“Is there life in Outer Space? That is a question that men have pondered for ages. It is hard not to wonder, when we look out into the night sky on a crisp, clear night, and gaze at the vast array of constellations and wonders that the night sky holds. I remember a trip I went on to Western Saharah in 2004. I went with a group to visit the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Tindouf Providence of Algeria. This is pure desert like I had never experienced before. There is no electricity, other than some florescent lights people have rigged up to discarded car batteries. One night when we were there, we hiked out away from the camp and laid down on the desert floor, stargazing for a long time. It was wonderful. With no artificial light interference, the night sky opens up in ways that stagger the mind and eyes. It was breathtaking. The experience on that trip reminded me of times when I was a boy, and I would go out to a field near our home, and lay down on my back and watch the stars. It is hard not to wonder what is really out there, when you behold all the beauty of the Milky Way, and our great Galaxy. The images coming back from the Hubble spacecraft are astounding and wonderful. We can’t help but think that, given the vastness of the known universe that there must be other inhabited planets. It is an easy conclusion to come to.
“Is there life in Outer Space?’ is one of those questions that, at this point in our existence, any answer that a person would give to that question is speculation. We can’t prove that there isn’t, but so far, no one has proven that there is. SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is an exploratory science that seeks evidence of life in the universe by looking for some signature of its technology. Their website states the following: “Our current understanding of life’s origin on Earth suggests that given a suitable environment and sufficient time, life will develop on other planets. Whether evolution will give rise to intelligent, technological civilizations is open to speculation. However, such a civilization could be detected across interstellar distances, and may actually offer our best opportunity for discovering extraterrestrial life in the near future.”
Like many controversial topics, a quick search of the internet will provide lots of websites where people are either trying to prove, or disprove if there is life in outer space. Some groups contend that the earth is being visited regularly by extra-terrestrial beings, and some even go so far as to say that extra-terrestrials have infiltrated, are living among us. Most of the evidence they provide to prove this is debatable and very subjective.
I am not going to try to prove whether there is, or is not, life in outer space, but as I progress in this writing, I would like to look at the whole matter from a different angle.
The concept of life in outer space makes for great Science Fiction. It is an interesting and entertaining concept. But we need to separate fact from fiction. We are not currently living in the “Star Wars” era. Star Wars comes from Hollywood, where anything can seem to happen.
People in times past may not have had the fascination with outer space that we have. One of the reasons may be that they may not have had the technology that we have to penetrate deeply into space. However, this is speculation on my part. I was not there, so I do not really know.
Notice that I said, “may not have” and not “did not”. Let me explain. I personally think it is possible that there have existed civilizations in the world that have been much more highly advanced than we realize. These civilizations are now gone, and all we can know about them is from artifacts and remains discovered by archeologists, and the theories about those remains postulated by anthropologists. The interpretations are all speculative.
The myth of the lost continent, or island of Atlantis has been around for a long time. I have no intention of trying to prove or disprove whether Atlantis was actually a real place that is now buried under the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, but I think it is certainly possible that there may be civilizations that we do not know of that are now buried in the depths of the world’s oceans or have been so obliterated by other means that we have no knowledge of them whatsoever.
The theory of evolution has made popular the idea that human beings started out in a very primitive state, and slowly evolved into much more advanced beings. The idea moves from the simple to the complex. Ape-like men living in caves, hunting large game with spears, evolved into suit wearing, computer savvy, Wall Street business tycoons. I know this is a ridiculous oversimplification, but you get my point. That idea has been the prevailing paradigm for at least the last 150 years. Recent archeological finds have disrupted much of the predominant train of thought that man started out as primitive, and gradually moved to become more complex and technologically advanced. It is time for a huge anthropological paradigm shift, because much new evidence is challenging this long held Darwinian idea of mankind evolving from the simple and primitive to the complex, high tech man of today. Recent archeological finds are bringing into question the long held notion that what we refer to as Neanderthal man was more primitive and brutish than homo erectus. It now appears that Neanderthal man was much more highly advanced than we previously thought.
