Two news stories, this past weekend, shed light on the increasingly desperate search for extraterrestrial life.
First, NASA scientists announced they expect to find alien life very soon, probably within the next 20 years ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/05/nasa_aliens_are_out_there_we_will_find_a_new_earth_within_20_years ). No, we’re not going to send up spaceships. This will be achieved by better and better telescope technology.
Second, scientists had to admit they got it wrong when they announced the discovery of two planets just like ours–nicknamed “goldilocks planets” because they’re supposedly “just right” for the chance appearance of life–orbiting a star named Gliese 581 (Source: Washington Post article by Sandhya Somashekhar, July 3, 2014 ). But the planets turned out to be not planets at all, but sunspots or something.
The humanist mindset is revealed in really bad movies: like The Lost Tribe, which I reviewed July 13, in which scientists discover a fossil that “proves God did not create man.”
Here’s what will happen. NASA telescopes detect “signatures of life” on a planet many light-years away, and next thing you know, the talking heads are all over TV saying “This proves there was no special creation of life on earth, no creation by God: but rather that life arises by purely naturalistic processes wherever you find ideal conditions for it.” Democrats dance in the streets, and the Presbyterian Church USA publicly states that it’s sorry there is no God, but it’s going to stay in business anyhow because it hasn’t paid a dime’s worth of attention to God in the last 25 years anyhow.
The materialist/humanist pseudo-theology dictates that life be found on other planets. They think this will wipe out Christian faith. Of course, with a whole universe at His disposal, where is it written that God created life only on this earth and nowhere else? The discovery of bacteria on Diomega Orionis IV would not change my religious beliefs.
Nevertheless, life on other planets is the Great White Hope of atheism, and it has led them to make some really splashy promises.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the LORD shall have them in derision. (Psalm 2:4)
P.S.–Of course the link to the article in The Register UK doesn’t work. Sorry! I’ve had all the computer problems I can cope with, lately, and I can’t cope with more. Seek the original story, and ye shall find.
God has a sense of humour. HIS joke on humanity was to build the ape. As I see it, it is possible that life something like ours exists elsewhere, but comparing it to what I see on earth, is it probable ? Is there one stone identical with another? One tree? One blade of grass? One cloud? One human being? Maybe there soon will be, thanks to idiot mad scientists.
dave
So far, we find more life in a single shovelful of dirt than has been detected in all the rest of the solar system.
In Aldus Huxley’s “Brave New World”, one class of test-tube babies were produced in batches of 100, so there were 99 clones of yourself – you wouldn’t need a mirror.
When I look at some of the people on the streets I think they are not of this world.
If all they hope for were to take place, there is insufficient time remaining to have it come to pass. Quoting Yeshua (Jesus) “…this generation will not pass away until all comes to pass…” That takes care of their many
thousands of years. so there.
I don’t care whether there is life in another. I’n maving enough trouble handling the “life” on this one. When I say life” I mean all the exigencies of this one that keeps getting messed up by a-theists (the “a” standing for “aint:” “aint got a bit of logic to stand on”). As my children might say, “Give me a break!”
The whole not in of searching for life on other planets has become a laughable exercise in speculation. SETI is monitoring the electromagnetic spectrum, looking for radio waves which contain information. Great! So far, they have found a few interesting patterns, but one of these has indicated intelligent life elsewhere. As I recall, the last time this happened, they found out that it had actually come from a communications satellite.
People, all people, have a tendency to try and fill in the blanks and come up with a narrative which ties everything together neatly. Unfortunately, life rarely allows itself to be packaged in such a manner. But that doesn’t stop people from speculating and then building a detailed narrative on their speculations. I used to watch a lot of science documentaries and found that many of them were essentially tales based upon speculative notions with little factual backing.
The movie,”The Perfect Storm” told a harrowing tale of a fishing boat lost in a massive storm. Fairly early in the story, the radio antenna on the boat is destroyed, rendering them out of communications. While the story was based upon a real-life event, everything depicted in the movie following the loss of the radio antenna was entirely speculation. Once they lost radio communication there was no way for the story to be told. All we really know beyond the point is that the boat never returned.
Much of what is presented as “science” follows along the same lines. There is a theory, then there is a narrative which can only work if that theory is 100% correct. The problem is, it’s not always so easy to prove a theory and, as we’ve all seen, “settled science” is not always engraved in granite. Settled notions are discarded all the time. Fats and cholesterol were the baddies of nutrition and that conclusion spawned a generation of diabetics (because we were all encouraged to eat carbs). Now the medical world is changing their views on the matter.
Such is the case when theories are treated as fact.
Yes, mankind spends megabucks searching for communication signals from outer space that will prove intelligent life on other planets. But when they study and map the intelligence of the DNA chromosome they only see chance and accident, no intelligent design. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
Indeed! The odds of even one simple protein arranging itself are beyond staggering, and one protein is but a tiny fraction of a cell’s contents.
“… and next thing you know, the talking heads are all over TV saying ‘This proves there was no special creation of life on earth, no creation by God: but rather that life arises by purely naturalistic processes wherever you find ideal conditions for it.'”
Of course they never think how they might answer the question, “And exactly how did those ‘ideal conditions’ come into being, and in what sense are they ‘ideal’ and for what? Who set the ideal? Why doesn’t life occur as magically out of nothing as those ‘ideal conditions’ do?”
They can’t be gods as long as there’s a real God, so they’re always trying to convince us that He isn’t there.