The latest Mars rover, Curiosity, will land on the Red Planet in a few days, if all goes well. Should Curiosity find evidence of past life on Mars, allow me to preempt what will certainly be a rewrite of history on the part of the world's major religions. All will come out and say such a discovery is completely consistent with religious teachings. Nonsense. Let us be clear that the Bible is unambiguous about creation; the Earth is the center of the universe, only humans were made in the image of God, and all life was created in six days. All life in all the heavens. In six days. So when we discover that life exists or existed elsewhere in our solar system or on a planet orbiting another star in the Milky Way, or in a planetary system in another galaxy, we will see a huge effort to square that circle with amazing twists of logic and contorted justifications. But do not buy the historical edits: Life on another planet is completely incompatible with religious tradition. Any other conclusion is nothing but ex post facto rationalization to preserve the myth. Let us see why more specifically.
From Genesis 1:1, we get:
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, 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.
Nothing in that mentions alien worlds, which the ancients knew nothing about, of course. Man was told to rule over the fish on the Earth, not on other planets. But God would have known of these alien worlds, so it is curious that he did not instruct the authors to include the language.
There is also a problem with Genesis 1:3: "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." Well, the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, yet the universe, and all the light generating stars in ancient galaxies, are more than 14 billion years old. So when God said, "Let there be light," there already had been light shining bright for at least 10 billion years. He was flipping a switch that had been turned on eons before by the thermonuclear reactions in stars. And that light bathed other suns and other planets long before the Earth was a loose accumulation of rocks orbiting our sun. Given that this is the story of all creation, these tidbits seem an important omission that will undermine the entire story when we find life elsewhere. We were late to the game of "let there be light."
We are also told in unambiguous terms that all life was created in six days. All life in all the heavens. Genesis 2:1 says, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." So here we learn that all life, in all the heavens, was complete, and all found on Earth. The complete totality of that creation in all the heavens, all of which was here on Earth, is made clear in the preceding sections of Genesis 1:1-31, with "every herb bearing seed" and "every beast" and "every fowl of the air." There is no modifier like "every fowl of the air -- that is, on Earth, but excluding life on the planet Xenflugan." We know all of this took place in six days, because Genesis 2:2 says, "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made." Now, some say that these are not real days but allegorical "God days," which could be millions of years each. But no, when God said, "Let there be light," and created life in six days, he tied these events to seasons on Earth, which are governed by real days. So the Bible tells us that all life, in all the heavens, was all put on Earth in six days -- that is, six Earth days. That leaves no room for alien life in this creation story. The discovery of alien life would therefore undermine the entire saga.
We can also have no doubt that the Earth is the center of the universe, because this is where God placed man. In the trial of Galileo, Pope Urban VIII made perfectly clear the church's understanding of God's word that the Earth is unambiguously the center of the universe:
We say, pronounce, sentence and declare that you, Galileo, by reason of these things which have been detailed in the trial and which you have confessed already, have rendered yourself according to this Holy Office vehemently suspect of heresy, namely of having held and believed a doctrine that is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture: namely that Sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west, and that one may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared and defined contrary to Holy Scripture.
Yet it would be difficult to claim the unique position of universe center if other planets held life that was zipping around in anti-gravity cars travelling at the speed of light. Clearly, if the ancients knew there was alien life, any form of life at all, the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe would be more difficult to sustain. Again, though, there is no mention of alien worlds or life beyond this little blue dot.
None of the 66 books of the Bible makes any reference to life other than that created by God here on Earth in that six-day period. If we discover life elsewhere, one must admit that that is a an oversight, so much so, in fact, that such a discovery must, to all but the most closed minds, call into question the entire story of creation and anything that follows from that story. How could a convincing story of life's creation leave out life?
As I stated at the beginning, none of this will matter upon life's discovery elsewhere. Religious leaders will simply declare that such life is fully compatible with, in fact predicted by, the Bible. Just like they eventually swept under the rug their being wrong about Earth's position in the heavens. They will create contorted justifications to support this view, cite a few passages of the Bible that could mean anything, and declare victory. Don't say I did not warn you.
Follow Jeff Schweitzer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JeffSchweitzer
Genesis 1: 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
That's a pretty big hole in this post ...not even quoting the source correctly.
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"There is also a problem with Genesis 1:3: "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." Well, the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, yet the universe, and all the light generating stars in ancient galaxies, are more than 14 billion years old. So when God said, "Let there be light," there already had been light shining bright for at least 10 billion years..."
ummmm .... that's not a bad description of our current knowledge of how the birth of the universe came into being via the "Big Bang"
ps Perhaps one should look up Georges Lemaître, a Roman Catholic priest.
As you could say about Georges `irascible' Lemaitre: one swallow does not make an evil cult.