I personally do not think that mankind was at any point in the past less intelligent than he is right now. Mankind has been basically the same since the beginning of creation. That is not to say that he was not as well developed in his ability to manipulate matter and make things. It means that his mental capacity was not less. Consider this: Mankind did not start out with any technology whatsoever. Everything he interacted with was from nature. Technology, or the ability to build things (manipulate matter) is a learning process. When you are examining archeological data, and coming to the conclusion that since earlier generations of mankind used rocks and spears as weapons, that he was less mentally capable than modern man, you are not factoring in the learning process. 150 years ago, people rode horses instead of driving cars. That does not mean that their mental capacities were less, it means we had not learned enough yet! It is a process that takes a long time.
There are a lot of known anthropological anomalies that have brought into question the assumption that man has moved from a less intelligent to a more intelligent form through the course of the years. Some examples follow.
1. A perplexing artifact was recovered by sponge-divers from a shipwreck in 1900 off the coast of Antikythera, a small island that lies northwest of Crete. The divers brought up from the wreck a great many marble and bronze statues that had apparently been the ship’s cargo. Among the findings was a hunk of corroded bronze that contained some kind of mechanism composed of many gears and wheels. Writing on the case indicated that it was made in 80 B.C., and many experts at first thought it was an astrolabe, an astronomer’s tool. An x-ray of the mechanism, however, revealed it to be far more complex, containing a sophisticated system of differential gears. Gearing of this complexity was not known to exist until 1575! It is still unknown who constructed this amazing instrument 2,000 years ago or how the technology was lost. http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rrice/apagadgt.html
2. Today batteries can be found in any grocery, drug, convenience and department store you come across. Well, here’s a battery that’s 2,000 years old! Known as the Baghdad Battery, this curiosity was found in the ruins of a Parthian village believed to date back to between 248 B.C. and 226 A.D. The device consists of a 5-1/2-inch high clay vessel inside of which was a copper cylinder held in place by asphalt, and inside of that was an oxidized iron rod. Experts who examined it concluded that the device needed only to be filled with an acid or alkaline liquid to produce an electric charge. It is believed that this ancient battery might have been used for electroplating objects with gold. If so, how was this technology lost… and the battery not rediscovered for another 1,800 years? http://www.unmuseum.org/bbattery.htm
3. There are artifacts belonging to ancient Egyptian and Central American cultures that look amazingly like modern-day aircraft. The Egyptian artifact, found in a tomb at Saqquara, Egypt in 1898, is a six-inch wooden object that strongly resembles a model airplane, with fuselage, wings and tail. Experts believe the object is so aerodynamic that it is actually able to glide. The small object discovered in Central America, and estimated to be 1,000 years old, is made of gold and could easily be mistaken for a model of a delta-wing aircraft – or even the Space Shuttle. It even features what looks like a pilot’s seat. http://paranormal.about.com/od/ancientanomalies/a/Could-Ancient-Man-Fly.htm
4. Humans were not even around 65 million years ago, never mind people who could work metal. So then how does science explain semi-ovoid metallic tubes dug out of 65-million-year-old Cretaceous chalk in France? In 1885, a block of coal was broken open to find a metal cube obviously worked by intelligent hands. In 1912, employees at an electric plant broke apart a large chunk of coal out of which fell an iron pot! A nail was found embedded in a sandstone block from the Mesozoic Era.
Many other examples could be cited, but suffice it to say that archeologists are being confronted with many astounding discoveries that seem to disprove the idea that ancient man was much less intelligent, and developed than modern man.
After having said all that, I will let it be known that the basis for much of what I will be presenting is primarily based on the Bible. Whether you do, or do not believe that the Bible is true, I ask you to read with an open mind. If you do believe that the Bible is true, and you have certain beliefs about the Cosmos, or “outer space”, I also ask you to read and consider with an open mind, and ask yourself along the way, “Is what I believe and think based on what Scripture actually says, or is it based on my own opinions and influenced by current cultural patterns of thought?”
