A fascinating article entitled "The Far, Far Future of Stars" appears in last month's issue of Scientific American. The article, written by Donald Goldsmith, delves into what he calls "[s]cientific eschatology"1 and explains, so far as astrophysicists can tell, what will be the future of the universe.
Goldsmith contends that the nature of the universe in the future will be hospitable to new forms of life. The reason why the prognosis of the future universe is full of life, although the sun is projected to burn out in roughly five billion years, is that newer generations of stars have heavier elements than previous generations. "The extraheavy elements should... favor the birth of planets, along with stars, and thus the prospects for life in the universe," states Goldsmith. He grants that, at least initially, "the proliferation of planets does not seem promising for life" since many of the stars in the distant future will be significantly "less luminous than the sun." However, continues Goldsmith, "A star with as little as one one-thousandth of the sun's luminosity can maintain temperatures that allow liquids to exist on close-in planets, satisfying what seems to be a requirement for living things to exist."2
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| NGC 7027, Planetary Nebula, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institute, on Flickr |
[L]ife on earth, as well as almost all other forms of life that scientists speculate about, depends on the existence of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. As time goes on, the increasing relative abundance of these elements should yield planets more hospitable to life. Therefore, as star formation steadily diminishes, every newborn star should appear with a progressively greater probability of lighting one or more potential life-bearing planets. Some of these new stars will have the low masses and tiny luminosities that allow them to last for hundreds or thousands of billions of years (not that such immense lifetimes seem necessary for the origin and evolution of life). However full or empty of life the universe may be today, it should teem with more abundant and more varied forms of life in the future.3Statistically, the odds are in favor of the existence of other forms of life in the universe, and the odds will only continue to increase. There are three broad theological implications to the prospect of other life in the universe. The first is perhaps the most obvious, and that is the munificence of God. The second implication is soteriological in nature. The third is eschatological. I will devote a blog post for each of these implications.
In this blog post I will discuss the unfathomable richness of the depths of God. Jesus called himself "the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6, RSV). So too, the Holy Spirit is called the one who "gives life" (John 6:63, RSV). God is the author and source of life and sustains life through his loving regard, i.e. his thought. This doctrine has its roots in Plato's philosophy. Plato's theory of the forms is well known. Essentially, it is the idea that everything that exists has its counterpart in another world, a pure world, of forms, and that everything that exists participates in these pure forms. Christian theologians modified Plato's theory of the forms and reasoned to what they call the divine ideas. Essentially, the rationale behind the concept of the divine ideas is that God has an idea of everything that exists - otherwise, they would not exist, since God's being is the source of the being of everything else. Like Plato, theologians associated beings in this universe with another order. Unlike Plato, however, theologians saw all things as rooted in a personal God as opposed to a world of forms. The existence of other life forms would testify to the divine creativity. The abundance of life on earth already testifies to God's creativity. One has only to consider that there are approximately 8.7 million species on the earth. With the possibility of there being literally millions of earth-like planets in the universe, with each earth having millions of species, the extent of life in the universe becomes impressive indeed.
Of course, it could also be argued that life is unique to earth and that this demonstrates the fragile nature of life on earth, the particular love of God for human beings, and his particular concern for the earth. Perhaps life is unique to earth. Whether or not life is unique to earth, either the superabundance of God on the one hand or a special concern and tenderness on the other is manifested by the extent of life. God's glory and majesty are held intact either way. My opinion is that there probably are other intelligent life forms and that if there aren't now, it is likely that they will develop in the future. This development, however, would be a part of God's plan rather than being the result of random evolution. It is important for Christians to insist on a divine hand in evolutionary processes - otherwise, the development of the universe and of humanity would be the product of chance and fate. This is the ancient teaching of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC), and many people today ascribe to sophisticated forms of both his cosmology and his emphasis on pleasure as the goal of human life. That these two views go together is not accidental.
The variety of life on earth even now attests to God's generosity and his overflowing goodness. The presence of life in other corners of the universe would amplify our knowledge of the scope of God's munificence. The discovery of alien life would not add anything new to God, but it would give us a greater insight into his grandeur.
Of course, it could also be argued that life is unique to earth and that this demonstrates the fragile nature of life on earth, the particular love of God for human beings, and his particular concern for the earth. Perhaps life is unique to earth. Whether or not life is unique to earth, either the superabundance of God on the one hand or a special concern and tenderness on the other is manifested by the extent of life. God's glory and majesty are held intact either way. My opinion is that there probably are other intelligent life forms and that if there aren't now, it is likely that they will develop in the future. This development, however, would be a part of God's plan rather than being the result of random evolution. It is important for Christians to insist on a divine hand in evolutionary processes - otherwise, the development of the universe and of humanity would be the product of chance and fate. This is the ancient teaching of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC), and many people today ascribe to sophisticated forms of both his cosmology and his emphasis on pleasure as the goal of human life. That these two views go together is not accidental.
The variety of life on earth even now attests to God's generosity and his overflowing goodness. The presence of life in other corners of the universe would amplify our knowledge of the scope of God's munificence. The discovery of alien life would not add anything new to God, but it would give us a greater insight into his grandeur.
