| Life in the Universe? |
[Oct. 10th, 2007|08:32 pm] |
Howdy. I'm in Edinburgh. It's nice. Staying at Kirsten's. Sleeping on the kitchen floor. It's "comfy". I made dinner tonight. We had: Mince (with onions), ham (with melon in it), carrot and cheese (grated together), fried (sweet and normal) potatoes and spring onions, apple, rasberry, horseraddish and ribena. I don't usually cook much. So it wasn't brilliant. But hey, it's the thought that counts. Anyway, Kirsten has an Astronomy essay to write. One of the choices was to talk about life in the universe, in particular the likelyhood of discovering aliens etc etc. I got bored and wrote this response. I await Ali's scathing comments... And look forward to disproving his counterarguements. t
Life in the Universe?
A Christian Perspective on Extraterrestrial Life.
Tom Gallacher.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.… Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created themGenesis1.. Human and Martian he created them.
Eh... Not quite. That last bit isn’t there. By ‘there’ I mean what I consider to be the only definitive account of the origins of life. I mean the Bible. In this essay I intend to show why, as a Christian, I know that there isn’t anyone else out there. I don’t plan to prove Christianity (I believe through faith alone), and this is not the proper forum for discussing the authenticity of my beliefs. However if we first accept God’s Word as true, we can see that we are alone in this wonderful creation.
At present our scientific understanding of life is very limited. We can, to an extent describe it. But all we really know, for certain, is that it exists. We are the living proof. There is no evidence, concrete or circumstantial, to suggest there is life anywhere else than on this planet. So where did it come from? Now, I’m no biologist, but I do remember a fundamental rule, stated in every textbook I’ve seen: Life only comes from life. It cannot be created from non-living materials. Except, of course, that one time where bits of stars and some kind of soup mixed together and made bacteria that grew up to be an insect that turned into a frog, into a fish, into a bird, into a rabbit, into a monkey, into a horse, then a zebra, back to a monkey, and finally ended up as one of us. I think not. Life only comes from life. Even at the start. There is no evidence of evolution. This was actually acknowledged by the famed atheist, Richard Dawkins (“It [evolution] hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.”). So if we accept, as the evidence demonstrates, that life does not grow out of nothing, it must have been put there by something. Or Someone. God.
So if He created it, His account of it should be trusted:
God blessed them [man] and said to them [man], “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over every living creature.”Genesis1.
So we now see that humans are in control over animals and plants. And God, as the creator, is in control over man, and therefore all life.
So?
Well, if God created all of life, and only mentioned life on this planet in his account of creation, does that mean there isn’t any other life? No. Cars aren’t mentioned; they exist. That argument is as flawed as the evolutionists’.
The biblical objection to ET is not merely an argument from silence. Rather, understanding the complete gospel message allows us to conclude comprehensively that the reason the bible doesn’t mention extraterrestrials, is that there aren’t any.
The Bible says that the whole creation groans and travails under the weight of sin (Romans 8:18-22). The effect of the curse following Adam’s fall was universal. Otherwise what would be the point of God destroying this whole creation to make way for a new heavens and Earth (2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1)?
Therefore, any ET living elsewhere would have been unjustly affected by the Adamic Curse through no fault of their own as they would not have inherited Adam’s sinful nature.
When Christ the Lord our God appeared in the flesh, He came to Earth not only to redeem mankind, but the whole creation back to Himself (Romans 8:21, Colossians 1:20). However, Christ’s atoning death at Calvary cannot save these hypothetical ETs because one needs to be a physical descendant of Adam for Christ to be our kinsman-redeemer (Isaiah 59:20). Jesus was called the last Adam because there was a real first man, Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45) – not a first Vulcan or first Klingon. This is so a sinless human substitute takes on the punishment all humans deserve for sin, with no need to atone for any sin of His own (Hebrews 7:27).
Does all this mean there is no life on other planets? Let’s not jump to conclusions. It does not mean that there is no life in other places than our own, small planet. Just that all life originated here. The Soviets could have snuck a couple of Cosmonauts to Mars. They could be there right now, happily colonising away, forgotten to us. Unlikely, but possible. (Maybe they even adapted. Turned green because of some chemical in the Martian soil. It is important to note this is not evolution, where one kind turns into another, but adaption, where one kind changes slightly, survival of the fittest, etc.) Bacteria could have been carried to other planets by modern day space probes, or scattered by the impact of a meteor strike. It’s possible. But we know life came from here. We know it came from God.
If we take the Bible as our starting point, as fact, we see that all life came from God, and is here on Earth. The question now is whether the Bible is true. I would not attempt to prove this in an essay. I do not need to. I believe. I pray that whoever reads this will come to see what I have seen, and will in turn be compelled to believe, to be forgiven, washed of their sins, and to have everlasting life with the Lord Jesus Christ, our God. Amen.
Sources: The Holy Bible (NIV), www.creationontheweb.com |
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