The Martians Are Coming!
The headlines are abuzz with news of recently formed gullies on Mars. This seems to indicate recent liquid water! The naturalists (those who don’t believe in the supernatural) are thrilled! You can almost hear them: “Life!” they cry, “There’s life on Mars!” Of course, water is just one of the many requierments for life, and they are excited about the mere possibilty.
Why are they so excited? So what if there is life on Mars? What difference does it make if there are bacteria living on mars? According to most atheists, the only amazing thing is that we haven’t found extraterrestrial life before now.
I can see how they might be happy that we may have a water source for future settlements. I think it was Ray Bradbury who remarked that he was glad there was water because we will need it.
The naturalists may be pleased that creating a permanent station on Mars may be facilitated by the presence of water, but I think their excitement goes beyond these practical considerations.
They are excited because they need a source for life on earth. The evidence is against an earth-based evolutionary origin for life. There simply wasn’t enough time nor the right conditions. So, life must have formed somewhere else and then been transported here, maybe from Mars!
Or maybe they are excited because it encourages their belief that there may also be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. But does it? Intelligent life is a far cry from microorganisms. And why would the atheists be excited about extraterrestrials? There may be many reasons, but I think one reason is this. They think that if there are other intelligent beings, and the Bible doesn’t talk about them, then that casts doubt on the Bible. They reason that since the Bible makes humanity a central theme of the universe, and there are other intelligent beings, then that casts doubt on the Bible.
Why should it? Some Christians seem to be afraid of this also. It is true, that Christ’s redemptive work does seem to extend only to humans on earth, and it may seem hard to imagine that there could be other human-like creatures elswhere. But C. S. Lewis did a nice job of imagining such a scenario from within the Biblical framework in his Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength), and we must realize that the Bible is not anthropocentric, it is theocentric.
Did Christ die in other worlds? I don’t think so, but my faith would not be shaken by the discovery of human-like beings elsewhere. So let the naturalists and atheists find water, and let them find life. Let the solar system run with rivers of water, and let the planets teem with humanoids. Watever is out there, it is a creation of God for His glory. We need not fear it. Let them find the Martians, and let them throw a party. We can be excited too, but don’t get too excited. I don’t think we will find any intelligent life. I think the conditions that life, especially intelligent life require are much too restrictive.
Is the Existence of God a Scientific Question?
In a recent Time magazine interview, atheist Richard Dawkins proclaimed:
“The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.”
Is God’s existence really a scientific question? The answer is no. The Bible depicts a God who created an orderly universe, one that he actively causes to run according to fixed “laws.” The laws of science describe God’s activity in the world. They do not constrain it. As God proclaimed to Job, “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth a constellation in its season, and guide the Bear with her satellites? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens, or fix their rule over the earth (Job 38: 31–33).”
A modern Job might reply, “As a matter of fact, I do know the laws of the heavens. Science can predict eclipses and meteor showers and the transit of Mercury!” But can you fix their rule? Or do you know who does? This was part of the riddle of Agur: “Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists (Proverbs 30:4a)?”
God is He in whom all things hold together (Col 1:17) and in whom “we live and move and exist (Acts 17: 28a)” The world that is described by the Scriptures is well suited to a paradigm like modern science that assumes the orderlines and constancy of natural law. In fact, modern science was birthed in Christendom and its philosophical atmosphere. But now it turns and says that because the universe is so orderly, therefore there is no God. The modern atheist says that the ordeliness of the world implies that the world can act on its own. Atoms act according to fixed laws, and they act on their own. They have their own power to cause events. The fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force, gravity, and the two nuclear forces, exist on their own and have the power to cause events. But these are leaps of logic. The universe is orderly, but it does not follow that it is so of its own accord. The cause and effect structure of the universe does not imply that the entities of the universe have their own power to act.
Science can never distinguish between a universe caused by God and one that has its own power to act according to fixed laws. The existence of a creator God is not a scientific question. Now, whether science can speak to the question of the truth of the Bible is another story, and one for another day.
