriptural truths.
No aliens. Google “Fermi’s paradox”.
One of the primary premises of the Bible is to explain how to be saved, not how to be cured of any disease otherwise the Bible would be a lot bigger than it is. LOL! I believe that if there were beings on some other planet somewhere in His universe, he would have mentioned it, at least in passing.
I love these discussions; I learn much about how people think.
I don't see why since they would be the Angels God created before man.
I also believe He would have mentioned it. However, we cannot be dogmatic about such things. An argument from silence at best produces weak probabilities and can never produce certainties.
'Cause conservatives are carnivores..
Doesn’t matter. Animals die. That doesn’t disprove anything.
“Extraterrestrials” exist already as angels, both fallen and elect.
God’s Plan for humanity is also linked the appeals trial of Satan. The Gospel message for humans is that while we are born today condemned, we have eternal life through Christ.
The article and the expert queried both miss the foundation of Scriptural Christianity. Salvation isn’t a soulish exercise giving merit to the believer, but rather it is a mechanism by which God is free to create our spiritual life in the new man.
Even if intelligent life is discovered, unless that life also has a spirit, discernible from the soulish mind, it still would lack the relationship with God He has provided in man.
From whence comith this? Brings back memories from my collegiate days (mid 60's). I once ventured into a philosophy class, not by choice but by academic requirement and heard something similar.
Rev 5:13 "And every CREATURE which is IN HEAVEN...
I know what you're saying and your logic has merit though I think you're holding back.
For instance, where is heaven, what are angels, how did the prophets know the future, why were there wars in heaven, and ...
We're no baloney, we're homo-sapient!
You were probably in a logic class, something I think should be taught systematically from sixth grade on up (by private schools, not state schools). The philosophy department, while containing the most psychotic leftist nuts, also contains some of the most consistent conservative Christians.
The Marxists have used the American people’s utter lack of logic to pull the wool over our eyes. How else do we think Obama can think he can get away with blaming ATMs and corporate jet owners for the bad economy?
“How long can any civilization last before it implodes in some way? Maybe a couple thousand years??”
By human standards, going by all of human recorded history? There is just no way of knowing, we don’t have enough data on how “alien” actual aliens could be to us. If there are really old alien civilizations, they had to start at some time. Maybe they could really different than us, not just “men” in a different shape, but having completely different goals and drives. Or maybe they live a couple of thousand years or longer.
It is interesting to speculate why there hasn’t been any contact yet. You would think that anyone advanced enough to reach the stars in a reasonable amount of time would do so, and be powerful enough to find other sentient life easily. But maybe that’s just our human penchant for exploration. Maybe there is something out there that squashes the more bold races when they make themselves known. Maybe most are species that just aren’t interested in exploration, alien contact, or even knowing anything we could relate to.
Freegards
You didn’t answer my question? And the course name, if I remember correctly was “ The Philosophy of Logic” or was it the “Logic of Philosophy” ... a requirement back in the day.
Quix's response to the question:
If extraterrestrial life is found on other planets, does Christianity come unraveled?
.
As usual . . . depends on lots of things . . . definitions, constructions on reality, etc.
1. It is CONCEIVABLE that there are countless citizens of distant orbs 'out there.'
2. I do NOT believe any of the 'critters' talked about in the literature are likely to be such citizens of distant orbs.
3. I agree with Guy Malone and his panel of top flight Biblical etc. scholars . . . the 'ET's' discussed in the literature appear to be FALLEN ANGELS and only FALLEN ANGELS, Nephilium, watchers etc:
4. Authentic Christ-centered, Holy Spirit led, relationship based spiritual warfare works against their activities as spiritual warfare works against demon forces.
5. EVEN IF some of the critters discussed in the literature turn out to be citizens of distant orbs--it does not matter--THEY ARE IN CAHOOTS WITH THE SATANIC COMMIE GLOBALIST OLIGARCHY SETTING UP THE SATANIC TYRANNICAL GLOBAL GOVERNMENT TO ULTIMATELY WORSHIP SATAN AS GOD. That's all one needs to know about their values and goals. They are on THE WRONG SIDE.
6. The critters are slated, imho, to profer what Scripture calls the GREAT END TIMES DELUSION so incredible that WERE IT POSSIBLE, EVEN THE ELECT WOULD BE DECEIVED.
7. The best sources assert that they critters will profer a holographic video purporting to 'prove' that they created Christ (and all other religious greats of history) for social engineering purposes . . . and pulled even His miracles off with their advanced technologies.
8. Believers need to KNOW JESUS--HIM IN THEM AND THEY IN HIM--WALKING INTIMATELY WITH HIM DAILY; KNOWING, HEARING AND OBEYING HIS VOICE AND WORD. Otherwise, they may be vulnerable to being snookered, deceived by the critters and their purported 'scientific' 'proof' trashing Christ's Deity as satan has been keen to do all along.
9. Coming months and years seem destined to have reality turned upside down and inside out. CHRIST ALONE IS ABLE AND WORTHY TO SAVE; PROVIDE; PROTECT. There will be martyrs aplenty. Yet, God will also protect His own as well or better than the Children of Israel in the wilderness.
10. The time to practice total surrender to God and total trust IN GOD and HIS WAYS is now. Practicing on a hurried run is a game of catch-up under trying circumstances.
“You didn’t answer my question?”
I got it from logic texts I’ve read. I self-taught logic to myself before then, but I did take a logic class.
That is a hard way to learn logic and I commend you for your effort, obviously it worked.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.