There is a pattern of arrogant human behavior that I think we need to examine here. We tend to look back at previous generations and the ideas that prevailed at the time and think of them as ignorant and uninformed. We think we have discovered the facts, and take the ideas that are held during our generation as the undisputed truth. But don’t you think that previous generations thought the same thing? Why are we so arrogant as to think our ideas are the undisputed truth simply because they exist now? The simple fact is, we don’t know. We were not there. We should have the humility to admit with Socrates: “My knowledge did not heighten my opinion of myself, for the more I knew, the more I knew my own ignorance. I was more and more convinced that I was very ignorant, even in what I thought I knew. And I found an infinite latitude of things, which I did not know at all. Yea, the farther I waded into knowledge, the deeper still I found it.”
What bothers me about much of what is presented in public education is that a lot of these “theories” are presented as if they are fact. These so-called facts may later be proven incorrect or inadequate, as new discoveries unfold. Haven’t the theories of previous generations been proven incorrect or inadequate during our times as new data emerges? What makes us so arrogant as to think our present theories will not also be proven wrong by future generations? The simple fact is, all of this is theory and speculation. Let’s be honest enough to call it what it is.
In order to understand what the Bible has to say about the Cosmos, we have to start in the beginning. We have to start with the Creation account as it is recorded in Genesis. I think it is important to state here, for those who are not thoroughly acquainted with the Bible, that if you begin to read the Bible thinking the Bible is a history book of the world, you will be disappointed, because it is not, and was never intended to be. Many great authors throughout the course of time have written much on the history of the world.
H.G. Wells’s two-volume Outline of History, published in 1920, was the first general history constructed on an evolutionary, sociological and anthropological basis. It was immensely popular and set the basis for this Short History, which Wells created “to meet the needs of the busy general reader, too driven to study the maps and time charts of that Outline in detail, who wishes to refresh and repair his faded or fragmentary conceptions of the great adventure of mankind.” Many other such books have been written and published throughout the course of time in an attempt to frame mankind’s history in a manner suited to the modern reader.
There are many questions that the Bible does not answer, or even address. There is no mention of dinosaurs. It is obvious, from the fossil records that there were some kind of very large creatures on the earth at some point in time. What they were actually and how they lived, and when they lived is all theoretical speculation. We really have no idea.
In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth……
There are many beliefs, theories, ideas, etc. about the actual age of Earth. Some will claim that it is billions of years old. The current, commonly held theory is that the age of the Earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%). This dating is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples. Following the development of radiometric age dating in the early 20th century, measurements of lead in uranium-rich minerals showed that some were in excess of a billion years old. The oldest such minerals analyzed to date—small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia—are at least 4.404 billion years old. Comparing the mass and luminosity of the Sun to those of other stars, it appears that the Solar System cannot be much older than those rocks. Calcium, aluminum rich inclusions – the oldest known solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the Solar System – are 4.567 billion years old, giving an age for the Solar System and an upper limit for the age of Earth.
It is hypothesized that the accretion of Earth began soon after the formation of the calcium, aluminum rich inclusions and the meteorites. Because the exact amount of time this accretion process took is not yet known, and the predictions from different accretion models range from a few millions up to about 100 million years, the exact age of Earth is difficult to determine. It is also difficult to determine the exact age of the oldest rocks on Earth, exposed at the surface, as they are aggregates of minerals of possibly different ages.
In 1862, the physicist Lord Kelvin published calculations that fixed the age of Earth at between 20 million and 400 million years. He assumed that Earth had formed as a completely molten object, and determined the amount of time it would take for the near-surface to cool to its present temperature. His calculations did not account for heat produced via radioactive decay (a process then unknown to science) or, more significantly, convection inside the Earth, which allows more heat to escape from the interior to warm rocks near the surface.
