Is there evidence of Intelligent life on other planets? None that we can observe. Anywhere, whatsoever: See here…

But what about Microbial life of some sort? What if we find that water is or was on other planets, and also found evidence of microbes, now or at one time?

The universe is the ‘House’ or neighborhood that God made “in the Beginning” (Genesis 1:1). And this is the explanation that explains eveything.

In a forum the conjecture of extra-terrestrial life cropped up again as it does once in a while, so I thought I would dig out this earlier reflection.

So far there are no facts confirming the presence of other contingent life in the universe, besides the astonishing abundance which flourishes here on planet.

Only the believer can truly and fully celebrate life anywhere in any part of God’s Uni-verse (one Reality or Uni-verse). There is only one creation, whatever (and wherever) its parts. The unbelieving scientist, however, wildly formulates Multiverse hypotheses and seeks to manipulate our own particular solar system in many ways and for many reasons (even for military purposes). We’ve been disrupting creation for a long time now.

St. Thomas Aquinas related the revelation of Christ to us, that “‘creation’ denominates an active power by which things are brought into being [‘esse‘]; and this is why creation does not presuppose either a preexisting matter [or an infinite regression of causes]”

“God alone is His own ‘esse’ [His “essence IS to exist”; thus only He can give anything  life]… Therefore, no created being is able to produce any ‘being’ absolutely except insofar as it causes ‘esse’ in this being, and so it is necessary that that through which something is, this being must be presupposed for the action by which it makes something similar to itself.” —De Potentia Dei, ques. 3,# 1

Only Uncreated Being (capital ‘B’) can create new being(s) [small ‘b’] and He, the “One who IS” ( His Name is YHWH, meaning “I AM” or “The One Who Is”: Exo 3:14), does so according to His inscrutable will and wisdom for good reasons, which may or may not elude us in part over time.  It is why you and I and that rock over there (and everything else) are here at all.

On earth there are—from the point of view of what we might have expected— bizarre microbial (and other) beings which at one time may have seemed utterly inexplicable, but which later yielded some of the secrets of their usefulness (from rhizobial bacteria which supply nitrogen for plants, to earthworms—each a very great ‘distance’ from the reality and being of sentient human existence / consciousness, though we all share material aspects).

Still, the Christian has received that the ‘how’ of being / creation is ultimately and irreducibly a mystery—the Mystery, after God himself (to the human mind), the explanation for which God alone has revealed the answer (Gen 1:1);  since it is utterly contingent and need not ‘be’ at all (journalists were not invited to the moment of Creation, when the first thing came into existence, nor were they informed in a press conference). Created being has not the reason for its being in itself. It all comes from the One whose essence is to Exist.

“It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.” —G.K. Chesterton

Everything there is came from nothing at all?

Genesis, the book of origins, explains that all contingent being is created, ordered, and sustained to God’s creative purpose and could never, as St. Thomas observes, arise out of “nothing”. This is the scandal of being—wherever we find it—which will ever elude the scientist with his part empiricism, part gnosis, part hubris.

Our particular solar system, like each and all of them, is a neighborhood which, according to the anthropic principle(1) is astonishingly configured for the sustaining of life. This can hardly be an “accident”.

Atheism, being a bizarre dogmatic attempt to prove the ultimate negative, can only ever seek to raise various objections in the face of the wonder of life itself. It continually begs the question of being. That doesn’t make sense, either for life on earth —or on any other planet.

Again, the creation (of the universe, everything!) happened but once, according to Genesis, whatever its theoretical multiform scatterings (or exportations –cross- pollination / contamination—from earth!), assuming there are any life-forms outside of earth.

Of Buzzards and Microbes:

Microorganisms are critical to nutrient recycling in ecosystems as they act as decomposers of things great and small. Like buzzards which clean up dead animals from the earth preventing the spread of disease, microbial agents stem any number of harmful contaminations and consequences, known or unknown, they act as God’s cleaning crew. It is much of their reason for being. Thus if, “in the beginning” God created microbial life elsewhere in the universe, in water or anywhere, He would have His “good” reasons which, alas for us, He is not telling, and thus leaving scientists to their conjectures.

Some try to work up mathematical equations / algorithms against the likelihood that we are “alone”. But what is the statistical probability against anything arising from nothing apart from a Creator / First Cause, much less as Chesterton says, “that everything that is came from nothing at all”? God Is (Ex. 3:14; Jn 8:58) first.

We don’t need to find microbes on another planet to know we are “not alone”. We are anything but alone—He “is,” and is with us—which is why we are at all. SH

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(1) Cf. Wheeler, John A. “Foreword,” in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. vii.

“Through Him all things were made; and apart from him nothing was made that has been made”—Jn 1:3

— UFOs Are Real, But Don’t Assume They’re Alien Spaceships

2024: UFO sightings in 1960s were secret aerospace tests – Pentagon report

By Yuval Barnea  
Jerusalem Post
March 8, 2024

“AARO found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the report said.
   
In a report submitted to Congress on Friday, the US government concluded that there was “no evidence” that the US government had interacted with aliens, according to American media.

The report created by the All-domain Anomaly Research Office (AARO) at the request of Congress found that most sightings of UFOs or “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP) were ordinary objects or explainable phenomena.

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“AARO found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the report said.

“AARO found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the report said.

The report also called allegations of reverse-engineered “extraterrestrial technology” inaccurate.

They blame the inaccurate reports on US government officials who viewed “authentic USG classified programs” without proper knowledge of them and then mistakenly associated them with extraterrestrial activity.

Some of the reports of UFOs were due to the rapidly expanding flight technology of the 1960s, which led some people to misidentify never-before-seen experimental technology as extraterrestrial.

Challenging public skepticism

The report took time to address the obvious skepticism from the public, saying, “A consistent theme in popular culture involves a particularly persistent narrative that the USG—or a secretive organization within it—recovered several off-world spacecraft and extraterrestrial biological remains, that it operates a program or programs to reverse engineer the recovered technology, and that it has conspired since the 1940s to keep this effort hidden from the United States Congress and the American public.”

The report said, “The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population.”

Maj.-Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said they approached the report with an open mind and no preconceived idea but found no evidence to back up claims of secret programs, hidden alien technology, or anything else extraterrestrial. [Source: Jerusalem Post]

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