by Justin Webb

Created on: January 11, 2007   Last Updated: August 06, 2010

Picture a clear August night in your mind. As you gaze up at the stars, you notice the Milky Way stretching across your field of vision. It is truly remarkable, isn't it?
And think about it - it's just one galaxy; there are billions of galaxies in the universe! Let me throw a statistic out there just to give you an idea of how huge the universe is exactly: top astronomers today have measured the universe and estimated that it is 156 billion light-years across.

Okay, let me restate that sentence - the universe is 13.6 billion light-years across. This means that if you could travel the speed of light, if would take you 156 billion years to reach the other side of the universe! Talk about gigantic, that number is overwhelming.

Let's take this new statistic and ponder it for a minute; I think you'll see that while it is possible for the animate life on this planet to be the only life in the entire universe, the probability that we are the only life is mind-bogglingly low. I mean, we haven't come close to exploring the entirety of our own galaxy yet, much less the universe! Actually, that makes the statement that we are the only life in the universe sound extremely audacious to me.

So, given the probability that no other life exists is extremely low, let's say hypothetically that life does in fact exist. What would happen to earthly religion?

There is an argument in favor of God's existence known as the Telelogical (design) Argument. A brief synopsis of this argument using numbered premises looks like this:

1. A thing "X" is too complex and beautiful in design to be created randomly.
2. Therefore, "X" must have had a sentient creator.
3. God is that sentient creator.
4. Therefore, God exists.

Now, while this particular argument deals with the God as portrayed in Christianity, and while this particular philosophical argument (as with any philosophical argument) has its objections and reasons for those objections, I will use it as an example because it shows that we are created for a purpose.

Here's where the article topic comes in: "What if other life was found in the universe? What effects would it have on religion?"

I will attempt to offer adequate response to this matter by offering my personal philosophy. I believe that life on other worlds would have no bearing on religion whatsoever. Aside from those few radical evangelists, along with other radical foreign religious followers (I mean foreign in the sense that it is foreign from me), I think that the

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