Geologists such as Charles Lyell had trouble accepting such a short age for Earth. For biologists, even 100 million years seemed much too short to be plausible. In Darwin’s theory of evolution, the process of random heritable variation with cumulative selection requires great durations of time. (According to modern biology, the total evolutionary history from the beginning of life to today has taken since 3.5 to 3.8 billion years, the amount of time which passed since the last universal ancestor of all living organisms as shown by geological dating.
Others, who hold to rigid formulas based on their interpretations of the genealogical records in Scripture will maintain that Earth is about seven thousand years old, and at the most, about ten thousand. The simple fact of the matter is, we just don’t know how old Earth or the Cosmos is, or when it all began. Anything we would state at either end of the extremes is pure speculation, and cannot be proven either way. No one reading this was there. The Bible itself makes no definitive statements about when everything recorded in the Creation account occurred. Simply stated, it just happened. Does it really make any difference when? Knowing the time doesn’t change anything about what is said. It simply doesn’t matter.
The fact, that throughout the course of time, different theories have existed about the age of the earth of the cosmos have existed, and have changed, proves that the current theories might not be right. The theories that exist now are much different than that of previous generations. At the time that previous theories were believed, the people during that time frame probably thought that their theories were correct, based on the data that was available to them at the time. Current theories are based on the data we have available to us now. Paradigms always change. Current paradigms will also eventually be challenged by new data and change as well.
Let us begin:
Genesis 1:1-2:
“In the beginning, (the beginning of our story, the story of mankind) God created the heavens and the earth.” That is all we need to know. Every story has to have a beginning. This is the beginning of our story. This is the first building block of a right understanding of reality. Earth and the cosmos are not some random, accidental smashing together of particles that somehow just evolved into order. God has a reason and a purpose for it. He purposefully initiated it. There is a huge difference. It gives life meaning. Without that beginning, life has no meaning. It is just pointless chance. Nothing really matters, because we really don’t have any control over it.
The Bible simply does not answer all of our questions, and it is not meant to. It can’t, because there is no end to our questions. Think for a moment about the behavior of a child. There seems to be no end to their unanswerable questions. “Why is the sky blue?” “Do dogs go to heaven?” “What color is God?”
I remember a time when my daughter was a child, and we were having a discussion on race, because she had begun to notice the differences in the way people at school looked, she asked, “What color is God?” To which, my wife and I, in our infinite wisdom, answered, “God does not have a color.” To this she responded, “I guess He is a clear God.” How prophetic! I often remember her saying that, and think, “He is a clear God. He makes things so easy to understand, if we have a heart to know the truth.” We, even as adults, are not much different than a small child. There is no end to our unanswerable questions.
There are many things that the Bible does not explain, but It does explain what we need to know. It provides for us a solid framework through which we can understand God’s purpose, the meaning of our lives, and what God expects of us. That is the sole intent. We live our whole lives, from the time we are old enough to understand anything, living within the context of what our lives are supposed to mean. We are egocentric. We interpret things within our own frame of reference, based on what has happened to us, what we learn, the things we are exposed to, etc. The Bible paints things within a much larger perspective. We see God’s intent. We find out what He is doing, and what He has been doing. It puts everything within a much greater perspective. We find that we are not the center of all things, He is. It starts with Him. It ends with Him. He gives us life, and He takes it away.
There are many things we read into the Bible that simply are not there. For example, we assume that Cain and Able were Adam and Eve’s first children. They may have been, but the Bible doesn’t say. They are the first two mentioned, so we assume they were the first, but the Bible doesn’t say one way or another. Their story is recorded because of the significance of what happened. It is the first recorded account of jealousy that led to murder. There is a lesson here about destructive human behavior that we need to learn and benefit from. When we concentrate on what others have or how they benefit in ways that we do not seem to, we have the potential of allowing jealousy to grow in our hearts, and jealousy is a very destructive pattern of behavior. The Bible does not say why God was not pleased with Cain’s offering, all it says is that He wasn’t. He is God, and I am sure He had a good reason. He doesn’t have to justify Himself to our reasoning. Whenever God makes it known to any of us that He is displeased with our actions and/or our attitudes, it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing, or not doing. All that should matter to us is how to make that right. How do we get our own heart and life back in line with God to please Him?
