Recently I watched the movie Contact, directed by Robert Zemeckis. The film is about the first message from ETs (extra-terestrials) in human history and the social, ethical and religious issues associated with it. Now when I saw ETs I'm not talking about green people with glowing eyes, giant heads half our size. Basically just people like us not from our solar system, or anywhere near us for that matter. It got me thinking. Thinking if there could actually be life out there. According to the Darke equations there's actually a high percentage for there to be other life in our universe, but intelligent life is the big question. I personally have a difficult time trying to think this because our minds are so bad with numbers and distances. I can say that the closest star to the Earth is 41.5 trillion km away and we sit there and think "Woah, thats far". ITS HUGE! We can't even see past our own galaxy and theres estimated to be billions and billions of different galaxies. So to imagine the probablity of there being another "Earth" is not difficult. In fact scientists have already discovered a planet out of our solar system (120 trillion km) that they claim to be "liveable". The only issue being it's about 5 times bigger than Earth and if anyone used to the Earth's gravitation pull was to step onto it, it would crush you. But that aside it seems only more likely that there are other planets with life on them.
Now, me being a Christian means that I believe God made all of this stuff. And if we somehow discovered another planet with intelligent life I would be excited to learn about it. I know there are some Christians I know who would be dead against it, but at the same time you can't say that if God wanted to make other creations like us that he couldn't?
Ethical issues like this make my head hurt...But maybe there are certain things that we should just never know. Maybe the complexity of the Universe and all its mysterys aren't for us to discover, only appreciate.
Watch yer punctuation...
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