Life on Mars and Creationist Theory?

[Gomer]

If they were to find life on Mars, how would this be covered under Creationist theory?

I don't recall the particular members here... but I know several of you are firm believers in the Flood and Ark and all that jazz.

Would finding life on Mars be a blow to that theory or would it just be woven in as an act of God? Is there pre-existing creationist theory that covers the possibility of life on other planets or solar systems. Or would it simply be dismissed as impossible and a scientific fallacy?

Now I am not talking aliens or what have you. Myself, I think that the universe and solar system are at least billions of years old. There is evidence of liquid water on Mars, and I think that in that billions of years time span... something could have lived. Of all the planets in the solar system it seems the most likely. Just life... single cell, multi-cell, who knows what it could be. It cannot be comprehended... nor ruled out (to me anyway). Is it ruled out under creationist theory? Would its discovery invalidate creationist theory?

We are not even scratching the surface of Mars exploration. The fact that we can park RC cars on the surface of something that far away and tool them around blows my mind! I know we have been there before, but it is still awesome.

Enlighten me… I’d like some theory.

[MitaDC]

That is a good question... I would like to hear somebody's imput on that. I believe in God but I have never gone that in depth...I see what u mean though...in the Bible it says nothing about creating life on other planets (to my knowledge) so I don't know what that would do. Also I think that supposedly man walked with dinasours (It's late leave my spelling alone). Science proved that wrong...I wonder how this would effect peoples thinking.

[Bovon]

Enlighten you?...seems to me like you already have it figured out.

But just for the sake of considering one against the other...say if God did create the earth and the living creatures..including man..we have no clue when it was done. The Bible only speaks of "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"..there is no date. Nothing there to say it was ?? October 25th, -5002.

On the other hand, if life formed from some sea creature that swam, then crawled...later walked out of the sea..and all land dwellers, including humans decended from this creature..when did it happen?..October 25th, -5002?

If life just happened on earth at some point in time, why not Mars (or a million other planets if they had the right necessities to sustain life...as we know it).

Is it conceivable..or possible that there can be life...other than what we know?...no water?..no air??...certainly no 'life' that we can conceive..but, the question remains..can there be life other than what we regard as life.

[Gomer]

Found this in my daily reading just now... it sheds more light on the questions of life on other planets... from easterblogg (Greg Easterbrook)

ARE WE ALONE?: As the plucky Spirit rover scans the surface of Mars and sends back high-resolution images of dust and rocks, once again human beings wonder: Are we alone in the universe?

SETI searches have been ongoing for four decades--read Amir Alexander's comprehensive history of SETI at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory website. (Despite its name, JPL is the primary designer of space probes.) Various radio telescopes have methodically scanned our galaxy, the Milky Way, for artificial radio signals, and heard nothing. Astronomers have inspected the galaxy for unnatural markers such as polygons of laser light--theorizing such beacons might be built by advanced beings seeking companionship--and seen nothing. Researchers have looked for the spectral lines of artificial nuclear reactions, and not seen them. Some nearby galaxies beyond the Milky Way have been scanned, with nothing seen or heard. Galaxies are huge--about 100 billion suns on average--so much might be overlooked. And it may be that other beings don't want to be found, or use communications media we have not yet guessed. But as far as researchers have been able to tell, no signal not of nature's making emanates from anywhere in the enormity of the cosmos. The stars are silent.

This has raised a worry among researchers that even in the vastness of the cosmos (50 billion to 100 billion galaxies, maybe an infinite number) the conditions for life may be surprisingly rare. Most stars are not stable over very long periods like Sol, our sun. Stars that are like our sun may be unlikely to have Earth-like planets, the one kind of planet we know can host life. A few decades ago, an astronomer named Michael Hart calculated how far from a Sol-like star an Earth-like planet must be in order to have liquid water on its surface and the right temperatures and pressures for carbon-based life. What Hart found was that the planet would have to sit almost exactly where Earth sits, or it would become too hot or too cold. Venus and Mars seem evidence of this. Venus, the next planet closer to the sun, has a runaway greenhouse effect and 900-degree Fahrenheit surface temperatures; Mars, the next planet out, has surface temperatures about the same as Antarctica, and its water appears locked in a runaway ice age. Hart called the star-distance relationship that allows for liquid water and carbon chemistry the "continuously habitable zone." He supposed that for a Sol-like star, the zone is less than one percent of possible orbits.

