Last week, the English press got all breathy about the “hint” that Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, might have some microscopic critters crawling about on or under its surface. The hintiness of the evidence is very hinty indeed, but it was interesting enough to sell a little beer and shampoo (the true function of the media), so the editors went with the story and the commenters immediately came out of the woodwork to Tell Us What it All Means.
What fascinates me is how much exercise people get leaping to conclusions, constructing non sequiturs, and, of course, boasting about their superior faculties of reason (over religious people) or (a much smaller minority in the Country that Used to be England) promoting a simplistic biblical narrative that, in fact, has nothing to do with adjudicating the question of extraterrestrial life.
On the “We prefer to worship the Intellect rather than use it” side of things, you get priceless entries like this from people who anticipate the imminent destruction of Religion by the Juggernaut of Science:
Leaving religion out of it, how about a few facts! This Solar System including Earth is approximately 4½ billion years. The Milky Way Galaxy of which we are part of is about 13.5 billion years old and the rest of it is about 35 billion years old. Each star you see is a sun of another system.
I’m sure glad we’ve got science experts who know the score on the dating of the universe there in the combox to correct us dumb ol’ religious believers. As long as you burn a pinch of incense to Science and Reason, you don’t have to actually know that the whole universe is roughly 13.5 billion years old, not just the Milky Way. You just need a superior tone of voice. And you don’t have to know anything at all about Fr. Georges Lemaitre, the priest who first formulated the Big Bang Theory. Still less do you have to know about the previous generations of Intellect Worshippers who derided that theory as “theology” due to the fact that it looked uncomfortably like saying that the universe has a beginning as in “In the beginning”, veering dangeously close to invitations to think about You Know Who.
Still another intellect worshipper writes the following insightful syllogism:
Does other life but human life exist ?
You can’t tell, the facts say yes though. (we are the dominant ones on this planet)
Does god exist ?
You can’t tell, the talking snake and pregnant virgin said it does though.
Hmmm… does other life than human life exist? Boy, that’s a poser. I’ll have to put down my high school biology text, take my dog out for a walk and lay down under our alder tree to puzzle that one out. Are there any living things besides me and my fellow humans? If only I wasn’t religious and had the benefit of a truly true scientific mind like readers of the Daily Mail. You can tell they are hard headed thinkers whose views on “god” are sound because they speak dismissively of a Judaic myth about the Fall and the Blessed Virgin Mary, so clearly they have disproven the entire edifice of the Christian tradition. I just hope they can resolve the mystery of whether other life than human life exists for us dumb religious people.
Another Clever Person, of a more satirical bent, writes:
I’m quite outraged by this, it’s obviously a lie cooked up by those ‘science geeks’, just like that man walking on the moon nonsense! There is only life on earth, man is the only living creature that has ever been, it has been said by Him. I urge you all to get off the computer and read your bibles!
Religious people, you see, believe that no living things exist except for human beings. And that’s because the Bible says so in some unspecified chapter and verse. Those dumb religious believers—including Buzz Aldrin, who celebrated communion with Neil Armstrong after the Eagle landed—also don’t believe man walked on the Moon. Religious people are all stupid and ignorant of the most elementary facts, you see. The reason they are stupid is because they don’t worship the intellect. Instead, they often use it, which just confuses secular Daily Mail readers.
Meanwhile, from the US comes the six day creationist contingent, filled with a confused melange of right wing culture war and Talk Radio dogmatisms all jumbled up together:
The entire Universe and all that is in it was created in 6 Days; and after a short period of time the entire creation was under the curse from sin. The curse is of course decay and death. God “made the Earth to be inhabited” Nothing can come “of itself” ‘nothing! Also in a short time ‘When the Kingdom comes’ the curse will be lifted. Evolution is the biggest HOAX followed by Social Security and Global Warming ever perpetrated upon the populace! Jesus said it is foolish not to believe “all’ that the prophets have written. All scripture is divinely inspired; but God Wrote on the Tablets of the Ten Commandments (Divinely INSCRIBED) [Ex 20:11] “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day:” Don’t be fooled by Science falsely so called” ALSO INSPIRED 1TI 6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:
While this may be an admirable expression of Fundamentalism and sundry culture war obsessions in early third millennial America, it has nothing to do with what Scripture actually requires of us, nor with what implications, if any, are to be gleaned from the presence of life on Titan.