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So it goes that Genesis is written as our first introduction to Yahveh in the same way we would teach our own children.
But I guess you didn't pay much attention to that? Don't worry... not many people below the pay range of theologians do.
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As for the "dumbing down" of information in the bible... that's nonsense. Every proper scientist can explain complex observations to their kids without dumbing them down, at all, or they can explain them in ways that are correct and consistent within the full theory. If G-d couldn't do that, he does not even qualify for the parenting level of an average scientifically literate person.
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You are both wrong. The bible is not open to allegorical interpretation. It is a historic document and has to be read in its historical context. Serious people have done that and they have come to some rather fundamental conclusions about it that can be expected to be a lot closer to the truth than idle talk by laypeople about things they didn't spend much time trying to understand in context.
I think, Dr. Schweitzer, you as a scientist can be expected to defer to the proper authorities in this matter... like the history departments specialized on Middle Easter religions in antiquity?
The article states the erroneous assumptions of the Roman Catholic Church towards Galileo when it determined that the Earth (the planet) is the center of the Universe. The Bible never says this nor even implies it. Yet church leaders took it upon themselves to pronounce this as a fact but when proven wrong by Galileo didn't react very well. The author does the same thing but in the opposite fashion. So this only discredits church leaders, not the Bible.
He then speaks about the creative days as if they were literal days rather than time periods. Since the ancients had no knowledge at the time of higher mathematics or even numbers over several thousands it would be reasonable to conclude that when Yahveh inspired Moses to write this account such numbers would have had little meaning to them so He used time periods with separations in those periods showing what was done in a specific order which lines up quite well with the fossil record and evolutionary theories, which is also supported by science as to how the Earth developed.
Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. The Egyptians had a very good sense of experimental mathematics and its engineering applications 2000 years before the Torah was written. Their astronomical observation skills were developed far more than those of the Jewish people. One could even argue that the builders of Stonehenge knew more about the movement of the heavens thousands of years earlier. Mediterranean civilizations had far surpassed the Jewish people in their architectural skills and many could build quite capable vessels thousand years before the main texts of the Jewish Bible are compiled for the final time, whereas the writers of Genesis obviously had absolutely no nautical skills, neither in the construction of ships, nor in the description of nautical phenomena.
So to argue that Genesis is the result of missing knowledge in antiquity is wrong. It is the result of missing knowledge by the writers of Genesis who are obviously writing from a rather limited point of view. Most scholars of the time were probably laughing about the rather restricted ideas contained in these texts.
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The author of this article said he wanted to "preempt what will certainly be a rewrite of history on the part of the world's major religions". There are at least 20 major world religions - he covered ONE.
I'm still waiting.
Some in the atheist and science communities enjoy hounding people of faith for the inconsistencies in their religious books, written millennia ago, with facts and information discovered over the last few centuries. However that behaviour only plays to the "persecution complex" of the target and has no effect in changing the underlying belief system. If one wants to keep religious dogma from being taught as fact in school or being used for the basis of public policy, the above tactics won't work. Those using them will lose.
The "Flying Spaghetti Monster" is far more effective in preventing "Creation Science" from being taught in public schools. But not because of it's humorous and sarcastic nature. When Fundamentalist Christians realise that once their "Creation Science dogma" enters the classroom all other non Christian religions would get an equal opportunity to present their stories, their demands for "Creation Science" in the school are dropped like a hot potato.
First, I didn't say I was a Christian, that is an assumption which you made up all on your own.
Second, my argument is that religion and religious beliefs are robust, they can they will survive being hit with what outsiders consider contradictory information.
Third, highly intelligent well educated individuals, such as you, can and are total dumb asses in the social arena.
Fourth, you think you found the perfect argument to "destroy" Christians regarding the "discovery" of life in the cosmos outside of Earth. But you have failed to realize people of faith may have been thinking on this issue for centuries that you have only pondered over this past year.
As for ability to argue, you don't have any. For in order to argue you must first understand. I fully understood your article. I actually agree with it. You obviously did not take time to read my comment, and it's likely you will not get to the bottom of this reply.
'We created the heavens with great force and no doubt we enlarge them continually.' (Zariyath. 47)
'In many heavens and on lands, all living creatures belong only to him.' (Bakara 116)
Seven heavens were created by Allah. His message reverbates thruogh each and every single one of them. (Al-i Imran 19)
'Allah created all the creatures from WATER. Some of them crawl, some of them walk on four legs, some of them walk on two. Allah creates as he pleases.' (Nur 45)
So, they will have a rationalization for anything else that comes up.
You are trying to insist that Christians accept a iteral interpretaton of Genesis so tat hypthetical life on Mars can refute it.
Now it's all `god of the clingfilm', resting weightless and evidence-free on top of everything. You can't shake it off.
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