Later other researchers, including the late Carl Sagan, revised Hart's calculations to suggest that the continuously habitable zone could be as high as five percent of possible orbits for a Sol-like star, but this still implies that the conditions for life based on carbon chemistry may be exceedingly uncommon in the cosmos. Most planets don't orbit stable long-lived stars; most planets aren't Earth-like (in this solar system, only three of nine are: Earth, Mars, and Venus); and of those Earth-like planets that do exist, 95 percent will fall outside the habitable zones of solar systems.

Now comes a study published in Science, led by Charles Lineweaver of the University of New South Wales, attempting to estimate the "galactic habitable zone," or the share of the typical galaxy that is hospitable to carbon chemistry. Galactic centers, Lineweaver supposes, could not allow living things like us to evolve: Radiation levels in the central areas of galaxies are fantastically high owing to frequent supernova explosions, while comets constantly rain down on planets. The outer areas of galaxies aren't hospitable, either. Almost all matter is gaseous, with heavy elements too rare for planets to coalesce.

Taking these factors into account, Lineweaver's team estimated that the "galactic habitable zone," the area beyond the tumultuous center but not on the diaphanous outskirts, is only 10 percent of the Milky Way. Obviously, Earth is in this favored zone. But if only 5 percent of planets have the right relationship to their stars to host life, and only 10 percent of stars are in a habitable zone to begin with--well, you get the picture. Add in that science still doesn't have the slightest idea what causes life to begin, and even in a galaxy of 100 billion suns, living things similar to us may be rare.

Finally, consider that intelligent beings may be rare in time as well as space. Earth life appears to have taken about 4 billion years from first cell to self-awareness, but it's only been 7,000 years from controlled agriculture to the nuclear bomb. Assuming Earth is typical, life may require incredible amounts of time to reach intelligence, and then quite rapidly advance to the ability to destroy itself--or, alternatively, evolve to some higher level. Thus the enormity of a galaxy may sponsor many intelligent civilizations, just not at the same time; the odds would be low that two planets would be in their space-probe-building period at the same moment. Evolving life may be abundant throughout galaxies, while intelligence in its technological phase is flashing in and out of existence very rapidly by cosmic standards.

This brings me to a haunting thought about the Lineweaver study. It estimates that the Milky Way's "galactic habitable zone" emerged about eight billion years ago. Our sun did not even form until about three billion years later; most Sol-like stars in the habitable zone are, on average, a billion years older than Earth's sun, the study supposes. If most of the stars in the galactic habitable zone are far older than Earth's sun, and if our evolutionary sequence is typical, this suggests that most of the intelligence our galaxy was destined to host has already come and gone: destroyed itself long ago, or long ago evolved beyond technological existence to some higher plane.

If you'd like far more on the topic of whether humanity is alone in the cosmos, including the religious implications, see my 1988 Atlantic Monthly story.

Now that last part is 22 pages... I had to print it out and will try to digest it here the next few days.

I don't really get what bovon was driving at... went a little too deep for me this late at night on too little sleep... better look after work tomorrow probably.

[Bovon]

Originally posted by Gomer
I don't really get what bovon was driving at...

Ahhh well, don't worry too much about it... I'm a bit over half way thru a 12 pack, and by the morning, even I will not be able to define what I wrote tonight.. LOL.

[super gerbil]

I think that there is life on other planets.

but I don't think they are intelligent. I think they are something like bacteria and prokaryotic cells

[John Prophet]

lol@bovon



Well....to those somewhat in the know spiritually, the very purpose of all these mars rover deals and lunar trips etc etc ad infinitum...the VERY purpose IS to try to discredit the bible and of course, creationism.

If you would only be able to see a little "behind the scenes"..as to the powers than actually "affect" the world..then you would see sooooo much more clearly into cause/effect and also you'd see behind the thin veil of the publicly given "reasons" for such "missions" (and the BILLIONS spent) and also you'd see behind the clash of different idealogies.

