On Thu, 8 Aug 1996 18:50:28 -0400 (EDT), Gordon Simons wrote:
GS>I will leave the name off, but I will pass this along to the
>reflector. It was prompted by an e-mail reply to my brother Keith
>this morning, a copy of which I forwarded to our church forum.
>Someone, a woman, is being very candid concerning her feelings. I
>appreciate but am haunted by her honesty. Any suggested responses
>will be appreciated. Please cc to me since I am not currently
>signed up in the evolution forum. Gordon Simons
Good to hear from you again, Gordie.:-)
[...]
GS>Well, unfortunately, I must admit that I personally got a bad
>shake to my faith yesterday when I heard about the Mars
>announcement. I was actually rather surprising--I now realize that
>I had never before *truly* doubted (although I thought I had).
>Previously, I had logically thought about what could challenge my
>faith and believed that only if scientists were able to create life
>would I experience a *real* challenge (to be overcome of course).
I would not necessarily have a problem if scientists were able to
create life in vitro. That would actually be a proof of intelligent
design. What would be a problem to me would be if scientists could
plausibly simulate a pre-biotic environment on the early Earth (or
even Mars, etc), and life would just "grow", all by itself, as
Shapiro describes:
"Early experiments would most likely produce numerous ignoble
failures, and test the patience of the investigators. But perhaps one
day, a mixture would not grind to a halt or turn to tar. Cycles of
chemical reactions would be set up which would persist and slowly
gain in complexity. Even if they damped out after some time, we
would have learned from the experience. A revised attempt could
then be made. One day, with the right mixture and conditions, the
process might not end. The chemical system would slowly organize
itself and continue to evolve. Initially, it might not contain the
chemicals important to our biochemistry. These substances might
appear later, or not at all. Either way, the result would be a vital one.
By intensive study of such an evolving system, we would learn how
matter can organize itself, even if the direction taken is different from
the one that occurred on this planet. Once the principle was
understood, the particular variation that leads to our own
biochemistry could be sought, with a greater chance of success."
(Shapiro R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Origin of Life",
Summit Books: New York, 1986, p302)
GS>Much to my surprise, yesterday I found myself asking:
>'Why would God create life on Mars and then let it die out?'
This might be a problem if God had *created* life on Mars. But even
if it is confirmed that the meteorite once contained living
microorganisms, the likelihood is that they came from Earth, as both
Paul Davies and Hugh Ross point out:
"Undoubtedly the definitive discovery of, say, a non-contaminant
living bacterium inside a meteorite would be immensely exciting and
important. It should be pointed out, however, that such a discovery
need not imply that life has evolved independently elsewhere in the
universe. The Earth and its neighbouring planets in the solar system
are subject to a continual bombardment by asteroids and comets.
Roughly-every few million years such an impact is violent enough to
eject substantial quantities of material from the Earth's crust into
space. Similar events take place on the other planets. Some of the
ejected material will subsequently collide with another planet. Thus
surface material is continually exchanged between the planets. Some
terrestrial meteorites, for example, are thought to have originated
on the Moon and even Mars." (Davies P., "Are We Alone?:
Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial
Life", Penguin: London, 1995, pp12-13)
"Though I'm convinced that the origin of life defies a naturalistic
explanation, I am expecting that life, or the remains of life, will
eventually be discovered on Mars. My reason has nothing to do with
spontaneous generation. It has everything to do with Mars' proximity
to Earth. ...The remains, at least, of many micro-organisms are
likely to be found on Mars for no other reason than that Mars is only
thirty-five-million miles away from Earth. In other words, these
zealous evolutionists, bent on searching for life on Mars, seem to
ignore important facts about the transportability and survivability
of Earth life forms. Consider the following data:
1. Balloon missions flown in the 1960s found an abundance of
microbial life at altitudes ranging from 30,000 to 130,000 feet. 2.
The solar wind is capable of wafting tiny life forms (sizes ranging
from 0.2 microns to about 1 micron) outward through the solar system
and perhaps beyond. 3. Many micro-organisms can be kept at liquid
air temperatures (about -200 degrees Centigrade) for more than six
months without losing their capacity to germinate. 4. Several
microbial species exposed for five days to the vacuum conditions of
outer space did not lose their viability. 5. Some microbes are
capable of absorbing 600 kilorads of x-ray radiation without losing
their viability. 6. Even very tiny amounts of graphite (of which
there is more than an adequate supply in outer space) will protect
micro-organisms from harmful ultraviolet radiation. 7. Meteorites
large enough to make a crater greater than 60 miles across will cause
Earth rocks to escape Earth's gravity. Out of 1,000 such rocks
ejected, 291 strike Venus, 20 go to Mercury, 17 hit Mars, 14 make it
to Jupiter, and 1 goes all the way to Saturn. Traveling the distance
with these rocks will be many varieties of Earth life.
Thus there are many reasons to believe that millions of Earth's minute
creatures have been deposited on the surface of Mars and other solar
system planets."
(Ross H., "The Creator and the Cosmos", NavPress: Colorado
Springs CO, 1993, pp144-145).
But there are several other fallacies with the question. Firstly,
science is not likely to be able ever to prove (at least in our
lifetime) that if there was life on Mars that it had completely died
out. It could always be lurking deep below the surface. Mars, even
though it is smaller than the Earth, is still a *very* big place
(6,795 km diameter) for a handful of robot vehicles and astronauts to
explore exhaustively. We would be battling to prove that a bacteria
life had ceased on Earth, let alone on another planet. Secondly,
even if life had once existed on Mars and had died out, it may have
served its purpose. After all, it is possible that life began on
Mars and migrated to Earth:
"These discoveries allow the possibility that life may exist on Mars
deep beneath the surface. They also allow that this life may have
been transplanted from Earth as a result of asteroid impacts.