From a Catholic perspective, the implications of the presence of life on Titan (assuming for a moment that it exists) are… not much (if by “much” you mean a challenge to the essentials of Catholic faith or the inspiration of Scripture). All it would mean is that the Lord, the giver of life, chose to create life on Titan, which he has every right to do if he feels like it. To feel threatened by that makes as much sense as feeling threatened by the presence of life around thermal vents at the bottom of the sea. In fact, several things would have to line up for the existence of extraterrestrial life to pose a challenge to the Catholic picture of the universe
First, it has to exist, which we don’t know.
Second, it has to be sentient. Alien oysters cannot sin any more than ours do.
Third, it has to have fallen. An unfallen race is not in need of redemption.
Fourth, we have to know that, being fallen, it has been denied the chance of redemption by God. How on earth (or Thulcandra) we’d ever figure that out beats me.
Fifth, we have to know that the redemption will be forever denied this hypothetically existent, hypothetically rational, hypothetically fallen race. After all, if you’d visited earth 10,000 years ago you would not have seen to many obvious clue that redemption was in the works for us. And since the only way to know that God has no plans to redeem them is to know the mind of God, this seems an especially tricky hurdle to get over.
Sixth, we have to know that redemption via an incarnation, death and resurrection of God the Son in this fallen alien nature is the only way in which God redeems fallen creatures and that such a redemption will never be granted such creatures.
As C.S. Lewis says, if our faith never encounters a bigger challenge than this, we are sitting pretty.
Man is an inveterate philosopher. He cannot resist the impulse to make grand pronouncements about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything on the feeblest provocation. The trouble is, he usually doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He incessantly goes off half-cocked. Both the secularists and the fundamentalists who hold forth with sweeping confidence in comboxes are typical specimens of postmodernity’s odd tendency to assume that our technological civilization somehow confers indiscriminately on all its citizens an automatic Ph.D on whatever they feel like pontificating about in a bar or a combox. Religious fundamentalists feel confident in sweeping aside the entire scientific enterprise (except when driving cars, flying in airplanes, using microwaves, or going to the doctor) in favor of a simple appeal to their favorite half-remembered bits of pseudoknowledge about the Bible. They don’t dismiss germ theory, but they are curiously confident that Genesis is supposed to be a science text. Meanwhile atheist fundamentalists are likewise uber-confident that they grasp Science and Religion completely, while they spout equally ignorant nostrums, dismiss all believers as Fundamentalists, and make fools of themselves with pronouncements about our 35 billion year old universe, all while touting their superior intellect, which they worship but seldom or never use.
We live in a time like no other: where more knowledge has been piled up than ever before (about both Science *and* about biblical revelation) and more and more partisans of each use it for little besides hurling fragments of it at one another like chimps flinging dung at one another at the zoo.
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Resistance is not futile - those Borg may have gotten it all together, but they forgot where they put it.
“The trouble is, he usually doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He incessantly goes off half-cocked.”
Spot on Mark! Exactly what I’ve been noticing when you ask someone for the scientific method which concludes their theory.
No alien life could ever pose a threat to Catholicism. Even if some aliens were found to be humanoid and believed in three gods, they would have a false gospel. Even if some aliens were found to be superior to men and believed in no gods, they would have a false god. Even if some aliens were found to be humanoid and believed they were redeemed, they would have a false gospel. Nothing in this Universe can contradict the Creator, even if it seems to, because nothing in this Universe is its own divine creator.
Yet this is how the Antichrist will fool some people and they will worship him as a divine creator. Better to stick with Jesus Christ than to give into doubts. And to stick with Christ is not to ignore truth, nor is it to hypocritically say “We believe this, yet are open to truth, but no matter what the truth is our beliefs are true and can never be lies”, but rather is faith and fidelity to God, for God Himself has assured us of what we believe to be true, and we must not doubt Him, for He alone is the Truth: Nothing else is more true or faithful than Him.
Good comment nick!
I think what would give all these anti religious zealots a collective heart attack would be the following (with a hat tip to Walker Percy):
An alien starship arrives in orbit. They manage to make contact, and one of the questions they ask, after viewing the state of man: “Have you asked God for help?”
Excellento! Posting to FB - this is sure to annoy both my religious and atheist fundamentalist friend alike (though I am certain the Christian ones will be more charitable…hopefully!)
@ Mike in KC,
Nail on the head…
From the We NO LONGER “Have A Secret” File <<<<<<
IF people going to Mass don’t know they sin AND they don’t know the effect of their sin…. HOW about the rest of the culture! The New Agers, Spiritualists, Atheists, Agnostics, and so on. They don’t NEED Jesus Christ because they don’t know they’ve fallen!