A quick summary...God created everything, lol...he even created the angel who was formally known as lucifer (sounds like Prince almost, lol)...Lucifer had a few thoughts he shouldnt have had...then he acted on them..next thing he knows he is grovelling in the dust,lol. Of course on his way down he managed to lead a third of the angels away in his short lived coup attempt. So now he is known as Satan, or the Devil etc. BUT....he isnt really the one I was referring to by saying "powers that affect".

Satan is just the Boss of the "Anti God" forces. And even though he knows he has already lost...he stillgets off on perverting Gods creation and trying to draw men away and doom them to hell. BUT, of course you must know that Satan cant be everywhere at once..just like Eisenhower couldnt be at Normandy, and Midway, and Manilla and Africa at one time....so Satans has his heirarchy...just like any commander in cheif does.

And of course, he has his different war departments. Intelligence, counter intel, sabatoge, infiltration, distraction ad naseum. So satan has his master plan to try and counter anything and everything God stands for. And he is very patient...he doesnt try to overthrow ideas and truths all at once....he just gets them to vary a tinyyyyyyyyyy bit at a time.

For the common poverty stricken hopeless young man in the inner city....well, the devil has plenty of easily available avenues of further destruction.......but for the intellectual types....ahhhhhh..he has to be a bit more subtle.

For them he appeals to .....logic....science....advancement, humanism, 'reason' ( or more accurately "reasoning").......of course, in the end, he leads them astray all the same. The issue at hand being.....he is smarter than them....but he appeals to their large egos and pridefullness....they puff up with each new 'discovery' and theory. They like to imagine themselves as "seekers of truth"...also they want to be associated with the all important quality of "open mindedness"....ahhhh, but they are justtttttttttt as easy to decieve.

So if he can lead em to find justttttttttttttttt a litttttttllleeee bit of moisture, or some other evidence of "life"...then he wins another set of men...or even a whole generation of "intellectuals" etc who have "disproved God" or "disproved creatinism". (evidently he couldnt quite pull the full trick with Darwin....for one reason cuz kids etc today are too dull to understand what Darwin was all about...they dont think that deep, lol...but a mars rover??? ohhhhh, they can fathom that.

So, I wish space permitted me to go into elaborate detail about these things...these "powers and principalities" that bend the mind and will of world leaders.....but it doesnt....so I will do my normal thing of leaving you all with a little "prediction"....because even an intelligent scientist would seem to want to at least check out the credibility of a predicition when they see it increasingly come true before their eyes. Set is aside and look at it in 6 months.....then 6 more etc.

The near future.

Humanism (the power and "good" in all people....opposite of what the Bible says), science, rationalism, 'freedom" and the trump card of satans hand these days...relativism...WILL ALL ADVANCE....almost MIRACULOUSLY......belief in God will be pictured as even more 'quaint" and even "untenable" than they seem today.

You doubters will seem to be "winning"! lol (winning what though?)

But at the same time as all these "advances" are being made....there will be more and more problems on the earth....more impossible situations...more catastrophes....more hate.

All of our sciences and human acheivements will have failed...everything willbe on the brink of collapse.....famine, pestilance, war..no answer.

What the world will really clamor for is........LEADERSHIP.

You WILL see Europe under the leadership of one person...(MAYBE not the next pope...but if its not him, he will by his right hand giving FULL approval...even most likely actually worshipping the man as "god"...and also giving "signs" to seemingly show Gods approval ----see "fatima" lol) ...and of course,one currency....(when I was a kid everyone joked about the "one world economy" as if it was as far away and fanciful as day trips to mars etc...but its basically here now...and we allllllllllllll see the EU gaining power)

You will see Anti Semitism on a world wide level that would make Hitler gasp.....most likely followed closely behind with a similar persecution of Christians.

