In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.- Genesis 1:1.
Quoting the late American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, and astrobiologist, Carl Sagan - “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” As to Sagan’s hypothesis: he is merely alluding to his opinion when he makes this statement. One could certainly suggest the same for the surface of the moon. He isn’t implying that there is any empirical evidence to support his theory of extraterrestrial life because there is none. Not one shred of tangible evidence exists for the proof of life anywhere in our universe with the exception of earth. And I suggest that for those who simply can’t believe we are alone in the universe, their beliefs are driven more by sentiment and emotion than by facts and measurable data. This is one of the prevailing issues of our time - emotion or sentiment driven truth. There is no such thing! As I said, there is no statistical data or empirical evidence to support truth based on emotion. This emotion represents the entire substructure of the pro-abortion movement, racial identity politics, the LGBTQ movement, and the whole misconception of relativism in general. Emotion never “proves facts;” it only negates reason and logic. But having said that, the question of whether we’re alone in the cosmos is a fair and reasonable question. It is not merely a hypothetical question but one which deserves an honest and definitive answer.
The only way we can possibly answer that question is for us to decide ahead of time what measurement we will use to answer it. We can go about tabling our criteria to answer the question with our suppositions. In fact, we would have to use supposition because as I stated previously, we have no concrete evidence to show the world why we believe there is life elsewhere. As for this particular argument, I will use one of the historically oldest records of life on earth as my position against the possibility of life existing anywhere but here on earth: the Bible. I believe the Bible is the best place to seek our answer since we’ve got to begin with what we know. And we know that as of yet, in the 21st century, we have no clear and unambiguous reason to believe that there is life anywhere but here. Now, how might the Bible perspective support that position?
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” - Genesis 1:1. From the very first words of Scripture we are told that God, from the very beginning, is the force behind our existence as a planet. Skipping ahead to the last verse of Genesis 1, we see that God not only created the earth but He also stocked it with every conceivable form of life “and it was good.” In other words, this was God’s will for the earth and life upon it.
Now just from the first book of Genesis, we come away with the facts that at no time does it refer to life being created anywhere else in the universe but here on earth. Furthermore, packed neatly away within this first chapter is this passage - “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’” - Genesis 1:26. Let man have dominion! That means that God gave to mankind the gift of being the dominant species on the planet earth. No other species has ever even been able to compete with us for dominion. Mankind is the only species that can: envision, think logically, rhyme, worship, translate language, develop a system of mathematics, compose music, create works of literature and art, experiment scientifically, and invent. The list of how man is dominant over all the other species of life on earth is nearly endless. In essence, by the end of Genesis, of all the creatures God created, mankind is best dispositioned, within the limits of God’s cosmological laws, to control his own destiny. No other species on earth . . . or elsewhere has been blessed in such a way.
So from the time of the Bible’s composition, there hasn’t been a single thing that has ever lent serious doubt to the account of creation or God’s plan for mankind, unless, of course, we simply refuse to believe the Bible, resort to emotion, and choose to engage in theory. While there have been other opinions and arguments about earth’s creation and man’s role in the scheme of things, the biblical position has remained unchanged, consistent, and intact from its inception. What Genesis says about the creation of earth and the universe has never changed. With the Bible account, we have a source for our faith and the bedrock of our belief. Without a source of faith, all we have are emotions, sentiment, aspirations, dreams, possibilities, and flights of fancy. While there is nothing wrong with these sensibilities, they should never form the basis of our beliefs.
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