The Bible does not say whether God created other people in other places. We assume that the children of Adam and Eve had to intermarry in an incestuous manner in order to reproduce, but the Bible does not say that. As the story unfolds, other people do mysteriously start showing up in other places, with no explanation of where they came from. We just don’t know, and no explanation is given. Again as I said about the whole idea of when Earth began, our not knowing and not having our questions answered does not invalidate the importance of what is written. It does not change anything. The only reason I bring up that issue is because in discussions I have had with people about the Bible, that issue occasionally comes up. If you understand the doctrine of Original Sin, the possibility of other being created simultaneously with Adam and Eve could not have been a possibility. Because of Adam and Eve’s decision to not believe what God said about eating the forbidden fruit, their nature was corrupted, and they passed that corruption of nature onto their offspring.
So let’s get back to the original question. “Is there life in outer space?” The Genesis account of creation actually focuses very little attention on the matter of outer space. The main focus is what is taking place right here on planet earth. Earth began as a formless mass, and the Word of God spoke order into it. The focus is on the creative power of the spoken Word of God, not on the specifics of what Earth’s formless mass consisted of, or where it came from, or how old it is. The focus is on the fact that God speaks order into chaos. That is the most important thing we need to know. Does it answer all of our questions? No! But it provides us with truth that we need to know, not necessarily what we want to know. God does not need to speak to create, but He does, He chooses to. There is something very significant in this. This is still the primary means through which God chooses to speak to lost souls. He speaks through people. There is no way around this.
Deuteronomy 8:3 says, “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
These words are reiterated by Jesus:
“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4)
Genesis 1: 3-5:
“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”
The statement, “There was evening, and there was morning- the first day” means that God initiated linear time. Before this, there was no such thing as linear time, only the eternal “now” in which God lives. This is a hard concept for us to grasp, because our entire lives are lived out, and understood through the concept of linear time. When we speak of the eternal “now” in which God lives, we have nothing that we have ever experienced to compare it to, because during this earthly life, we live out linear time. But here we see that God purposefully initiated linear time. We cannot say, “when” because until then, time did not exist.
John 1:2-3:
“The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
Eternal life is the never beginning and never ending life in which God has always existed. The eternal NOW. This is the life we are born into when we come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and accept the sacrifice He has made for the forgiveness of our sins. Eternal life is not just a never ending version of the life we now live in the flesh. It is a totally different kind of life than that which we are born into. It is life outside the constraints of linear time, and it begins in us when we believe the Gospel (Good News) of Jesus Christ. Dr. Who, the “Time Lord” doesn’t have anything on the born-again Christian! We have access to the “Eternal Now” right now. Eternal life is much more than just a never-ending life. Let the vampires and zombies have their never-ending life. Eternal life is a totally different kind of life that is not shackled within the constraints of space and time. We don’t need a TARDIS! Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here when I say that we are not shackled by the constraints of space and time. I am not referring to Astral Projection or Astral-Travel, in which it is believed that a person’s spirit leaves their physical body to travel to an astral plane. As long as we are alive, and live within this body, our spirit does not leave our body because of the presence of Eternal Life. The presence of Eternal Life means that we are in touch with, and experience, to a degree, the life that man was originally intended to live before the fall. It is the life of God that is available to any born-again Christian, manifest within this mortal body in which we now live.