Meanwhile the Ecumenical movement will move fullllllllllllllll steam ahead...it will still carry the name of "Christian"..or at least it will be partially made up of "Christians".....but they wont be really...lol..they will be as decieved as the worst murdering sinner. Any "true" Christian will have two characteristics in those days...they WONT have anything to do with the Ecumenical thing...but they WILL be still true to Isreal. (although Im not sure they will be TOO outspoken about it....what I do now is even a luxury)

And you probably know the rest of the story by now.....this leader will make a nice little peace treaty with the "Jews"...but...oopsy, he will renig half way thru. (bringing to a head the AntiSemitic fury I spoke of)

And, to top it off.....dude will have "power" to do all sorts of "signs" etc. He will be EXACTLY ---"like something out of the movies". (just like society has now been trained to be drawn too and fascinated by)

Also..there will be all kinds of "upheavals"...(I dont know a better word). But just an "upheaval" of things long held to be true....the upheavals will probably not change anything really....people will just further polarize to whichever belief they already held....and these upheavals will be more on the lines of casting God in a worse light and giving more creedence to the world leader.(slightly under the premise that if people have a heart to doubt..then God can easily give them a little "rope to hang themselves with")...possible "upheavals"....well as fits this thread......possibly some strong or even "irrefutable" evidence of life on mars , lol (or elsewhere).........'discovery' of the "true" Bible....as opposed to what you all might call the "hogdpodge" of centuries of copies and versions of texts......possible "creation" of a "man" from cloning and other dna sciences...a fully "normal" human....normal but also slightly "transcendant".....maybe even..to cast further confusion on the whole Israeli scene--possible discovery of the very "Ark of the Covenant"...(buried under the temple mount perhaps)

Sounds a little fantastic I know....but you have to realize that these things wont happen overnight...although they are WELL on their way even now. Ironically for this discussion, by the time the proverbial hits the fan...it will be TOO LATE to sort out whats real and whats not....EVEN THE INTELLIGENT wont be able to understand the things the world stage will present....but it will be too late to even TRY to find your way....by then the play has come too near the end to look away from it...even those who know and SEE IT COMING...will have a hard time keeping a grasp on what they KNOW to be true.

So, yes I know it is strange sounding......but it is also all predicted already.....and it will come...no way it cant..no way to stop it, lol. But it will unfold little by little....and those who dont already KNOW...KNOW....KNOW..the truth....well, good luck, lol....because the power of the delusion will be too strong to deny. NOW is the time to search these things out..now..while it is still daytime...once the night sets in....too late.


(ignore the typos, I did this on a laptop....and I am NOT a laptop user, lol)

JP

[originel]

sooo...you're saying that we won't find life on mars? and that there is no intelligent life anywhere else? very interesting post (which i firmly believe to be false) but it doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the stated question.

so what would you say if we did find life on mars?

i will point this out tho:

the VERY purpose IS to try to discredit the bible and of course, creationism.

that is completely off base and untrue. I'm an Electrical Engineer myself and i actually take a great deal of offense that you would assume scientists are out to take down christians because it is simply untrue. yes there are those that feel this way...just like there are christians who are trying to take down scientists...but they are a rarity and not the norm. Most scientists are out there to try and figure out how the universe works because they are curious, just like a kid who takes apart an old toy to see how it works. there is nothing malevolent about this and i'm sorry you are paranoid enough to think that this is the case.

[f1oored]

I don't think us Christians will have to say anything if life is found on Mars. Just because something isn't mentioned in the Bible doesn't mean God didn't create it. I don't believe aligators are mentioned in the bible but non-believers don't use that as a point to discredit the Bible.

God created many things that were not mentioned in the Bible. There is a vast universe out their and God has been around forever. Who are we to believe that God the almighty did nothing before he created us and Earth. For all we know, we could be God's 5th creation or something.

I think it is possible that aliens could exist. Why not? Why couldn't God have more than one thing going at a time? He's God, He can do whatever He wants.

[Omardeth]

Originally posted by originel
sooo...you're saying that we won't find life on mars? and that there is no intelligent life anywhere else? very interesting post (which i firmly believe to be false) but it doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the stated question.

so what would you say if we did find life on mars?

i will point this out tho:

that is completely off base and untrue. I'm an Electrical Engineer myself and i actually take a great deal of offense that you would assume scientists are out to take down christians because it is simply untrue. yes there are those that feel this way...just like there are christians who are trying to take down scientists...but they are a rarity and not the norm. Most scientists are out there to try and figure out how the universe works because they are curious, just like a kid who takes apart an old toy to see how it works. there is nothing malevolent about this and i'm sorry you are paranoid enough to think that this is the case.

well put ..