Are We Alone?

Alan Marshall – 14 December 2003

Life on Mars?

As I write, four unmanned spacecraft, launched by the USA, Japan and the European Union, are nearing the end of the journey to Mars. During the months of December 2003 and January 2004, they will land on the surface of the red planet, and conduct an unprecedented range of experiments to determine the nature of the planet’s environment, and in particular to seek any evidence for the present or past existence of life forms. Details of these spacecraft, and their estimated dates for landing on Mars, are included as an attachment to this article.

This multinational rush to Mars has been prompted not just by the spread of space technology and the present proximity of the planet, but by the announcement by NASA scientists in 1995 that they believed they had found fossil bacteria in a Martian meteorite. Their findings have since been thrown in to doubt by other scientists who believe the organic compounds, and other minerals cited as evidence, to be the result of natural geological processes. The only way to resolve the issue is to explore Mars, firstly by robotic probes, and ultimately with a manned mission.

I am a science graduate myself, and there is much in the current venture to excite me. Much will be learned, not just about Mars, but on the formation of the solar system. Much information will be gathered vital to the planning of a possible future colony. I have no doubt that the experiments will yield some interesting and unexpected results. But will there be evidence of life? On this I remain a skeptic.

Back in 1976, I followed with interest as the USA sent two probes, Viking I and II, on their way to Mars. Yet I held the same conviction then that I do now, that no convincing evidence for life would be found.

How can I be so certain? Most people believe that given the vastness of space, there must be life forms, and probably intelligent life forms on other planets. On the other hand, there is a small minority who believe that when it comes to intelligent life, humans are alone in the universe. I am firmly in this minority, and the reasons arise from science, and also from my faith.

Searching for Origin of the Universe

There is an emerging trend among scientists to acknowledge that however well they can explain the workings of the universe, and the workings of life, they will never satisfactorily explain the origin of either.

From philosopher Immanuel Kant, up until the middle of last century, scientists believed that the universe was infinitely large and infinitely old. When Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was in fact expanding from a central point, many of these scientists were dumbfounded. The recently released book, “20 Compelling Evidences That God Exists”, written by Boa and Bowman, summarises it this way:

The discovery that the universe had a beginning was not met with pleasure. Many scientists rebelled against the notion because it implied a Beginner. In fact Einstein was the first to complain …..

….. With disdain, Fred Hoyle, another critic of the theory, labelled it the “big bang”. [i]

The “Big Bang” theory has been stuck with Hoyle’s derogatory tag ever since, though it would be more honest to call it the “Creation Burst” theory. It was confirmed in 1965 with the discovery of cosmic background radiation. More recently this radiation was accurately mapped by the COBE satellite, not only proving the “Big Bang” theory once and for all, but undermining its variant, the “Oscillating Universe” theory. Boa and Bowman make the observation that:

In 1990 the COBE delivered its first findings: the radiation was so even throughout space that the universe must have begun with an extremely hot  explosion from a central point of origin – too hot to be one in an endless series of explosions. [ii]

Since the theory’s confirmation, attempts by scientists to explain a universe that does not involve God are looking more and more to be intellectually and spiritually bankrupt.

Searching for Origin of Life

When it comes to explaining the origin of life, the task for the unbelieving scientist is just as formidable. Scientists may now have a plausible explanation for how one complex life form can gradually evolved into another (eg. fish to amphibians, dinosaurs to birds), though I would argue even here we can see the creators’ guiding hand. However when it comes to the beginning of the story, the origin of “simple” single-celled organisms, they are stumped. Even Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, conceded this. In the very last paragraph of his famous work, “The Origin of Species”, he writes:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. [iii]

Of course, biology has made enormous advances since Darwin’s time, and the truth is that a single cell is much more complex than even Darwin could have imagined. It is a highly sophisticated organic machine that is irreducibly complex[iv]. If you remove from it any part, it will cease to function. Life on a scale smaller than a cell is not possible. (Viruses are fragments of DNA, but they can only reproduce inside a living cell). The primal cell or cells did not arise by chance, but were the work of the creator himself. The millions of meticulous instructions in the DNA of each cell are like a computer program. It is digital information. Computers run on strings of millions of 0’s and 1’s, known in mathematics as base 2 or binary numbers. The DNA that cells run on consists of strings of millions of connected molecules known as nucleotides. These molecules come in just four types, normally represented as A, T, C and G. We could just as easily represent these four molecules as 0’s, 1’s, 2’s and 3’s, and the strings containing them as base 4 numbers. It is difficult, but not impossible to “reverse engineer” the binary machine code of a computer into the original higher-level instructions written by a programmer. In a similar way, it will be possible in the not too distant future, to identify the higher-level instructions coded into life’s DNA by the creator.

In fact, the more one studies the intricate workings of the universe, and the intricate workings of living things, the more one sees evidence of deliberate design. In this short essay I can do no more than touch on the emerging scientific theory of intelligent design. It is a theory that has both scientific and spiritual integrity. For those interested in following it up, I recommend as an introduction, chapters 4 to 7 in Boa and Bowman’s above work.

