The First "Earth-like" Planet Discovered!

                                           Image:  Caltech/NASA -- Artist's Impression of new
                                           planet Kepler 22b

    I have often wondered what the reaction would be in the religious community if life were ever discovered outside of earth.  Throughout all of human history, most major faiths, Christianity included, have seen the earth and its inhabitants as being quite special and unique.  Up until the last 500 years, earth was still considered to be the center of the universe, surrounded by planets, the moon, and the sun in orbit around it and the stars making up some distant firmament likened to pin holes in a black sheet draped over all of the above.  What a picture!  It makes sense though, when you think about it.  Explanations provided by religion aside, this pretty well described the observable universe based upon the tools and knowledge that were available to our ancestors.

    Changing these ideas took what was, at the time, a great deal of indirect international collaboration.  The Polish astronomer Copernicus helped us correct Ptolemy's crazy geocentric system of epicycles and deferents by placing the sun at the center of it all instead.  Unfortunately, his still very Aristotelian views kept the orbits too circular for that model to be widely accepted or, more importantly, useful for prediction.  Not long after this, the German mathematician Johannes Kepler gave us three laws that govern how planetary orbits work.  These laws made the Copernican heliocentric theory not only more palatable but much superior to the Ptolmaic model.  Galileo, an Italian, popularized the idea further, which brought a great deal of attention to it...and also to him.  He is thought to have been a very vain man, but the experience that he had as a result of his 1633 inquisition trial certainly forced a fair amount of humility out of him.  He was a religious man and though not the most faithful Catholic in some ways, he was certainly deferential to the opinion and orders given to him by the inquisition.  Explanations about why he was summoned before the inquisition are often simplistically reduced to his belief and acceptance of the heliocentric hypothesis, even though he was really summoned for disobeying an order not to teach the idea.  Regardless, this is one of the noteworthy events that eventually led us into the modern scientific revolution and officially began the separation of science and faith.

    I recount this story because it illustrates a major event in the confluence of science and faith.  Galileo et al., challenged the deeply held convictions and beliefs of the church.  This was not the first time this ever happened and it will not be the last...which brings me back to my original pondering...

  As Christians, what beliefs about the uniqueness of earth will we strive to cling to should NASA or some other researcher finally discover the existence of life outside of earth?  The probabilities, however lacking in empirical evidence for support, are against earth's uniqueness.  The discovery of Kepler 22b recently, even with no evidence of life at the moment, has shattered any notion that earth could be the only place where life as we know it is possible.  If life is found, would we make a distinction between microbial life and intelligent life?  How does the story of the garden of eden figure into the theology of those who take that story to be literally historically correct?  Will some christians refuse to even believe the plain evidence of life when presented?

    I would like to think that we are past the age of witch hunts and inquisitions, at least here in the west.  Galileo was finally pardoned in 1992, removing an unspoken barrier between science and faith that had existed since his conviction in 1633.  While this branch of the church had already long since made its own strides in coming to an understanding with science, many (certainly not all) protestant christians still cling to a version of science that does not fit the same philosophical model as that claimed by mainstream scientists (that of the skeptical research interested in falsifiability, reproducibility, and testability).  Their view starts with a model provided by their interpretation of a  literal english translation of scripture, and attempts to fit evidence to that model, thereby creating a completely different interpretation of the same evidence.  In traditional science, evidence leads to a model/theory which is used for prediction and explanation (Theory is  a loaded word in these discussions...and might merit a forthcoming post by itself).  Consequently, it is very likely that large swaths of christians would simply ignore or re-interpret the evidence in order to fit it to their preferred model, no matter how incontrovertible the mainstream explanation of that same evidence might be.

    I hope that this will not be the case.  An avid fan of Star Trek, I have also hoped that one day we could meet other intelligent species from beyond our solar system.  I have never seen a conflict between what the Bible tells us -- as it talks entirely about us here on earth -- and the possibility of life outside of earth's creation.  It never alludes to, nor disavows, the presence of life beyond this planet.  I do not think it was much on the minds of the early Jewish writers, though I could be wrong on that one!