by Paul Schingle

Created on: December 15, 2009

I should think that discovering life on other planets would be a huge boost to believers in evolution and would likely have a devastating effect on those who sell, er, excuse me, preach religion.  This would be especially difficult to swallow for those who consider themselves Bible literalists.  To those who believe that every last word in the Bible is true, even the thought of life on other planets is impossible.  We (that is those of us on earth) are supposed to be God's little pets.  Don't you tell me that God is some kind of whore-spreading His seed all over the universe.  Yeah, life on other planets would definitely be a serious blow to religion-except maybe the Scientologists.

To those of us with a more open mind, the thought of life on other planets is not only possible-but probable.  I don't know that we have the technology to get to where these other life-filled planets are-at least not in my lifetime.  From what little our science can tell, there's certainly no sign of life within our solar syatem-and, maybe not within our galaxy.  But, with the (almost, literally) countless stars and planets out there, it's nearly impossible to believe that there isn't life somewhere else-at least not without religion.

I think Richard Dawkins explained it best in his book, "The God Delusion."  Dawkins stated that creationists argument that life evolving spontaneously, out of gases and water, was something like a billion-to-one shot.  That may be the case.  But, as near as we can tell, there are a billion, billion (that's one billion times one billion) planets in the universe.  So, even with odds like that, the likelihood of spontaneous life happening on earth is actually pretty good.  In fact, there are probably, roughly, a billion other planets somewhere in the universe, which have spontaneously spawned life.  As hard as this may be to believe, it is certainly more likely than the Bible story of God making Adam out of sand, and Eve from one of Adam's ribs-unless you allow for metaphor.

Now, just assuming this is correct for the sake of argument, the religious could ask, "If there are a billion planets with life on them, how come we haven't discovered them, yet?"  This seems a fair question.  My best answer is, all of these planets will have evolved at different rates.  There may be a million, or more, planets whose life is still at the amoeba stage.  There, likewise, will be a large number of planets who are further advanced than we are, scientifically.  If that's the case, they would likely find us before we found them.  Like I said, it may not happen in my (or your) lifetime, but I still think it likely that life will be discovered on other planets and, thus, put a serious damper on those who interpret the Bible literally.

What would be the effect of the discovery of life on other planets on religion?  I should think that this kind of discovery would almost certainly be a devastating blow to religion-especially those religions who depend on literal interpretations of the Bible.

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