Conversely, life may have originated on Mars and come to Earth by the
same mechanism. In this case Martian and terrestrial life would have
a common origin." (Davies P., "Are We Alone?: Philosophical
Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life", Penguin:
London, 1995, pp13-14).
The point is that we all will probably be pushing up the daisies by
the time this question is resolved. Even though President Clinton and
NASA are keen about more missions to Mars, it is going to take many
years to send another robot lander, and it may be many decades before
a manned mission can be sent to Mars.
GS>I don't think that finding out that there was presently life on
>another world would have led me to question faith, but thinking that
>there HAD BEEN life that then died out didn't make ANY sense at all.
There is another point here. Just because we cannot make any sense of
something, doesn't mean there isn't any sense to it, or that God
doesn't find any sense in it.
GS>It didn't mesh with anything I believe and I couldn't incorporate
>it into my current faith fast enough. Suddenly I found myself
>thinking, 'well, if its true then maybe God isn't real.' And, I
>allowed myself to *feel* a world without God.
>
>I spent about three hours in a state that I can only describe as
>'despair.' It wasn't that I didn't believe (to be honest, I
>couldn't make myself focus on belief), it was just that for the
>first time in my life I could imagine what it was like to NOT
>believe. It was as if I caught a glimpse of something horrifying.
>It made me realize how much of my belief in people, my life plan, my
>morality and *myself* is wrapped up in my belief in God. I hope I
>don't go through another such period for many years!
I can imagine that it would be terrible. Perhaps this is a pale
reflection of the sense of loss and abandonment that Jesus felt when
he cried on the cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
(Mt 27:46).
GS>Needless to say, I'm feeling better now. I have read more about
>the study and it looks pretty unconvincing.
Indeed. Even eminent paleobiologists like Schopf have urged caution:
"William Schopf, paleobiologist at the University of California, Los
Angeles, who is best known for discovering the world's oldest
fossils, spoke for many who would urge caution. Invited by NASA to
represent the natural skepticism of the scientific community, he
repeated a familiar Sagan quotation: "Extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence." Said Schopf: "I happen to regard the claim
of life on Mars, present or past, as an extraordinary claim. And I
think it is right for us to require extraordinary evidence in support
of the claim." It was clear that to Schopf such evidence was not yet
forthcoming. He noted that PAHS are routinely found in interstellar
and interplanetary debris, as well as in other meteorites. "In none
of those cases," he said, "have they ever been interpreted as being
biological." Turning to the putative fossils in the
electron-microscope images, Schopf pointed out that they are a
hundred times smaller than any found on Earth, too minuscule to be
analyzed chemically or probed internally. Also, he noted, "there was
no evidence of a cavity within them, a cell." Nor was there any
evidence of life cycles or cell division. This led him to believe
that the structures NASA was touting as fossilized life-forms were
probably made of a "mineralic material" like dried mud. "The
biological explanation," he concluded, "is unlikely." Schopf
acknowledged that the NASA team had done first-rate scientific
research, but he regarded it as only a "preliminary" report. "All
I'm saying is that there's additional work to be done." (Jaroff L.,
"Life on Mars", Time, August 19, 1996, p80)
and
"Some scientists in the field express more optimism than others.
Ralph Harvey, a geologist at Case Western Reserve University, and
Harry McSween, a geologist at the University of Tennessee, have also
studied ALH84001. In a paper in the journal Nature last month, they
said that the carbonate globules formed at temperatures greater than
650 degrees Celsius, much too hot for any life we know of to exist.
And alternative-and mundane explanations exist for all the team's
data. "The question is whether the processes that might have made
the magnetites and the organic molecules might have happened no
matter what," says Allan Treiman, a planetary geologist at the Lunar
and Planetary Institute in Houston, "and whether all of them
happening is more or less likely than having microbes in there."
(Rogers A., "Come in Mars", Newsweek-The Bulletin, August 20, 1996,
p73)
and
"John Kerridge, a planetary scientist at the University of
California, San Diego, said: "The conclusion is at best premature
and more probably wrong. You should not go public with evidence
that's less than 100 per cent sure. This is much less than 100 per
cent sure." ("Signs of life on Mars found", The West Australian,
Perth, Thursday August 8, 1996, p1)
GS>I still feel that I have to address my basic question, however,
>in case scientists DO get more evidence of life on Mars. Thus, I
>turn the question over to you, the forum, to help me work through
>some answers.
>'Why would God create and then destroy life on another planet?'
See above. This might be a psuedo-question. There is evidence that
God did "create and then destroy life on another planet", but even if
He did, so what? One could just as easily ask why God created new
Cambrian phyla and then wiped them out without apparent descendents.
Or why God allowed extinction at all. This was a big theological
problem of the 19th century, but even YECs accept it today. In the
final analysis, we might never know why God does some things and
doesn't do others. We can be sure that God has a purpose in
everything, but that does not mean we will always know it. Some
verses that might help include:
"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things
revealed belong to us and to our children forever..." (Dt 29:29)
"Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of
the Almighty?" (Job 11:7)
"And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the
whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his
power?" (Job 26:14)
"For we know in part and we prophesy in part...Now we see but
a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully
known." (1Cor 13:9,12)
"And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write;
but I heard a voice from heaven say, "Seal up what the seven thunders
have said and do not write it down." (Rev 10:4)
Hope this has been some help to your friend. My morning reading
today might also be of help:
"Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that
they should always pray and not give up." (Luke 18:1)
I hope this has been of some help to your brother's friend.
God bless.
Steve
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