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Is Interstellar Life Bad News For God?

 

NASA held a press conference last week reporting the exciting discovery of the earthlike planet called Kepler-452b. But is this discovery exciting for the church? Are we one step closer to closing the church doors because life is found on another planet? Is this bad news for God? Jeff Schweitzer at Huffington Post says this is absolutely bad news for God and you can read his article here.

In his article, Mr. Schweitzer launches a preemptive strike against any attempt from Bible-believers to justify a possible discovery of life, and to “square that circle” with twists of logic to “preserve a myth.” However, his article is full of problems.

First, Mr. Schweitzer is resting upon a very large assumption: that there is life elsewhere in the galaxy. There is still no discovery of life of any type anywhere else in the universe. When you consider the billions and billions of galaxies that are in the Universe, and the billions and billions of stars that are in each galaxy, it is justifiable to think there would be something like an earth out there with organic life; even intelligent life. In fact, there should be millions. Even in our own Milky Way galaxy, there should be thousands. But we haven’t discovered any evidence of intelligent life whatsoever. This massive void where we should find abundance is called the Fermi Paradox. Mr. Schweitzer is making a weighty and costly statement on the back of a very questionable assumption.

I personally think it is highly unlikely that life exists anywhere else in the physical universe. However, I do leave the door cracked open to the possibility. The rest of this response will assume the future discovery of life somewhere other than Earth is possible.

Second, Mr. Schweitzer is confusing the nature of life. This should be expected from someone who comes from what I assume is an evolutionary worldview. But this confusion will cause him great misunderstanding if life is discovered. The biblical worldview makes a distinction between human life and all other life. Only humans were made in the image of God. Neither animals nor plants nor any other physical thing has a spirit like God created man with. Even though Mr. Schweitzer probably denies this distinction, he lives by it every time he goes to a funeral or feels disgust with child sex-trafficking or eats a hamburger while condemning cannibalism. When Mr. Schweitzer speaks about life in his article, there is rarely any qualifier. For him, apparently it would mean the same thing if we find bacteria or we stumble upon little grey alien women venting their anger about how alien men don’t listen to them (it’s a universal problem, literally). However, Mr. Schweitzer needs to understand that this distinction makes all the difference. While I hold that animal life is possible on other worlds, I do not hold that intelligent life is possible. In this regard, Mr. Schweitzer would be right. If we make contact with life that has moral and ethical understanding, I think the Bible would dissolve away.

God made Adam in his image. Adam’s sin plunged the whole universe into decay. Jesus Christ put on humanity and forever will be a human. The angelic and demonic host exist, but not in our physical universe. A non-human being with moral accountability simply doesn’t fit the biblical record. These beings would be living in a sin-wrecked universe, but without understanding as to why or hope of salvation from it. Would Christ go to them as a human? Would they have their own book of revelation? And if we make contact with them how would all of this be sorted out? There is nothing in Scripture about dealing with such a possibility. I feel confident to say that scripture is human-focused because they are the one creature in the universe that God made to have a relationship with. All of Scripture is focused upon man, and all of history culminates on Earth with humans alone. Therefore, I concede that if moral intelligent life is found, then Mr. Schweitzer would be right.

However, I think that is impossible and so I will be speaking about all other life in the rest of my response. Before I leave this point, let me make one more statement. People who hold to an evolutionary worldview would no doubt make the quick jump from a discovery of an alien monkey to the claim of a discovery of pre-intelligent life. That is, they will say they have discovered a world where evolution has not yet produced people like us. This would never be accepted by those with a biblical worldview because of the image of God distinction.

Finally, there is a problem with how Mr. Schweitzer handles the creation account in Scripture. First, he says that Genesis mentions nothing about alien worlds. This is an argument from silence, which carries no weight if all alone. Just because God doesn’t mention such places doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Second, he takes issue with the dating of Kepler 452b and how it looks like it is billions of years older. This runs into the problem of dating the earth and the universe, and there are massive problems and viable alternatives to the claim that the universe is older than 6,000 years. Third, he is right that all life was created in 6 days, but he is wrong when he says that it was “all found on earth and earth alone.” He has just gone beyond what the text actually says. While the focus of the creation account is earth, it doesn’t say life is excluded from being anywhere else. The error of his statement seems to come from not even reading the passage he quotes from. He says that there is no modifier, but there is a modifier in the very verse he quotes. In 1:29-30, three times a variation of “on earth” modifies the plants, beasts, and birds. Clearly, only what is on earth matters to God because that is where man will always be. We know this because all of humanity will still be on earth when history is wrapped up according to the book of Revelation. This doesn’t say there can’t be life anywhere else, it simply means that the life that is here on earth is the only life that really matters. If there are alien rabbits and alien bugs and alien monkeys on some earth-like planet, that won’t change the fact that we all will be here on earth marveling at God’s expansive creation.

Discoveries made in the far reaches of this universe have never been bad news for God. Instead, they make us fall upon our faces in awe and reverence when we see just how uncontainable and unfathomably great our God is, who could speak all of this into existence.

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