Evening and morning represent something other than morning and night as we understand it, because at this point in time, the Sun and Moon had not yet been created. Evening and morning represent the beginning of linear time in which we now live. The Scripture reads:
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5)
And speaking of the New Jerusalem, or the restored world order:
“The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” (Revelations 21:23)
Notice that God created light before He created the sun, and the rest of the cosmos. It could also be said that the light appeared just because God was present. God did not create darkness, because darkness is not a created thing. Darkness is the absence of light, just as nothing is not a thing. Nothing is the absence of something. It is not a tangible thing that actually exists. Darkness is not a tangible entity in and of itself. Darkness is the absence of light, just as death is the absence of life. God did not create darkness, just as God did not create death. The curse of death falls on us when we step away from God, who is the source of life. When we move away from God, we move away from life. We move into death. The absence of life is death.
When God removes His presence, there is darkness, even when the Sun is present, and the light of the Sun should be illuminating the Earth. There are two examples of this actually happening in Scripture:
Exodus 10: 21-23:
“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.” So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or move about for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.”
Matthew 25:45-46:
“From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).”
Notice in Genesis 1: 6-13, God created the earth (terrestrial) and sky (celestial), and initiated the beginning of plant life, within linear time, the second and third days, before He created the cosmos. Our current theories of plant life inform us that plant life is dependent on the Sun. Apparently, this is incorrect. Plant life is dependent on the creative power of God, not the Sun. The Sun sustains it, the Sun initiates the reproductive cycle of plant life, but it does not create it
Next, on the fourth day, we see the creation of what we refer to as the Cosmos. Here, we see the reason for the Cosmos, which is very different from what modern science and astronomy teach. Much of what is recorded here is the basis for my thesis. This is where I will lay the groundwork for my response to the question, “Is there life in Outer Space?” “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, (the things within the created order that sustain us), but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Genesis 1: 14-19:
“And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.”
As the beginning of the Creation account starts with Earth, not the Cosmos, the creation of the Cosmos comes later, to be subservient to God’s purposes on planet Earth. This is a very significant point we need to understand in approaching the question of whether there is life in Outer Space. Here, after the initiation of linear time, the Sun and the moon are created. The Sun, to govern the day, to provide light on planet Earth during the daytime, and the moon to govern the night, to provide a dimer light to enable people to see, at a dimer level at night. The presence of light is not dependent on the existence of the Sun, but the Sun is created within the context of linear time to govern the cycles of linear time. In a sense, the Sun and the Moon are part of God’s “clock”. We use the cycles of the moon to mark off months, and years. We use the arrangements of the constellations for navigation, and to mark off seasons on our calendars.
One thing that strikes me as I observe images of the planets that exist within our own solar system is that there is absolutely no evidence of life on any of them. They all appear to be totally barren of any form of life, as they are. I think God has painted a picture for us here. God knew that, in time, man would begin to reach out into space looking for answers. He has intentionally painted a picture of desolation for us. Without His supernatural power creating and sustaining life on this planet, it would be like all the rest, totally lifeless, empty, and void, just as planet Earth was before He spoke life and order into place. This should humble us. This should shock us into realizing that we are totally dependent on God. We have no control over this. Our own planet Earth would be exactly like all of the other planets we observe in our solar system if it were not for the fact that God has intentionally initiated life on this planet. There is no other logical explanation for it. This planet is unique and special. If only a few very minor things about this planet were different, such as its distance from the Sun, or the speed of its orbit, among many other things, life could not exist on this planet. This is not chance. Random chance could not produce the miracle of life on this planet.
In 1969 Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were the first three human beings to set foot on the surface of the moon. Over the next three and a half years 10 men followed in their footsteps as NASA continued to explore the lunar frontier. Buzz Aldrin describes the surface of the moon in these words, “magnificent desolation.” There is nothing there. That is as far as we have gotten with manned space travel.