The Silent Universe

In 1984 the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute was founded with the aim of examining all sun-like stars within a given number of light years from Earth for signals that could only be made by civilised beings. Today data from several radio telescopes is scanned across the frequency spectrum, and numbers are crunched by a network of thousands of personal computers around the world, searching for the telltale signature of intelligence.

To date, such a signature has not been found. Although I believe man is the only form of intelligent biological life in the universe, I think the work of SETI is valuable. The power of computers doubles every 18 months, and within the next 10 years, SETI will exhaustively search our corner of the galaxy. I predict they will find nothing. The SETI scientists may be disappointed, but a negative answer is still good science, and will help us better understand who we are. Such a result will not of course prove the absence of other intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy or universe, but I think it will cause a rethink on this issue.

I am something of a space technology buff, and have greatly enjoyed reading “The Millennial Project”, the forward thinking epic by Marshall Savage, in which he sets out in breathtaking detail, technological principles for transporting and constructing colonies on the moon, Mars, and in inter-planetary space. The driving motivation for his work has been his conclusion that Earth alone has life. He argues passionately as follows:

The evolution of life is overwhelmingly improbable. The odds against life are so extreme that it is virtually impossible for it to occur twice in the same universe. That life ever evolved anywhere at all is a miracle of biblical proportions. If it wasn’t for our manifest presence, the creation of life could be dismissed as a wild fantasy …..

Let’s presume that all that is required for the evolution of life is the single self-replicating chain of DNA. ….. the minimum chain length for self-replicating DNA is around 600 nucleotides …..

How likely is it that the primordial soup, given enough time, will cook up a strand of “Genesis DNA”? [v]

Savage calculates the odds at 1 in 10³⁶⁰. That’s 1 followed by 360 zeros, a number that makes the number of stars in the universe look tiny by comparison.

I agree with Savage on the improbability (I would say impossibility) of life arising by chance. His approach is strictly scientific - there is no religious subtext in his work. That is why I do not expect the current missions to find any signs of life on Mars. I share his science and his viewpoint, but I add to that a Christian perspective on the uniqueness of man.

Genesis Suggests that Man is Unique

Have you ever wondered why every people group, no matter how isolated, has some kind of creation story? Why has every culture a need for explaining who they are and where they came from? Why does this almost always involve one or more supernatural beings?

There is an explanation – one that secular anthropologists are likely to resist, but one that I challenge you to consider. This simple but profound explanation is that we are really are meant to be here. Our existence is not some kind of cosmic accident. Our ability to comprehend the world, and to control its destiny for good or ill, is by design. The creation narratives of all peoples, though they differ in the details, recognise a supernatural presence, beyond the world that we see, that has made the world and given man his place in it.

The most detailed, most beautiful, and arguably the most thought-provoking of these narratives is the first chapter of Genesis. It begins with these familiar words:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. [vi]

This verse presumes that there is a physical universe which we experience through our senses, and a realm beyond, where God dwells, which we cannot. The laws of nature, including the laws of time, and of cause and effect, belong to the created order. The universe must have a beginning. Its origin is in a God who is himself outside of time.

A similar statement closes the narrative in chapter 2, verse 1. These verses serve as "bookends" to bracket the account of creation, which is arranged into six "days". The key to understanding this creation account, in my view, is chapter 1, verse 2. It describes the Earth in its primal state, on the "evening" of day 1. If I may borrow the Biblical image of the creator as a potter, the Earth is like a lump of fresh clay, waiting to be shaped into a pot and be filled with useful objects. In terms of our current scientific understanding, this corresponds to the solar system at its point of formation, around 4.5 billion years ago. This is an extraordinarily long time for mortal man to contemplate, but perhaps it gives us an insight what eternity really means. As the nuclear fire of the sun ignites, the first morning dawns.

This introduces the concept of a "day", which is then used as a literary device to give structure to what is arguably the greatest poem ever written. Each stanza of the poem begins with the phrase "And God said …". It involves some act of creation by God, which he almost always then declares "good". Each stanza finishes with the phrase "there was evening and there was morning …". The initial state, described in verse 2 as "formless and empty", lays the pattern for what follows. Days 1 to 3 explain how the heavens (sky) and Earth are given form. Days 4 to 6 explain how the heavens and earth are filled.

On each of days 1 to 3, there is an act of separation that gives shape to particular domain. On day 1, the domain of the heavens is prepared as light is separated from dark. On day 2, the fluid surface of the Earth, or biosphere, is given form by separating the sky, with its clouds, from the ocean. (Scientifically, this domain is given form as the Earth cools, the oceans condensing, or separating, from the primal atmosphere). Then the domain of the land is then given form as tectonic forces lift the continents above, separating them from, the oceans. The land produces vegetation in preparation for animate life.

On each of days 4 to 6, one of the domains formed above is filled with "inhabitants". On day 4, the domain of the heavens is filled, in a formal and literary sense, with the sun, moon and stars. On day 5, the domain of the biosphere is filled as birds inhabit the sky and fish inhabit the oceans. On day 6, the domain of the land is filled with all manner of animal life, and finally, with man.

