Some theological issues bore me to sleep. As a new Christian at Eastman School of Music, I was the only Pentecostal / Charismatic Christian in my Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in a sea of (what I thought to be) heretics. As such I had my fill of setting these folks straight with the truth as I learned it from my home church on pressing issues such as eternal security, the second coming of Jesus, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So thirty years later, when I encounter these issues I immediately zone out.
But last Tuesday at church, I began to wonder about what I consider to be a more important theological issue. As a Star Trek and Star Wars fan, I can't help but wondering whether there is life on planets far, far away.
This was of course prompted by a message by our pastor concerning Jesus as the light of the world. To illustrate this message, he spoke some about the science of light and showed on the projector a picture by the Hubble Space telescope. This picture showed pictures of galaxies 12 billion light years away that appeared as small dots to the telescope.
Now of course this also touches on the great theological issue on the age of the earth. I know some folks insist the earth can be no older than 7000 years or so according to the Bible. Galaxies 12 billion light years pose no problem to this theology, God just created the light in transit so that they only seem 7000 years or so.
Of course I would then ask whether this is within God's character to plant scientific evidence that suggests the universe is at least 12 billion years old while at the same time clearly speaking in His word that it is only 7000 years or so old. It would seem to me that this is a rather deceptive thing for God to do. Of course the only other alternative then is maybe the age of the universe is not as clearly laid out in the Bible as some would have me believe.
Anyway, according to my calculations, galaxies that are 12 billion light years away are 12,000,000,000 * 186,000 * 84,000 * 365 * 5280 * 12 inches away. According to my calculations this comes to 1,907,805,892,608,000,000,000,000,000,000 inches. We could then round this to 1.9 dectillion inches away. That is a lot of inches.
Of course then the question comes, given the vast number of inches in the universe, whether there are any other sets of inches that support life.
Now when I was in Junior High, I used to listen to the People's Gospel Hour by pastor Perry F. Rockwood on the radio. Once my friend mailed away and got a little pamphlet "Youth Wants the Answers" which had the answers to this and other great important questions straight from the Bible. Besides learning that women had to wear dresses and that men had to keep their hair off the ears and that everyone (especially Catholics) who did not go to a Bible believing fundamentalist church was going straight to hell, I also learned that it was impossible for there to be life on other planets because God did not say there was in the Bible. This must be the same school of thought that you can't have pianos in church because God did not mention pianos in the Bible.
Anyway it makes sense to me that God does not need to tell us everything that He is doing in the Bible. So therefore I can not eliminate the possibility that there is life on other planets. All that I know is that if there is life on other planets, God did not see that it is that important for us on earth to know about it.
But this leads to questions about intelligent life. One thing that I do know is that the universe is governed by a triune God in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). It does make me question whether there is other fallen life on other planets, because then would not God the Son have had to die for the sins of fallen life on other planets. Would this go against the Scriptures that God the Son died once for the sins of the world. Or would God the Son have died several times on several planets for the sins of several fallen races. This seems improbable to me.
Maybe satan is only in operation on planet earth and any other planets are perfect planets with no fallen races (that I would like to see). Under this theory the Star Trek Klingons and the Star Wars Darth Vader would be an impossibility because every where else would be perfect.
Anyway, these are the pressing theological issues I like to thing about.
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I think there is certain to be life elsewhere in the universe, and maybe even in our own solar system.
Intelligent life is another thing, but the universe is a big place, so I expect that to be possible too - even though it may be quite rare.
It's quite likely that we will never make contact with such life, simply because it is so far away. Star Trek notwithstanding!
You are asking very good questions. But the problem is that you are looking for logic in a topic that is inherently illogical. Don't expect any sensible answers - religion does not obey the usual rules of logic.
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