CREATED TO BE INHABITED
THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE
“Are we alone in the universe?” To many, especially NASA’s scientists, this is the ultimate question. Why is this so pressing, how is it being addressed, and what can we learn from this quest and from God’s Word on the matter?
For the many naturalists that populate the scientific establishment (particularly in the field of astronomy), the query stems from the belief that we cannot be alone. That is, if the universe has provided 15 billion years in which life evolved here, then surely life must have evolved somewhere else. After all, the universe is estimated to be 150 billion times wider than our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
This search first began by looking for “intelligent” life—presumably the kind that could at least communicate (if not travel) across the great distances of space. The biggest practical effort in this direction has been the SETI project (Search for 
Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which in part aims “to explore…the prevalence of life in the universe.” This ongoing project, initiated by the late, great astronomer Carl Sagan, and popularized by a myriad of movies including the 1997 film Contact (adapted from Sagan’s novel of the same name) now boasts an active institute, complete with a website, radio show, “adopt a scientist” program, education and outreach, and of course, nifty apparel and coffee mugs. As of my last check, 72.9% of its polled website visitors believe that we are not alone, and need to keep looking, whereas a mere 5% believe that we are indeed alone. The difficulty of this as a scientific endeavor, however, is represented by the 22.1% who, believing that we are “probably not” alone, nonetheless recognize that we might never find this out.
This is a problem because they are correct in principle: the nature of science is to present a hypothesis—an assertion which must be reasonably testable (and no, an “educated guess” does not necessarily qualify, contrary to what the textbooks often say). When the hypothesis is stated “we are not alone,” then the only course for discrediting this is to look everywhere, finding nothing. This can never be done. If the hypothesis would be stated instead as “we are indeed alone,” then this would gain strength as a working theory the more we search. But the former is not how it is framed, because the evolutionist must believe that Earth is not the only site of the successful accident that we extremely successful accidents call “life.”
So, since 1979, after much number crunching of astronomical imaging data, with massive computing power (assisted by personal computers who participate in the SETI effort when not being used for local tasks), still no recognizable patterns of intelligent communication have been received. (It is notable that intelligent language can indeed been distinguished from data streams, and that our own DNA does in fact fit this criteria.) That being the case, what is the next avenue for the search? For many, it is to look simply for life—not necessarily intelligent life. This (in their understanding of evolution) carries an increased probability, and has thus motivated the search for bacterial spores on the Moon, Mars, or any habitable world.
And that is the rub—the habitable world: For life to evolve, or even to exist if it were to show up somehow (say, by creation), it must have particular atmospheric and climatic conditions. And so the search has morphed slowly into a quest not so much for life, but for places where life could possibly exist (translated: “have evolved,” which, of course, assumes that life did indeed evolve improbably right here at home.) That has led to the search for extra-solar planets (planets outside our solar system), or “exoplanets.” This is a tricky business, as 1) planets produce no light of their own, 2) they are an enormous distance from us, and 3) any light they might reflect is obscured by the relatively blinding light of other stars, and for certain the very stars they orbit.
So, how are these exoplanets “discovered”? Indirectly, by inference: Typically, an exoplanet is announced when a star has the proper wobble to indicate an orbiting planetary body. And this wobble may be so subtle, or in the fore-aft direction, that its detection must also be inferred using the “Doppler shift” of the star’s light. There are some other methods employed as well, but so far only a handful of the nearly five hundred exoplanets “found” to date have been directly observed, imaged in the very low resolution of just a few pixels. The first, Fomalhaut B, orbiting the star Fomalhaut, was imaged by the Hu
bble Telescope’s Advance Camera for Surveys in 2004, and finally confirmed in 2010 as a gas giant, eight times more massive than Saturn. Of the few directly imaged bodies, there is disagreement as to how many are actually planets, as they may be brown dwarf stars. Of the total, over three hundred are gas giants (like Jupiter), and absolutely none have qualified as “earth-like.” (Though when they are first discovered, this possibility is often stated enthusiastically, and usually written up with hopeful statements about the existence of atmosphere, ice, or water.) The search continues.
