From One Evangelical Christian's Point of View: Is There Anyone Out There?

This entry was made on my old site on

July 5, 2007

From one evangelical Christian's point-of-view: is there AnyOne Out There?
"Hellooooooo?"
"Knock, knock, knock?"
Even from a non-Evangelical, non-Christian's point-of-view, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that there's AnyOne Out There.
Carl Sagan's Hope notwithstanding, Fermi's Principle seems to hold sway at present. Discussions about the possibiliy of AnyOne being Out There are speculative, lively and participants draw from tens-of-thousands of reams of printed work and hundreds of websites...but when all is said and done and the janitor cleans up after the party, one thing is painfully and obviously clear: there's no one in the universe but us.
Christians and other religious people have some sense that there is SomeOne Out There -- God or gods or Life Forces or what have you. Certainly the knowledge that there is SomeOne Out There gives us hope that there might other intelligent life in the universe besides us. But materialists have nothing to bolster flagging hope. We've been staring at the stars for 3000 years and except for a few "abduction" stories, there's absolutely no evidence that intelligent life exists anywhere but on Earth. Right now we have no clear evidence that LIFE exists anywhere but here.
Oh, I've heard all of the arguments. I teach a class to gifted and talented young people called Alien Worlds and Advanced Alien Worlds. The first question I ask is if anyone in the class REALLY believes there is intelligent alien life in the universe. As with all intelligent people, they hie to the party line, eloquently expressed by Jody Foster/Ellie Arroway/Carl Sagan (in the movie CONTACT): "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?"
Unfortunately, Carl Sagan's "argument" stands in direct opposition to Enrico Fermi's "argument": The story goes that, one day back on the 1940's, a group of atomic scientists, including the famous Enrico Fermi, were sitting around talking, when the subject turned to extraterrestrial life. Fermi is supposed to have then asked, "So? Where is everybody?" What he meant was: If there are all these billions of planets in the universe that are capable of supporting life, and millions of intelligent species out there, then how come none has visited earth? This has come to be known as The Fermi Paradox.
So, back to my question: is there AnyOne Out There? I answer simply: yes. Why? Because I believe in an infinite Father God who loves to create. Not only is He the source of creativity (whether you are a Christian or not, He's STILL the source of creativity. Satan is the father of destruction and will pervert God's creativity if we give him a chance), He is infinitely creative. Aliens wouldn't pose any great problem for Him. And while some will be "humanoid", we're talking about the same God who made the life around deep sea black smokers and created icefish with "antifreeze" for blood! There will be aliens so strange that David Brin's Jophur and G'kek will seem folksy familiar by comparison! In the 1930s, JBS Haldane said, "Life is not only stranger than we imagine; life is stranger than we can imagine."
I believe that God would agree.
Deuteronomy 10:19 says that we must "show your love for the alien". Why? Because God made the alien. (I KNOW that this isn't what Scripture "meant", but it IS what it SAYS...) I happen to agree with Sagan, but I also agree that Fermi has a point. We need to keep looking and while I believe the aliens are there, they are not going to be crawling all over the galaxy. The civilizations are few and far between and breaking the light barrier is not going to be Star Trek easy. It will require long-term committment and a level of societal maturity that we haven't reached yet. Of course, I think that that maturity will come only when individuals come to Christ and accept Him as their personal Lord and Savior -- but I don't see that happening anytime soon. On the other hand, if that was the only way to First Contact, how many hardened atheist/agnostic SF materialists would convert? Hmmmmm...
I'm pretty sure Carl Sagan would shrink from me using the Bible to agree with him, but tough. There's obviously more that I could say and I don't have the space here.
Thoughts? Let me know. (Also, if you are interested, read C. S. Lewis in THE WORLD'S LAST NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS. He talks about life on other worlds in it).