God of the whole universe
I have always had a fascination with astronomy and in fact for my GCSE IT got 100% for covering how computers are used infrared spectrometry and monitory emmsisions. As a Christian I am often amazed at the University that’s been created before our eyes however it does prove somewhat of a challenge at the same time. Clearly as a galaxy we are not alone, there are millions of other galaxies, some bigger than ourselves, some containing more stars and many so much more older than ourselves. Even today science has proven the evidence of planets going around some of our closest neighbours, albeit admittedly these tend to be gas giants such as we have in Jupiter and Saturn.
The challenge to me is that as a Christian, I have adopted whether rightly or wrongly that the Earth is at the centre of God’s plan. To think that there is intelligent life like ourselves outside the solar system seems somewhat wrong. I guess it doesn’t neatly fit into our Christian thinking. Neither am I convinced by some people try and cover this by saying “Well, Jesus said (and I paraphrase) – go to the very ends of the earth and beyond”. I guess the question of other intelligent life beyond earth is, somewhat a mute point – its along the lines of “Did Adam have a belly button”, “Did Noah and the flood exist”, “Is Norwich going to get promoted” – they are things we will never know for sure. This is where I turn to core principals that Jesus was alive, he died and there is evidence he rose again to crowds, plus I feel I have a personal relationship with him.
But what if science discovers life elsewhere – taking a simple scenario – lets say the Mars rovers Spirit or Opportunity discover a recognisable organism, something that clearly is life. Does that matter? What if science says “Look, here is a planet, we can tell that there is evidence of life on the planet that is intelligent like ourselves”. Does that matter. My heart wants to say no, my mind says a big yes. If life is found in our simplistic looking the implication therefore is far reaching, it probably means life is in abundance throughout the Universe. The argument is that we have never heard from such life, but given the vast distances to travel this argument is mute. For example, to get to the nearest star in our OWN galaxy, would take 4 years at the speed of light. Given that science says travelling at the speed of light is impossible and worm holes are only theory at the moment, then the time take to do anything between our next door neighbour suns becomes problematic.
The challenge to me is that as a Christian, I have adopted whether rightly or wrongly that the Earth is at the centre of God’s plan. To think that there is intelligent life like ourselves outside the solar system seems somewhat wrong. I guess it doesn’t neatly fit into our Christian thinking. Neither am I convinced by some people try and cover this by saying “Well, Jesus said (and I paraphrase) – go to the very ends of the earth and beyond”. I guess the question of other intelligent life beyond earth is, somewhat a mute point – its along the lines of “Did Adam have a belly button”, “Did Noah and the flood exist”, “Is Norwich going to get promoted” – they are things we will never know for sure. This is where I turn to core principals that Jesus was alive, he died and there is evidence he rose again to crowds, plus I feel I have a personal relationship with him.
But what if science discovers life elsewhere – taking a simple scenario – lets say the Mars rovers Spirit or Opportunity discover a recognisable organism, something that clearly is life. Does that matter? What if science says “Look, here is a planet, we can tell that there is evidence of life on the planet that is intelligent like ourselves”. Does that matter. My heart wants to say no, my mind says a big yes. If life is found in our simplistic looking the implication therefore is far reaching, it probably means life is in abundance throughout the Universe. The argument is that we have never heard from such life, but given the vast distances to travel this argument is mute. For example, to get to the nearest star in our OWN galaxy, would take 4 years at the speed of light. Given that science says travelling at the speed of light is impossible and worm holes are only theory at the moment, then the time take to do anything between our next door neighbour suns becomes problematic.
posted by monty at
1:41 PM
3 Comments:
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Oh my, how jolly interesting.
Re: other life in the universe, I'm convinced there is, even if it's not carbon based or resembles anything like life as we know it. If you guesstimate that the chance of there being an environment capable of supporting life is about 1:10,000 planets, and the chance of life actually coming to exist given the right parameters is 1:10,000,000, then (with tongue in cheek) we can say that the universe tends to infinity - there must be other life forms out there. There only limitation is whether the product of the probability of life forming and finding a suitable platform for it is more than finite-ness of the universe.
Anyhoo,
I think the spiritual implications of there being other lifesorts out there aren't that great. I haven't read anywhere in the Bible that says we're alone in the universe, or that the universe centeres around us. I think it'd be a bit like an eldest child not wanting it's parent's to have their baby because it knows its attention will be halved - so maybe us God fearing humans don't want our cozy God to be into anything but us... maybe we weren't designed to share our God... Maybe if there are other life forms, God is disinterested in them... Maybe if there are other life forms, they have another heaven, another hell, another side to God... Or most likely, the other life forms wouldn't be any more developed than worms, and, as we all know, God's only interested in people.
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