One might wonder, though, why evolving life requires an earth-like planet at all. Some scientists, for instance, assert that perhaps we are too Earth-centric (okay, but it’s sort of tough not to be…). That’s a reasonable assertion if one believes that our Earth was not designed for life at all, but it just happened. Given this assumption, why wouldn’t life emerge in different modes or forms, under different conditions? Yet the evolutionist must face the fact that our univ
erse is governed by physical parameters affecting the very chemistry needed for any form of life we might envision. These constraints (a marking characteristic of design, by the way) make it such that the only foreign types of life that might be reasonably imagined are silicon-based forms rather than carbon-based forms. And curiously, those forms did not emerge here, on a planet with plentiful silicon and all the other ideal conditions. And whether silicon- or carbon-based, experts can only envision systems of metabolism (the capture and use of energy) that require an Earth-like atmosphere, with an Earth-like exposure to the sun, Earth-like temperatures, and Earth-like resources. So, Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” (mentioned in my “Great and Small” essay) might seem a lonely place to live, but it’s the only place to live, and as such, most scientists default to the Earth-like planet search. The object of the search, in fact, has often been called “the Goldilocks planet” (not too hot, not too cold…not too massive, not too small…). The irony in all this is that if we are indeed alone in the universe, then we must not be alone at all, because Someone must have singled us out in a creative, purposeful act.
Extraterrestrial life is a glamorous concept, and theists (theistic evolutionists in particular) might also like to believe that God created distant worlds housing additional life, or even other souls like us. And He certainly could have. But what God could have done is not what God said He did in His Word. First, we must recognize that the Bible is entirely Earth-centric in its view of the universe’s creation and purpose. When Scripture recounts the creation, it refers to “the heavens and the earth” as a dichotomy, using that phrasing 91 times. There is the Earth, and there is all else. This is further emphasized by something that theistic evolutionists seem to easily overlook: that Earth was created first, including ocean, land mass, and plant life, prior to the creation of “sun, moon, and stars” (“stars” meaning “luminaries”, and presumably including planets) on Day 4. If the creation account was simply an allegorical tale of God’s drawn-out, ongoing evolutionary process of creation, then this numerical ordering in Genesis 1 would be completely misleading.
Second, we note that when God declared satisfaction with his finished product in Genesis 2:3, there had been no mention of life other than that which has been created in the waters, skies, and land of Earth—a striking oversight if other civilizations were in the plans. And when we read of the great flood of Noah’s time, we find that it was purposed to destroy “all life” without qualification (Genesis 6:17, 9:11,15,17). In fact, other beings of an entirely different ilk are in fact mentioned in other places in Scripture: angels, seraphim, and cherubim, who are not of this physical creation at all. So it is not as if God is omitting secretive information about created beings.
So it appears—from Scripture, not from what some wish that God might have done—that Earth is the chosen, designed, unique place of habitation for us, as well as for all other life in the natural realm. Consider three other passages that speak to this emphasis:
For thus says the LORD, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the LORD, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:18)
I have made the earth, And created man on it. I—My hands—stretched out the heavens, And all their host I have commanded. (Isaiah 45:12)
The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’S; But the earth He has given to the children of men. (Psalm 115:16)
In further support of the dichotomy between the heavens and the Earth, we might also expand upon the dominion emphasis in the previous verse. If God has made man uniquely, and given us this world, then it follows that he would give Adam the opportunity to name its creatures (Genesis 2:19-20). And if there exist no other like worlds with inhabitants, then it follows also that He would name the rest: “He counts the numbers of the stars: He calls them all by name” (Psalm 147:4). To state this without qualification would be a disservice to any other races created on any other worlds. “Other Adams” and other habitations are never alluded to in any fashion in Scripture. And this is not because we would somehow be unable to bear such a truth; if such habitations existed, I think to the contrary that God would have referenced their worlds as illustrations or motivations for his purposes here.
So what do we learn from this quest of today’s astronomers? Perhaps we are reminded not only that the suppression of God produces desperation for validation, but also that many of us recognize the need for something beyond us. With the search for extraterrestrial life, there is a vague underlying hope that either 1) something marvelous and superior could augment or rescue our struggling humanity, or 2) we might find ourselves at least one other frail civilization, thereby diminishing the emptiness of living alone in the cold, dark, vast cosmos.
The search for extraterrestrial life is much more than an unpromising scientific endeavor or popular curiosity; it is a search for meaning itself. Yet the answer is found right here:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
© 2010 Chard Berndt
All Scriptures NKJV.
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