If you read by earlier remarks, I said money SHOULD be spent on medical research instead of search for ET life.
OK.
Studying the planet would be cool.
See the other thread. I think I answered this there.
But “cosmos” does not refer to the whole universe; it refers to the world of people that the Bible is written for. If there are aliens in distant galaxies, then the creation account in Genesis 1 would not apply to them, and the Bible would not be written to them. We wouldn’t know whether these aliens also fell into sin like Adam and Eve. Perhaps they did and God provided them a different way to be saved over there.
We are talking about whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. It doesn’t seem to me the resurrection or islam contains any answers to that question. Could there be some kind of prokaryote still living in the Martian crust? In the oceans of Enceladus or Europa? I can’t find any Bible verses that say anything about this, much less whether life could exist in other solar systems or galaxies.
But you have no idea really, all you have is extremely dubious interpretations of Bible verses that in point of fact, make no actual claims about whether there is life on other planets in the universe.
We’re not talking about the search for ET, but for life. Just anything which can be considered alive. Even if that is just single-celled organisms like bacteria.
No, it does that nowhere.
We, as in humans? We’re not looking for other humans, we’re looking for life. Even though it’s not really obvious to me that the Bible says there is no other intelligent life in the inoverse.
That depends on what you mean by similar, doesn’t it? We have certainly discovered so-called “Earth-like” planets, that are roughly the same size and mass as Earth, and exist somewhere around the habitable zone around their local star. We don’t know whether there’s life on them, we can’t currently determine that. We’re not even sure how to determine that as the whole question of what is or isn’t a biosignature is a subject of ongoing research.
But this isn’t the time to start throwing the towel in the ring, on the contrary. Within the lifetime of my grandfather, we went from literally not knowing whether planets even existed around other stars in the universe, to having discovered thousands of them. This overview is from 2013:
As of 2018, here’s a list of potential Earth-like candidate planets:
We went from not knowing what the configurations of planets around other stars were like (how many planets do other stars have, if any? How big are they?) to now being pretty sure that most other stars also have multiple planets orbiting them, and the range and sizes of planets seem to be continously expanding. With every passing generation of telescope technology, we become better at finding planets, and better at deriving their size, mass, and composition from spectral lines in their atmospheres.
I’m pretty sure the Bible doesn’t say anything about planets around other stars. But as you say, it’s not a science textbook, so one has to wonder what makes you so confident some form of life could not exist on any of them.
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Well it’s rather odd that first you say
“For example, I see no reason to search for extraterrestrial life - it’s a waste of time and money from my POV because there’s no indication from the Bible that it exists.”
Then when it is pointed out to you that there are many things the Bible doesn’t point out exists (bacteria and viruses, DNA, uranium, other galaxies, ufathomable numbers of other things) you turn around and dismiss it all with “The bible isn’t a science textbook”.
We know, that’s our point! You can’t decide on what will or will not be a fruitful research program by consulting a book that doesn’t actually give any indication of detailing all that which exists.
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Why can’t we look for non-humans on other planets? Why isn’t that something you are interested in?
I believe I discern her argument: since the universe was created specifically for humans, there would be no point in having intelligent life elsewhere, since it wouldn’t be useful to us. I’m not sure what use other galaxies are to us, but doubtless there is some reason for them.
10 posts were split to a new topic: A Vision: If Adam Had Not Sinned
Have you studied the resurrection, or have you merely studied what people have said about the resurrection?
There’s a big difference.