My latest issue of U.S. News & World Report came in the mail the other day. I subscribed to this magazine some time ago, because 1) they had a very special subscription offer, 2) there were some gifts that I wanted that came with the subscription, and 3) it is supposed to be the most unbiased, non-liberal major magazine. I appreciated the gifts, I saved lots of money with the initial subscription offer, but I am beginning to think I need to scratch reason #3.
This issue has at its theme on the front cover: FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE, with subheadings such as How will humanity evolve? What will we eat? Where will global warming hit home? How did life begin? Will we find it in the heavens?
Judging by how the questions are posed, one can easily conclude that quotations from the Bible are not to be found anywhere in the featured articles. That being said, the article that got my attention the most was the one entitled, "Will We Soon Find Life in the Heavens?" Here we read that "in the coming months, two new tools will greatly expand astrobiologists' capacity to hear and see other promising signs of life. Later this summer, the nonprofit SETI Institute. . .will begin listening for alien broadcasts on the new $50 billion Allen Telescope Array. A spread of 42 radio dishes in California's Cascade Mountains, the array is the first such facility built specifically to listen for E.T. 'We're looking for life that's clever enough to hold up its side of the conversation," says Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. The array, half funded by Microsoft mogul Paul Allen, will search for alien signals at a clip 'hundreds to thousands times faster' than current SETI projects, says Shostak."
(Before I proceed, I need to interject a bit of advice to Seth Shostak. Perhaps he could save lots of time and money if he were to talk to a fellow scientist, Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who walked on the moon on the Apollo 14 mission. He recently said aliens have visited our planet several times over the last six decades, but that our government has covered everything up.)
The last paragraph in this article is most telling. "That makes SETI the only project with grand-slam potential. Astronomer Shostak boldly predicts that SETI will hear from a real E.T. within 20 years. They think it's going too far," Shostak says. But he's convinced that 'we're going to find out, one way or the another, that biology is not a miracle.' "
The statements in this article reveal one apparent truth which has been documented in numerous other incidents--the evolutionary dogma is in serious trouble from within its own ranks. Principally because of the Intelligent Design movement, die-hard evolutionists have been playing defense for a number of years now, and the growing commotion within the halls of scientific academia are hard to ignore any longer. It may not get national press coverage, like for example in the U.S. News and World Report, but doubting Thomases of all kind can be found within the evolutionists' fold. People like William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, Jonathan Wells and Michael Behe deserve much of the credit for exposing the scientific weaknesses of Darwinian evolution with such commonplace terms now like specified complexity and irreducible complexity.
So what does an evolutionist do in these days? Continue to deny the irrefutable lack of evidence for evolution where Chance does not stand a chance, take personal potshots at the advocates of Intelligent Design through ad hominem attacks, move the playing field to outer space ala Star Wars or E.T., or do all the above. If you choose "all of the above", then you go to the head of the class. (Although you may be kicked out of biology class at college.)
The third alternative is the focus of this magazine article cited above. Much of this goes back to Fred Hoyle and others who proposed panspermia or transpermia, where microbes on Venus or Mars hitched a ride on a comet and carried life forms to our planet. Hence this is how life began here. Since the facts are stacking up against life beginning here through traditional evolutionary processes, evolutionists thought they have solved that sticky problem by moving the debate to another planet where no evolution defenders or Intelligent Design promoters live.
Astronomer Shostak admits the dilemma of modern-day evolutionists. Since they are hard pressed to find evidence here for how life began by resorting to their old bag of Darwinian tricks, they are forced to go where no man has gone before to prove that "biology is not a miracle." What an interesting choice of words by the astronomer--words which he did not use by chance. What is he admitting here? Two prominent things stand out.
Number one: If intelligent life exists elsewhere in our solar system, then life here on planet Earth is not that special or unique. The elephant in the evolutionists' room has always been that everything is so precise and just perfect for life to exist here on this planet--the miles we are from the sun, the rotation on the earth's axis, the physical properties of the earth, the structure of the atom, etc. This is called the "anthropic principle." There are too many variables that have to work together for life to exist here that claiming everything resulted from a cosmic role of the dice sounds incredulous. (Albert Einstein said once, "I, at any rate, am convinced that God is not playing at dice.") If evolutionists can somehow hold out hope that there is intelligent life out there somewhere, then that removes the elephant from the room. They can then proclaim that this planet is not so unique after all.
Number two: The prevalent fear in the minds of die-hard modern evolutionists is that Intelligent Design has made too many inroads in demonstrating that life truly here is nothing short of the miraculous. Microbiology and biochemistry have opened up a new world of discoveries that evolutionists probably wished never materialized. Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box was like a nuclear bomb dropped in the lap of traditional evolutionary teaching. If somehow we can point to life way out there and get the attention off life right here, then maybe the evolutionists can succeed in their minds at saying that "biology is not a miracle after all."
The astronomer said that he is looking for life that's clever enough to hold up its side of the conversation. I am reminded of a cartoon several years ago where two aliens, who just landed on our planet, where standing outside an electronics store window. They were watching an episode of Jerry Springer's daily TV show, and after a few minutes, one said to the other, "I think we better leave. There is no intelligent life on this planet."
The Intelligent Being has spoken. The Life behind all life forms has made contact with us. We don't need $50 billion of radio dishes out in the California mountains to hear this E.T. (Eternally True) speak to us maybe one day years and years from now if we keep waiting for some faint, indiscernible signal. All we need to do is pick up an easily available copy of the Bible and start reading. How many people here are clever enough to hold up its side of the conversation by listening and heeding what this Intelligent Being has said?
What does all this have to do with hell? Last week I mention two arguments why people really believe in hell, even when they say they don't. The argument of language and the argument of history are powerful reminders that hell is not something we can wish away. Now I add the ARGUMENT OF SCIENCE. Since segments of science are so determined to find intelligent life out there, then we can happily take their efforts as a backhanded compliment to what we have always believed--that Intelligent Life has not only spoken to us, but this Intelligent Life came to visit this planet over two millennium ago. This is not Hollywood fiction, but real life historical fact that science can only support and in no way can refute.
What is more is that this in-person E.T. that came to visit us and die at the hands of earth's inhabitants spoke a whole lot about the life that is out there for all of us beyond this earthly existence. One of the two destinies is Gehenna, translated "hell" in the Communication Book from the one Intelligent Life, who in-person used that word himself eleven of the twelve times we find in this discernible Signal from Heaven. To describe this place of existence that is "out there" for all who reject Intelligent Life in this life, this all-powerful, all-good Eternally True Intelligent Being used at various times the phrase, "outer darkness." That should definitely please people like astronomer Shostak because it fits neatly in their model.
If radio dishes could be constructed to detect any signals or voices out there in this "outer darkness", then we are told already of what they would consist. It would be nothing but an unending, inexpressible blend of uncontrollable sadness and anger, a place where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth."
So, thank you, modern defenders of the indefensible hypothesis of evolution with your desire to take the debate "out there". By doing so, you only give more credence to the fact that there is life out there, life beyond what is here on this earthly journey. Heaven and hell are here to stay, and that is where all will stay.
Yours in Christ,
Chris
