Okay, sure, so this is Internet post #4,572,366 on whether there is life in the universe. A Google search for the phrase "extraterrestrial life" gives 728,000 returns. But it's something I've been thinking about lately, so there you go.
Most interpretations of the Bible would seem to preclude the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The idea that God would have created humans and Vogons in His image makes us uncomfortable at best. Of course, the early 16th century idea that He'd created Native Americans in His image was borderline heresy. But regardless, the Bible certainly doesn't give much positive indication that God created life anywhere else, at least not any intelligent life that we would consider as having a soul.
Now let me present a more scientific approach to the idea. In 1960, Frank Drake developed what is now called the Drake equation, used to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy we could contact. Without getting into the technicalities, it basically says that this number is dependent on things like how quickly stars form, how many of those stars have planets, how many of those planets could support life, how many of those actually do develop life, how many of those actually develop intelligent life, and how many of those civilizations develop the technology to communicate beyond their world. The greater the value you place on any of those variables, the greater the likelihood that there are other civilizations out there trying to call us.
Let me simplify it a bit. If there are so many stars in the universe, doesn't it seem pretty likely that there's got to be life on at least a few of them? I mean, unless God really did say, "Humanity, you're it," then the chances that there aren't other civilizations out there right now, writing their own histories, developing spaceflight, and watching Survivor, seems like it'd be pretty slim. According to most astronomers' estimates, there are 100 billions stars just in our galaxy. And they estimate that there are 125 billion galaxies in the universe. So there are something like 1.3*10^22 stars in our universe. Let's says that life developing is very rare, so that it only occurs in one solar system out of a trillion. That means there would still be 13 billion different planets with life-forms out there, enough for at least a few more episodes of Star Trek.
But then you come back to God. With all that space out there, do you really think he would've created it all just for us? Doesn't that idea seem a little, I don't know, self-centered?
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See, this is interesting because I've always assumed just the opposite--that the God of the Bible would definitely have created an entire universe of relational life and never saw anything in Scripture that indicated that he didn't. God seems to share information with us on a need-to-know basis--ie., we don't know much about those "principalities and powers" that are referenced from time to time--but we know what we need to know, mainly that God is an immense God and is immensely loving and creative and self-giving. So yes, it seems more self-centered than God-centered to assume that we're the center of the universe. At least to me.
Well when you take into consideration that "We are the center of the Universe - I don't know!" LOL
I don't have any problem with believing God creating things that we don't understand - let alone other lifeforms on other planets. Shoot we still haven't discovered all the lifeforms on this planet. It seems like it was a few weeks ago that I saw an article on some new speicies discovered in the ocean. Some even thought to have become extint.
We will let time tell on this one. I especially like the Star Trek Comment.
There's a point in Contact where Dr. Eleanor Arroway (quoting Carl Sagan) says, "I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?"
Current estimates of the Drake equation parameters suggest there ought to be 2 or 3 civilizations in our galaxy with which we might hope to be able to communicate. So far we haven't found them, but I can think of a couple of explanations...
1. There are none. God may have simply created the whole universe just for us. It would be just the kind of thing an infinite God would do.
2. If the age of the universe is 14 billion years, give or take, and it takes a few billion years for a civilization to get to the "transmitting" stage, then I suspect the likelihood of there being two civilizations close enough together in time to actually communicate is pretty small. A miss of 100,000 years would be very small, but long enough that communication would be unlikely.
3. If the universe isn't very old, then there hasn't been enough time for signals to reach us unless God sprinkled them out in transit at creation.
I agree with T on this one. I don't think the Bible says anything that either requires or precludes life on other planets. It's clear that Jesus is the only way for us to be saved (John 14:6), but it could easily be that this applies only to humanity. God could have provided some other means of salvation on other planets and Jesus still would have said what he did about our salvation.
Perhaps the answer you come to depends on what you believe about the nature of the universe. Is it really 14 billion years old, or is only a few thousand? Did God create life over the space of a few days, or did it happen over millions of years? Both sides of the debate put forward arguments that sound plausible to me. Then again, it's not too hard to put together an argument I find plausible!
Isaac Asimov wrote a short story a long time ago about a civilization on another planet who differed from us in that they never sinned; their first man and first woman didn't "eat the apple" and so there was never a Fall and thus, never a need for salvation. It was an interesting premise.
For Christians, the major problem with the Drake equation is the term which represents the probability that a planet which can support life will actually have life. This term is zero if God didn't want it to and one if he did. And there's just really no way in science or in theology to decide which is the right answer.
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