I recommend reading this chapter in the New International Version of the Bible (click here for the full text of Genesis 1). Its structure, summarised above, can be represented in the diagram below. While the diagram doesn't capture every subtlety of this wonderful poetic account of creation, it should help make the literary style clearer. While the account is not a scientific text, it is surprising how well it fits with what we know of the Earth's history.

In referring to Genesis 1 as a "poem", I am not attempting to diminish the respect that is due to it. Inspired by God, passed down through Abraham's descendants, and recorded by the prophet Moses, it has a style appropriate for the time, but the truths it contains are timeless.

Day 6 ends with an explanation of man’s special place among God’s creatures:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.

Thus man is made an intelligent being whose rule over the Earth reflects God’s rule over all of creation. Man alone can comprehend and relate to God. Man alone has a spirit made to commune with his creator.

This understanding places man at the pinnacle of the created order, and therefore at the spiritual, if not the literal, centre of the universe. While this does not absolutely rule out intelligent life on other worlds, it does suggest that a search for it may be in vain.

Man’s Relationship with the Creator

The early chapters of Genesis, whether you understand them to be a literal style, a poetic style, or perhaps a blend of each, have profound things to say about God and man beyond mere creation. These chapters are all about relationship – between God and man, between man and woman, between parent and child. Each of these was designed to be a love relationship.

During the next few months, as we go fossicking for microbes on Mars, we would do well to remember that it is loving relationships which give the universe meaning – without love it is all futile!

Of course life is a mixture of good and bad experiences. Those who blame God for the latter overlook the fact that human misery is, for the most part, the product of selfish human decisions. These may be our decisions, the decisions of our contemporaries, or the decisions of those who have gone before us. In the early chapters of Genesis, it is man alone who is given moral responsibility for his actions. And it was man’s selfishness and pride that led to the original covenant with God being broken, and his relationship with God becoming dysfunctional. Not only so, but relationships between people became dysfunctional, and thus the history of “civilisation” is a history of violence.

For love to triumph, and man’s selfishness to be overcome, the Bible tells us it was necessary for the creator to come to his errant creatures, and undo the damage of their moral failure.

This is where the Christian faith moves beyond the other main monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam. The latter two acknowledge the purpose for which man was made, and they also acknowledge man’s moral failure. However the solutions they have offered, including sacrifices, ritual and harsh discipline, are not adequate. In fact no person, of whatever faith, can ever be adequate in himself. It took a visitation by the creator himself, and a supreme act of divine love, to rescue mankind.

The Creator Pays a Visit

You may have noticed in the above quote that when God says “Let us make man in our image”, he uses the plural words “us” and “our”. This is the first of a number of hints in the Old Testament that within God, there is a relationship between persons. Within God, there is in fact a Father and a Son, and it was prophesied that it would be the Son who would fully reveal himself to man. The first chapter of the gospel of John puts him in this context:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it …..

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God -- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

This Son of God, who we know as Jesus, was fully God, but also fully man. It is the foundational truth that God became a man that ultimately explains the theme of this essay, and is the ultimate reason for believing that man is unique. You see the Son of God not only became a man, but he died a gruesome death as a man for me and for you, to offer us a way to be reconciled to God:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Because he was God, death could not hold him, but I don't imagine this is an experience he would want to repeat on other worlds. Doesn't the willingness with which he made that sacrifice indicate that there is nothing more precious to him in all creation than mankind?

Man is alone in the sense that, as far as we know, he is the only creature made to know and love his creator. Yet he is not alone in the sense that he is the object of his creator's love. Those who commit themselves to him and receive his love will never be alone, for Jesus promised:

And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Finding Out More

If you are keenly following the current Mars missions, you are probably the kind of person who spent countless hours reading or watching anything you can about space travel, fact or fiction. If you truly want to understand the universe and understand the meaning of life, then you owe it to yourself to find out what the creator himself said about it when he lived among us.

Don’t settle for second hand opinion. Investigate Jesus for yourself! Let his own words, spoken 2000 years ago, enlighten you today as his ever present spirit opens your heart and mind. The gospel of John takes just four hours to read. It ends with the following challenge. Why not let this record of Jesus’ words and deeds have its intended effect?

Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

If you genuinely want to discover Jesus for yourself, God is willing and able to lead you to individuals and churches that will help. I am more than willing to answer any questions you may have, but first I suggest you have a look at the web site below, where I have assembled what I believe is persuasive evidence that Jesus is everything he claims to be. We are indeed not alone, for Jesus is real!

www.jesusisreal.org

Feedback:

Some readers may wish to endorse this essay while others may have different views. All feedback is welcome if it is constructive. Email can be sent to:

alan06@oceansoft2000.com

All essays on this site can be reproduced freely without permission, provided they are not altered. Another essay you may be interested in is titled "The Revelation, in Jesus, of the One God "I AM". You can print out these essays, but for the best formatting, I recommend you download the electronic versions.

Notes:

The following details of the missions to Mars were obtained from the web site of The Planetary Society (www.planetary.org).