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This article is from
Creation 13(3):51, June 1991

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Life on other planets?

People often ask, ‘If God created this enormous and awesome universe, isn’t it absurd to imagine that He placed life only on this tiny planet in an insignificant galaxy?’

The large scale of the universe has nothing to do with its complexity. The immense complexity of the human body, in so far as this is understood, is much more awesome than the array of stars. But it all depends on the way each of us views things. Relative to our human yardsticks, the large scale of the cosmos is about the same as the small scale of the microcosmos of the atom—man’s ‘order of magnitude’ seems to be somewhere in between.

Evolutionary cosmologists love to stress the insignificance of the earth in the cosmic economy, and it is easy to get caught up in this kind of reasoning without realizing that the very use of words such as ‘insignificant’ is charged with anti-biblical bias, using a totally arbitrary frame of reference for such value judgments. If we abandon the vain speculations of men and look instead to the Scriptures, we find that it is inconsistent for a Bible-believing Christian to believe in life in other parts of the universe (apart from spiritual beings such as angels).

From God’s point of view, the earth, far from being insignificant, is the crucial focus of His creative, sustaining and redemptive activity. Consider the following:

  • The earth was made first, and the other heavenly bodies made on the fourth day were for signs and seasons for the earth.
  • There is no scientific reason for assuming life on other planets—or even for insisting on the existence of any planets outside our solar system, let alone a planet so uniquely suited to sustaining life as is earth. Only sun, moon and stars are mentioned on the fourth day—no other planets like earth are mentioned. The reason why many have come to believe so readily that life on other planets is reasonable is solely the result of evolutionary speculation. If the evolution of life can happen once, by chance, then it could have happened elsewhere with so many stars which could have planets—or so the story goes.
  • The heavens, the earth, and everything therein were created in six days (Exodus 20:11). Man is the crowning glory of creation, and all creation is to be subservient to him.
  • For man’s sake, because of Adams fall, all creation is cursed and subject to futility and ‘bondage to decay’ (Romans 8). Other civilizations, presumably sinless, would then have to share in the effects of this cursed cosmos.
  • Eve is described in the Scriptures as the ‘mother of all living’.
  • The final catastrophic judgment is described as one in which the very elements will burn with fervent heat, and in which the heavens and earth will be rolled away, passing away with a great noise, and no place will be found for them. Such a cosmic, universal catastrophe would mean that any other civilizations also would be annihilated in the same cosmic fireball (perhaps the very antithesis of the evolutionist’s favoured ‘big bang’).
  • It was on this earth that the Creator Himself became flesh, and bled and died for Adam’s hapless race—and because of His redeeming action, all creation will one day share in the effects of total redemption/restoration. For beings unrelated to Adam to share in the cosmic effects of both curse and restoration seems to ignore the whole thrust of Scriptural cosmology.

Although the Scriptures do not directly say that no life was created elsewhere, the suggestion that it was is not only totally unnecessary, but loaded with logical and theological inconsistencies and contradictions.