There has been a lot of talk about planning a manned space flight to Mars sometime in the timeframe of the 2030’s. On the surface, that sounds like a noble goal. But I honestly think it is really pointless. We have already taken pictures of Mars, and we know there is no life there. We cannot live on Mars. The simple fact is that we cannot live anywhere outside of the atmosphere of this planet without a very expensively produced, temporary, artificially manufactured environment. What is the point? To prove we can do it? Who are we proving it to? What will be gained from it? Aren’t there vastly more important issues for us to focus the vast amounts of time, money, resources, and creativity on right here on this planet that we are living on, rather than a project of the magnitude of a trip to Mars?
Genesis 1: 20-25:
And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.”
Here we see the creation of animal life in all forms. The life of the sea. The life of freshwater. Everything that lives in water. The creation of everything that flies. The creation of every living thing that moves on the surface of the earth. I want to take a moment here to touch on one small phrase that begins to appear and be repeated here in this chapter: “According to their kinds” or “According to its kind”. I think there is great significance in the inclusion of this phrase. It is necessarily included for a reason. It is a direct affront to the theory of evolution. Living things do not mysteriously morph into a different kind of creature over the course of billions of years. Dogs have always been dogs. Birds have always been birds… you get the point. Of course there is a great deal of variation within all species, so they may come out looking differently, but the basic species does not change. Everything reproduces “according to its kind”. There is not a shred of evidence to prove one species ever evolved into something else. But God knew that, in time, man would come up with that notion, and He puts those words there to correct it before it even got started.
Genesis 1: 26-31
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
God made man “in His image”. For a more thorough explanation of what this means, please refer that chapter, or to my eBook “The image of God in Man”:
http://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-daniel-mark-bryant-the-image-of-god-in-man/
Here we see the pinnacle of God’s creation. We are the climax of God’s creative work on planet Earth. This should stagger our minds, and humble us. Man is so much more than a highly developed primate, as the theory of evolution states.
So what does all of this have to do with the original question posed: “Is there life in outer space?” First, the Genesis account of creation contradicts the currently held paradigm that the expanding universe is ever evolving and that if conditions are right, life will evolve on other planets. The Genesis account shows us that God’s creative activity in this universe started with planet Earth as the center, and the rest of the Universe is subservient to God’s purpose for planet Earth. Earth is not just a tiny spec in a vast universe that coincidentally has all of the right conditions for the evolution of life. So, consequently, the search for life in outer space is really a pointless exercise.
Having said that, let me now state that I do totally think and believe that there is a “Celestial” realm that exists, but it is not in “Outer Space”. The Bible abundantly makes clear that there are a multitude of angels and demons that exist somewhere. They have interacted with humans since the beginning of time as we know it. The existence of Angels and Demons is not explained in the Bible, it is just taken for granted that they both exist, and both are capable of moving in and out of our world of existence. I think that there is a distinction that needs to be made between the two however, in how they interact with human beings. First, Scripture proves that Angelic manifestations are always initiated by God, not man. Demonic manifestations, on the other hand, can be initiated by man. We can invite demonic manifestations into our lives through many different avenues. Demons are more than willing to manifest themselves when humans do things to invite their presence. Angels do not manifest themselves to human beings unless they are directed to do so by God. There is always a God initiated reason for their appearance.
Genesis 1:31:
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
What does this mean for us? How are we to understand that God saw all that He had made and it was good? First, it is a safeguard against the idea, or philosophy, or belief in Dualism. The use of the word Dualism can mean different things, given the context in which it is used, but here I am referring to the idea that there are two co-equal, opposite forces controlling the universe. There is the good, creative force, or god, and there is the evil, destructive force, or god. This is the basic principle behind the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy and many Eastern religions.
The Biblical account of God and Satan is much different. First, God is represented as an eternal, all Good being who creates. Satan is NOT His eternal evil counterpart. Satan originated as a being who was created good, and later fell and became evil and rebelled against God. Nothing God ever created is inherently evil or bad in and of itself. There is no such thing. Things become corrupted, or bad, as they move away from their intended good purpose. Just as I said that there is no such thing as darkness in and of itself, darkness being the absence of light, which is a created thing, and no such thing as death, in and of itself, death being the absence of life, so evil, or badness is the absence of good. People, and things become bad, or evil as they move away from their intended good purpose for which they were created.
