The thought of the possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth has been around for thousands of years. Early speculations were postulated primarily by Greek philosophers and “thinkers”. Atomism, the first real attempt to put the idea of cosmic pluralism into a workable philosophy, was jointly conceived in the fourth and fifth centuries by Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus. Atomism taught that the Universe consisted of identical, indestructible moving particles (known as atoms) from which the Earth was accidentally formed. From this thesis it was concluded that other worlds and other life-forms, while each self-contained and inaccessible from Earth, could possibly exist. Atomistic views about other inhabited planets were more akin to “parallel universe” theories than with the modern idea of multiple planets, galaxies and solar systems all existing within the same universe. The modern idea of extraterrestrial life didn’t begin to gain true ground until after Copernicus introduced his theory of a heliocentric solar system (the Sun is the center of the solar system) around 1543. As the theory that the Earth was the center of the Universe (geocentrism) began to wane, the new heliocentric model introduced the idea that the Earth was supposedly “just another planet” in a vast sea of stars.

      With the invention of the telescope in 1608 the speculation that “we’re not alone” grew even more as the immense size of the Universe began to be realized. Three hundred and twenty three years later (1931) the radio telescope was invented. Not only could scientists put their “eyes in the skies”, but now they had the technical know-how of putting their ears there too. As a result of the radio telescope, radio astronomy was born. In 1960 Dr. Frank Drake conducted the first organized search for intelligent extraterrestrial radio signals, known as “Project OZMA”, utilizing the radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank, West Virginia. Dr. Drake, currently the Director for the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, Chairman Emeritus of the SETI Institute’s Board of Trustees and Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, devised an equation for “estimating the number of technological civilizations that may exist in our galaxy” (see http://www.seti.org). Known as “The Drake Equation”, this series of mathematical factors has become generally accepted by many scientists as a valuable tool in the search for life in the cosmos. Some scientists believe that the Drake Equation could someday be as important as Einstein’s E=mc2 theory.

                                                           

      On June 24, 1947 a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying his single-engine plane over the Cascade mountains in Western Washington State, when he unexpectedly encountered nine shiny objects flying in single file at an estimated speed of 1,600 miles per hour (nearly three times as fast as any known aircraft at that time). Arnold later reported that the unidentified fl ying objects “flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” This famous incident would go down in history and mark the beginning of the modern age of “flying saucers”. Only eight days later (July 2, 1947) the most famous (or infamous) UFO incident in history would occur in Roswell, New Mexico as a supposed “crashed saucer” with accompanying “alien bodies” was recovered by the United States Military.

      As UFO sightings erupted into a worldwide phenomenon, Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon in June of 1950 and released Rocketship XM, the first motion picture depicting alien life in outer space (Note: While it has never been proven that UFOs originate from outer space, they have, nevertheless, become the primary symbol of the existence of “intelligent life beyond Earth”). Over the next five-plus decades Hollywood made movie after movie showing aliens, saucers and things from another world, firmly ingraining in the minds of the American public (and the world) that intelligent life must indeed be “out there somewhere”. Regardless of much of the Hollywood hype however, the existence of the Drake Equation tells us that modern scientists are very serious about searching for life in outer space. And the ambitions of Drake are not unique, for many of the programs of modern science are (or have been) aimed at discovering life in space.

• The LGM Signal (1967) discovered by radio astronomers in Cambridge, England, was at first anxiously labeled as the “Little Green Men” signal. It was simply a misidentified pattern of short pulses from a pulsar.

• The Pioneer 10 & 11 (1972-73) were the first space probes to carry engraved plaques designed to communicate with alien life.

• In 1974, a three minute digital-message was beamed into space by astronomers at the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico.

• The Viking 1 & 2 (1976) space-probes both landed on the surface of Mars and conducted experiments to locate life.

• The Voyager (1977) spacecraft contained an LP record with greetings to aliens recorded in 56 different languages, 90 minutes of music and 118 encoded pictures.

