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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Finding life on Mars. What would it mean to Christians?


The Pope's astronomer has recently been quoted as saying, "...one cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God... They would be part of creation...Children of God."

According to this article in The Independent, such statements can be seen as an attempt to show that the current Pope is not as opposed to science as some of his statements, including those about Intelligent Design, might lead you to believe. In fact, the Pope's astronomer, José Gabriel Funes, a Jesuit priest, said that for him "evolution is a given. He also said that he believed in the Big Bang theory as the most likely explanation for the origin of the universe, and that the Bible should not be held to account for its lack of scientific accuracy. "Fundamentally," he said, "the Bible is not a book of science... It's a love letter written by God to his people in the language of two or three thousand years ago... So one cannot ask the Bible for scientific responses."

But what of the ID, anti-science proponents? They've just recently produced a documentary with Ben Stein, Expelled, which posits that the initial requirements for life are so remarkably unlikely as to make God's hand a virtual requirement for the formation of even microscopic life. Unfortunately, it is appearing to be increasingly unlikely that life is as wide-spread in the universe as only recently was thought. This means that NASA is unlikely to find any signs of life any time soon. Can anyone imagine that the misguided Christians who oppose science will only use this as further proof for their inane ideas? It would be better for us, as Christians, if NASA actually did find life. It would cause the ID, anti-evolutionists to completely rethink their entire position. I have little doubt that they would only manage to come up with some new horror, but at least the old one would be extinguished. And maybe even a couple of them might learn a valuable lesson.

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