Genesis 3:17-19:
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
It is also a safeguard against Gnosticism, a modern term categorizing a collection of ancient religions whose adherents shunned the material world – which they viewed as created by the demiurge – and embraced the spiritual world. In Gnosticism, the world of the demiurge is represented by the underworld, which is associated with matter, flesh, time and, more particularly, an imperfect, ephemeral world. The world of God is represented by the upper world and is associated with the soul and perfection. The world of God is eternal and not part of the physical. It is impalpable and timeless.
The Genesis account of creation corrects these wrong ideas by showing that God created everything good, and that man, inspired by Satan, the fallen angel, brought corruption (the fall and the curse) into God’s perfectly created world, by disobeying God, and thus moving away from Him. Since, to voluntarily move away from God, who is Life, is to move into death.
It is my contention that when mankind fell, the real, eternal world which we were made to inhabit became veiled to us. That is what is meant in Genesis 3:22-24:
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Think about this: God created our eyes. Our eyes have limitations. There are many things in our world that we simply cannot see. That is why with high definition televisions and other electronic media, once you go beyond a certain level, the degree of definition becomes pointless. In other words, the human eye can only see to a finite level of definition. Even though we may have the technology to manufacture devices that are capable of a much higher level of definition, they become of no practical use to us because we cannot see it. The same is true of our ears. We can only hear to a certain level of frequency. Even though frequencies of a higher level exist, we cannot hear them. That is why a human cannot hear a dog whistle. There is no point of manufacturing listening devices that are capable of broadcasting beyond these limits, because they are of no practical value to us. Perhaps, through the curse and the Fall of man, God imposed those limits intentionally just to keep the invisible world veiled to us. Perhaps the Cosmos, which God designed to serve His purposes for planet earth, now itself, acts as a kind of veil to keep us from seeing into the eternal realm. Perhaps all of our longing to find life “Out there”, meaning, in Outer Space, is an exercise in futility because the Cosmos itself is the veil. Admittedly, this is pure speculation on my part, and I would never teach this idea as if it were a spiritual truth. I do not know.
Fallen mankind is always reaching out for that fruit from the Tree of Life, but it is not accessible to us when we try to do it on our own. That is the whole point of why the account of the tower of Babel is recorded in the Bible. Mankind tried to build a tower to reach the heavens. God destroyed it. Aren’t we basically doing the same thing when we build space ships to go into Outer Space? God intentionally placed limitations on us that will not allow that to happen.
The good news is that it does not end there. God has made a way. God came into this world that He created. He has invaded our prison of space and time through His incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ, the Only God-Man, fully God and fully man. It never happened before, and it will never happen again. He has provided redemption for us from the curse of sin by taking the punishment of sin, which is death, from us, when we turn to Him in faith and accept this. God, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Triune Godhead comes to live inside us, and when this happens, the eternal life that we were initially intended to live in, is reborn in us. Physical death will still play out in the fallen bodies in which we now live, but they will live again. It is called the Resurrection. Do we understand it? No, because as of yet we have not experienced it, so we have nothing to compare it to. But because God’s Word is true, we know that it is so. And it will be then that Ultimate Reality is opened to us, and we will be able to experience life beyond anything that could ever be dreamed up in a Science Fiction movie!
If an attempted manned trip to Mars ever becomes a reality, will I be signing up? To that I reply with a resounding, “NO”! However, when Jesus Christ, who is the King of kings, and the Lord of lords returns, which He has promised to do, I will be in that number that He ushers into His Eternal Kingdom, and with that in mind, there is nothing “Out there” that we can see in our telescopes that holds any interest for me beyond simply enjoying its beauty.
Danny's Stump 