• The WOW! Signal (1977) was a sharp, clear, on-and-off-again signal heard by the Big Ear Radio Telescope at Ohio State University. The signal, heard only once, never returned again for verification.

• The SETI Program (1978 - present), by the very nature of it’s name (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) has always been about locating life beyond Earth. The official website for SETI reports: “The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe. We believe we are conducting the most profound search in human history — to know our beginnings and our place among the stars.”

• Project META (1985-94), also known as the Megachannel Extraterrestrial Assay Project, was conducted by the Harvard SETI group. It scanned the northern skies for signs of alien radio signals and was partially funded by a $100,000 donation from film director Steven Spielberg.

• SERENDIP (1986 - present) is an ongoing SETI program who’s purpose is also to detect radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. The project name (SERENDIP) says it all: Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations.

• Project META II (1990) was launched and began scanning the southern hemisphere for foreign, intelligent space signals.

• NASA began the High Resolution Microwave Survey (1992) from the Arecibo and Goldstone observatories which also searched for deep-space ET signals.

• Project Phoenix (1995), instead of scanning the entire sky, was designed to scan smaller segments of space concentrating on local star systems like our own which were thought to have the best chances for supporting life. The project originally incorporated the largest radio telescope in the southern hemisphere - the Parkes Radio Telescope of New South Wales, Australia. After a failed scan of 800 stars, project leader Peter Backus dishearteningly quipped; “We live in a quiet neighborhood.”

• Project BETA (1995), also conducted by the Harvard SETI group, was the successor to the META project. The Billion-Channel Extraterrestrial Assay program had the ability to immediately rescan “candidate signals” with an improved radio-interference filtering system.

• Mars Meteorite ALH84001 (August 7, 1996) also known as the “evidence of life on Mars” or “the Martian worm” meteor. Originally found in 1984 in the Allen Hills ice field of Antarctica, ALH84001 was initially classifi ed as a “lunar meteorite” only to be re-classified nine years later as a “martian meteorite”. Upon closer examination a microbial, worm-like fossil structure was discovered and later declared to possibly be “ancient life on Mars” - most likely martian bacteria. Scientists have been able to naturally recreate similar fossil-like structures and many disagree with this conclusion.

• SETI@home was launched on May 23, 1999. In less than 7 days over a quarter of a million home computers were linked together worldwide in a unifi ed effort to analyze data from the constantly streaming SETI radio signals.

• As part of the NASA Astrobiology Program, NASA and Russian scientists departed for Siberia (July 27, 1999) to search for “extremophiles” in the Siberian permafrost. Supposedly, microbes discovered in “extremely hostile environments” were to divulge clues to the existence of extraterrestrial life in our solar system.

• The Catalog of Habitable Stars was published (2003) by SETI scientists Jill Tarter and Margaret Turnbull. The report listed 17,129 potentially habitable hosts for complex life.

      This short list only highlights the tip of the alien-search iceberg. While some may mock and scoff at the idea of searching for life in space, and even relegate such fl ights-of-fancy to kooks, wackos and campy sci-fi B-movies, there are those in positions of authority who are actively engaged in this activity. It is now abundantly clear that modern science, in a concentrated, focused effort, has been looking for intelligent life outside of Earth for many years. This field of study even has its own names; astrobiology, exobiology and xenobiology. NASA’s official website has this to say:

      Astrobiology is devoted to the scientific study of life in the universe - its origin, evolution, distribution, and future. It brings together the physical and biological sciences to address some of the most fundamental questions of the natural world: How do living systems emerge? How do habitable worlds form and how do they evolve? Does life exist on worlds other than Earth? The tremendous breadth and depth of this endeavor requires interdisciplinary investigation in order to be fully appreciated and examined.

      As part of a concerted effort to undertake such a challenge, NASA established the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) in 1998 as an innovative way to develop the field of astrobiology and provide a scientific framework for flight missions. (see http://astrobiology. nasa.gov/nai/)

      Why is modern science so obsessed with finding life in space? What motivates these people to believe extraterrestrial life even exists? Are their thoughts undergirded by Scripture or is it something else? NASA claims to be doing research to know how “living systems emerge”, but do we not already have these answers in the Bible? Not according to them. The engine that fuels this fanatical hunt for life in the cosmos can be summed up in two words: organic evolution.

