05-30-2011, 07:35 PM
(09-05-2010, 03:20 PM)richness of tradition Wrote: 'Hawking, who is renowned for his work on black holes, said the 1992 discovery of another planet orbiting a star other than the sun makes "the coincidences of our planetary conditions ... far less remarkable and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings."
That does kind of make me think though. If there are millions of other planets out there obiting their own suns what relevance with Christianity have for possible inhabitants of such planets? Christianity would seem to be a home-grown thing which would apply to planet Earth but not across the entire universe.
And if there are no other intelligent beings out there, it seems like an awful waste of space (as I think Carl Sagan said).
We're making a lot of leaps here.
First of all, the methodology used to ‘discover’ other planets is rather theoretical.
Usually, this involves gravitational fluctuation readings. But if we assume for argument’s sake that the readings are accurate and they are due to the reasons suggested (celestial objects orbiting other stars), we still have the issue of these bodies being rather large and, given our understanding of science, unlikely to produce conditions conducive to life.
Proximity isn’t simply the issue. Many researchers point to the fact that the Earth is quite a display of coincidences.
The Moon appears as the same size as the Sun, which is really interesting since this produces eclipses. But on a more functional level, the tides resulting from the interaction of the Moon and Earth are responsible for many aspects of life.
Just supposing for a moment that there are other intelligent, sentient beings in the universe, this would not automatically disprove the Faith as many like to claim. These could be other created beings, perhaps lower than Angels but higher than us, or even some form of Angel.
With that said, I personally do not believe there are celestial bodies inhabited by beings like us because this would seem to erode the special place Man has in God’s Creation. But more than this, I find no historical reason to believe in such a thing. The extraterrestrial craze, I believe is rooted is something real – and something demonic. I attribute the .001% of actual ‘sightings’ to visitation from a rather dark place.
In any event, this talk of creation from nothing with no creator is absurd. How people could go through life and not see a tapestry of intended design is explained only, in my view, by extreme materialism that usually includes solipsism or nihilism.
But as I wrote in another thread on this scientist, I really question just how much he is saying. A few years ago, he was unable to complete longer sentences and so I doubt now he is able to plumb the depths of essential truths.