I don’t know about you but I don’t think we should keep THIS a Secret !
Mark wrote:
“Fourth, we have to know that, being fallen, it has been denied the chance of redemption by God. How on earth (or Thulcandra) we’d ever figure that out beats me.”
Consider the number of “practicing Catholics” in confession lines on Saturday compared with the number of “practicing Catholics” in communion lines on Sunday!
NOW, you know why we can “NO LONGER HAVE A SECRET”
“...and lay down under our alder tree to puzzle that one out”
LIE DOWN, stupid English major!!!
Why is it that some Catholics are so afraid of doubting evolution? Personally I have found the biggest problem with people who believe in evolution is almost always the fact that they cannot apply basic probability laws to question in hand.
Personally I went to university believing in evolution and having seen the scientific arguments that people place against it combined with the fact I can do maths, which is a talent lacking in the average biologist, I was forced to choose not to “believe” in it.
When it is pointed out to these people lacking in mathematical ability how staggeringly improbable evolution is, the reply generally consists of “that is why it takes billions of years”. As if this little thing wouldn’t be taken into account? Lol.
Of course even when you can stump a person scientifically and mathematically they often still think that you are providing some kind of biblical argument.
God Bless
TO: Paul Hughes
I can’t speak for Mark, but for myself, I don’t think he is talking about not doubting evolution. I think he is talking about those who say we MUST because it ‘contradicts the Bible’ or some such. The entire point is that there is no conflict between religion and science.
One of my favorite articles on evolution is from Fred Reed (a man not really religious himself). It’s long, but a good read:
http://fredoneverything.net/EvolutionAgain.shtml
Einstein was one of those “Intellect Worshippers who derided that [subsequently-named Big Bang] theory as “theology” ” But, a few years later, he did reverse himself completely and personally complimented Fr. LaMaitre in public for the beauty of the theory he had constructed.
Additionally, I recently learned that in the 1700’s the French academy of science declared that meteorites were imaginary - nothing but superstitious folklore - and refused to accept that rocks brought to them by “country folk” could have fallen “glowing and smouldering out of the sky.” Those intellectuals were too smart to fall for that deception, too!
Great article Mark. I’ve said this before on a recent episode of the Catholic Lab - if we do find ‘life’ on another planet regardless of how small it is, we will marvel at it. And yet, how many humans are willing to destroy an unborn child.
www.catholiclab.net
I just hope the aliens don’t eat us.
I am not too sure you can easily dismiss those who say that there are theological reasons to reject evolution either.
Nice post, Mark; Also, Mike in KC, MO gave a post worth repeating and a chuckle.
TeaPot562
What a refreshing article. Now I will go back to listening to Mahler’s Symphony #2 “Resurrection”. Mahler another great Catholic convert who got it.
You will note that fundamentalists of any stripe never compose music of the caliber of Mahler, Mozart, Haydn, or Beethoven.
“When it is pointed out to these people lacking in mathematical ability how staggeringly improbable evolution is, the reply generally consists of “that is why it takes billions of years”. As if this little thing wouldn’t be taken into account? Lol.”
Hmmm, this sounds like a good argument for God. He dose tend to work against the odds, so to speak.
It all depends, of course, on what you mean by “accepting” or “rejecting” evolution. To use Richard Dawkins’ metaphor against him, natural selection is a jim-dandy “crane” for explaining species variation. It starts to labor heavily, though, when you start using it for species development over time. And when you try to use it to explain species origin, the cable snaps and the engine overheats. The fact that it’s the best “crane” science has developed doesn’t mean that it’s good enough to do everything the anti-theists want it to do.
Natural Selection is its own category. Natural Selection can explain change in biology over time from species and information contained within the genome of those species already there.
It is exactly the same in artifical selection. The farmer breed the cows which already had the capacity to produce the best milk, the juiciest steak etc.. The farmer did not however evolve his herd, just prevented some from breeding and encouraging others.
So since natural selection is a process exactly the same as artificial selection where nature plays the part of the farmer, observation of natural selection is not proof of evolution. Rather natural selection is proof of natural selection.