      The belief in the Darwinian theory of Organic Evolution necessitates the belief that lifecan “evolve” elsewhere in the universe. In short, since life supposedly spontaneously self-generated from nothing here on Earth, according to modern “science”, there’s no reason why life can’t just-so-happen into existence on Planet-X. I know that’s extremely simplified, but this is the “reason” why the search for life goes on. The modern theory of macroevolution (i.e. given enough time a horse can change into a giraffe or an amoeba into a man) is not only unobservable, indemonstrable and unscientific, it requires a lot more faith to believe than simply believing the Bible. Physicist H.S. Lipson once wrote; “In fact [subsequent to the publication of Darwin’s book, Origin of Species], evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit with it ... To my mind the theory does not stand up at all ... If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces and radiation, how has it come into being? ... I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me; but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.” – H.S. Lipson, “A Physicist Looks at Evolution”, Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, p. 138 (1980) [emphasis added]. Although widely accepted since the 1870s, Darwinian Evolution has begun to wane in the last quarter century due to further advances in the fi elds of genetics, molecular biology and biochemistry. According to many, the aging theory has now reached a crisis point and a new, more scientifically palatable theory is beginning to emerge. Known as “Intelligent Design”, or “ID”, this new theory postulates that creation is the product of “intelligent cause” and not blind, undirected chance as Darwin’s theory suggests. However, since the Intelligent Design theory makes no attempt to identify the source of the underlying “intelligence”, there are a few who hypothesize that extraterrestrials may actually be responsible for the creation of life on Earth. The New Age, atheistic, religious organization known as the “Raelian Movement” is one such group that advances this belief. In his book Intelligent Design: Message from the Designers, Claude Vorilhon (a.k.a. Rael) repudiates the idea that God created mankind and asserts that life on Earth was created by advanced humanoid scientists from another planet. This new alien-created-man theory is called “Atheist Intelligent Design”. This may sound like “far-out fantasy”, but over 2 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide.

      On May 20, 2008 Associated Press writer Ariel David wrote; “Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican’s chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday. The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones. ‘How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?’ Funes said. ‘Just as we consider earthly creatures as a brother, and sister, why should we not talk about an extraterrestrial brother? It would still be part of creation.’ In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion ‘doesn’t contradict our faith’ because aliens would still be God’s creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like ‘putting limits’ on God’s creative freedom, he said. The interview, headlined ‘The extraterrestrial is my brother,’ covered a variety of topics including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life.” [ Vatican: It’s OK to believe in aliens, by Ariel David, Associated Press Writer, http://www.physorg.com/news129920030.html ].

      Today Christians are inundated from all sides by the idea of “intelligent life beyond Earth”. Modern science is constantly in search of extraterrestrial life and the past is proliferate with programs which testify to this fact. Some claim aliens created mankind, while others theorize that aliens were created by God. When faced with this dilemma could you give a doctrinally-sound answer with the Bible? Did God create aliens? Are there other inhabited planets? Does intelligent life really exist beyond Earth? What about God’s “creative freedom”? Where and how would you start?

------------------------ END EXCERPT ------------------------

      Chapter One of Aliens, Angels & Outer Space! establishes the fact that searching for intelligent life beyond Earth is not just found between the pages of science fiction novels or on the silver screen. To the contrary, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been an official, on-going project for over half a century. With the advent of the theory of Organic Evolution, and the global UFO/Alien Phenomenon, a majority of people today believe in the reality of alien life on other planets. What are Bible-believing Christians to make of all this? What do the Scriptures reveal about intelligent life beyond Earth? Are you prepared to finally uncover the truth regarding aliens and the Bible? Opportunity knocks, don't let it get away!

      

| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |