One of the sacred beliefs held by many people who claim to hold no sacred beliefs is that there is life on other planets. Currently, Earth is the only planet we know of where life exists but you wouldn’t know that if you get your cosmology from Star Trek. The danger of ingesting Science Fiction comes from emphasizing the ‘science’ part and ignoring the ‘fiction’ part.
According to Science Fiction, the entire universe is teeming with life. It’s hard to find a planet that isn’t inhabited by a variety of lifeforms. The Star Trek crew is CONSTANTLY bumping into intelligent aliens with fully developed cultures. Their original job was to seek out new life and new civilizations and they succeeded in every single episode!
Science, without the fiction, hasn’t been so successful. To date, there hasn’t even been a single celled organism discovered on any other planets, let alone walking, talking, spaceship building humanoids. But saying this out loud will make some people very angry.
Life on other planets is a matter of faith for many people who have no faith in God. They’ll assure you that given the vastness of the universe, it is “mathematically likely” that evolution occurred elsewhere. If you press them to show you the ‘math,’ they will either change the subject or accuse you of being anti-science.
In order to calculate the probability of life forming on other planets, you need to be able to calculate the probability of life forming on THIS planet, and to do that, you need to know HOW life came to exist. Science (again, without the fiction) cannot tell us HOW life first happened. Some scientists simply ignore that ‘science’ problem and resort to fiction. They have speculated that life was placed here by…wait for it…
…aliens from another planet!
THAT is why many people are desperate to believe in the Gospel of Star Trek. They believe that finding life elsewhere proves their religious convictions that God isn’t necessary. When you suggest that life on ANY planet needs an explanation for how it got there, you’ll be accused of being anti-science again.
It is certainly possible that life exists on other planets. But it is mathematically unlikely (which should be read as ‘impossible’) that life exists by chance. If there are aliens somewhere among the stars, God created them.
The science, so far, says that Earth is the only planet to experience the miracle of life. It’s fun to imagine what might be happening in a galaxy far, far away but there is no reason to think your aliens are anything other than fairy tales.
“For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.”
(John 5:21)