P
Here is an Abstract from a paper published by the VP of the National Research Council of Italy in his book: “Evolutionism, the Decline of an Hypothesis” November 9, 2009. ABSTRACT: The discovery of collagen in a Tyrannosaurus-rex dinosaur femur bone was recently reported in the journal Science. Its geologic location was the Hell Creek Formation in the State of Montana, United States of America. When it was learned in 2005 that Triceratops and Hadrosaur femur bones in excellent condition were discovered by the Glendive (MT) Dinosaur & Fossil Museum, another team of scientists asked and received permission to saw them in half and collect samples for C-14 testing of any bone collagen that might be extracted. Indeed both bones contained collagen and conventional dates of 30,890 ± 380 radiocarbon years (RC) for the Triceratops and 23,170 ±170 RC years for the Hadrosaur were obtained using the Accelerated Mass Spectrometer (AMS). Total organic carbon and/or dinosaur bone calcium carbonate fraction of bio-apatite was then extracted and pretreated to remove potential contaminants and concordant radiocarbon dates were obtained, all of which were similar to radiocarbon dates for megafauna. Goodby evolution and those millions and billions of years. Mark wake up and review what the Church fathers said including St. John Damacene wrote about “dragons.” Try www.kolbcenter.org and www.dinosaurc14ages.com for starters
The problem for the believer with the existence of life on other planets is not that it contradicts any clear passage of Scripture or any doctrine of the church, but that it seems to erode (just slightly) the special position that the Bible seems to give to the Earth.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all Christians assumed that the only intelligent biological life in the universe was on earth. That would become a “tradition” of some sort. It would get mentioned in sermons and books and casual conversation and so on. And most people don’t make careful distinctions about such things. E.g., this is a dogma but this other thing is just an idea.
So then Zephran Cochran does his warp thing, the Vulcans land in Montana and we’re suddenly faced with a universe with lots of other intelligent species.
The fact that such a story wouldn’t contradict the Bible doesn’t change the fact that it would be a _point of discomfort_ for many Christians. It would challenge a “tradition” (not Tradition).
There are dinosaur footprints in Texas with fossil Human footprints together (and elsewhere but in Texas they are discovered in pristine condition under tones of cretaceous rocks). Did the folks leaving these footprints in mud and a few hours later rock be those who “scoffed at Noah and therefore missed the boat?” Of course ome folks in academia believe them to be aliens from another planet. However why would aliens with human feet leave thier comfortable space ship and walk around in the limy mud with the dangerous meat eating Acrocanthosaurus? Besides the carbon dates for fossil wood in the clay between the limestone strata was the same as in Montana and from Texas to Alaska for other dinosaur bones? Why try to compromise with the evolution hypothesis when in recent years scientists have shown it is a fairy tale for some tenured professors and gullible students of all ages?
Several other Points:
Instead of conjuring up wild theories about aliens it seems more sensible to: (1) Accept the word of God and the logical assertion that these footprints were made by a non-evolved creature called man and (2) Accept the concensus among knowledgeable scientists (who agree with the church fathers) that radioactive C-14 was created along with all the other elements and their isotopes in-situ by God as he did the whole Universe, stars, galaxies, planets etc. (3) Accept the logical conclusion that since the creation of carbon 12, carbon 13 and carbon 14 that Carbon-14 has been increasing by cosmic radiation and photosynthesis so that by now, in our time, there is so much C-14 that it has now reached one part/trillion of total carbon. It is easily detectable by beta counting method developed by Dr. Libby up to about 40,000-50,000 C-14 years and by the Accelerated Mass Spectrometer method that counts each atom of C-12, C13 and C-14 up to about 80,000 C-14 years. (4) Accept the fact that diamonds thought to be up to three billions of years old are in the range of 55,000 to 80,000 C-14 years old. Therefore accept the earth and universe to be only 1000’s of years old NOT billions of years old and get back to following the dictates of the creator, love one another and enjoy life as He has given us.
An excellent discussion of these issues, without any name calling or yelling, can be heard hear.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stephen-hand/2010/05/29/hugh-owen-creation-and-mr-darwin
No matter what your particular viewpoint, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this conversation.
If the Creator wanted to create life on other planets He would have set up for them a plan of redemption as well. But it was God’s plan for Jesus to be given all authority on heaven and earth, so that when heaven and earth pass away his words will never pass away; by saying this Jesus is declaring his authority over all of the universe and eternity.
” the only imagery ever used when poking fun at faith, is Catholic”? Oh please, don’t flatter yourselves. You take what could have been a good essay and turn it into a hysterical screed with that comment. Somewhere between paranoia and triumphalism, your message is lost. As usual.
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