Why are there Alien Worlds?

[Lilandra]

Hi this is my first post w/a new username. I posted a Consideringlily in the past.

I am starting to wonder with all of the new astronomical discoveries of the nature of planets and moons in our own solar system and recent discoveries of planets beyond our solar system, exactly why from a Biblical perspective they are there.

How do you explain Mars?

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Seeminglily barren. Why would God specially create Earth full of life and just pop Mars into existence also?​

How about Jupiter?​

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A radioactive gas giant. What purpose is it serving in the Biblical God's plan? Is it also "good"?​

What about the moons of Jupiter?​

These are the four largest Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.​

Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system.​

Europa has more water than Earth.​

Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and is larger than the planet Mercury.​

Callisto's cratered surface records collisions from the formation of the universe.​

These alien landscapes...​

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existed unobserved before our brightest minds like Galileo ever realized that he wasn't looking at 4 stars around Jupiter but four moons.​

Outside our solar system planets are being discovered in the tradition of Galileo by observation and reasoning. Someday we may build a telescope sharp enough to see these alien worlds beyond our Solar System just as our probes have seen the alien worlds in our own Solar System in a way Galileo never imagined.

What I want to know is why are they there? What explanation in the Biblical mythos would account for their existence?​

 

[Nitron]

Good question. BTW, why did you change usernames?

 

[Lilandra]

Good question. BTW, why did you change usernames?

It just didn't fit my perpsective on life anymore. I was a Christian when I first started posting and changed my perspective somewhat since then.

 

[spblat]

What a wonderfully illustrated and thoughtful question. Thank you!

I have two books I'd strongly urge you to read.

First: The Sacred Depths of Nature by Ursula Goodenough. As I blogged in 2005 about this short but lovely book:

...Ms. Goodenough knows exactly the emotions I have failed to describe, because she has experienced them herself, which motivated her to create this fascinating examination of life, the universe and the natural world: she takes us from subatomic particles through the evolution of life, on up to the horrifying scale of the universe. Her approach in the book is to lay out the science at each level, then reflect on the spiritual meaning she finds infused in everything around us. To me, reading her short but powerful book felt nothing short of revelatory.

Then: Carl Sagan’s The Varieties of Scientific Experience. This one comes mostly from an atheist perspective, but Sagan is as gentle and respectful as they come. Our world is poorer for having lost him. I blogged about his book too. Let me give you a couple of Sagan quotes:

if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, then our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves.

...and...

the best way I know to engage the religious sensibility, the sense of awe, is to look up on a clear night. I believe it is very difficult to know who we are until we understand where and when we are.

Good luck on your journey. You have arrived at a topic which inspires me to no end.

 

[Morcova]

It just didn't fit my perpsective on life anymore. I was a Christian when I first started posting and changed my perspective somewhat since then.

Now your perspective is that of the emperess of the Shi'ar empire?


I'll remember to step lively around you!

 

[Mumbo]

This sort of stuff is why I started doubting God's existance in the first place, but it isn't really indicative of His absence. He's omnipotent, remember, so it isn't as though creating countless stars, planets, and whatnot costs Him much effort. Either He felt that creating the rest of the cosmos was "good," or he wanted to give man something to look at.

 

[Mumbo]

Guff!

 

[The Nihilist]

Now your perspective is that of the emperess of the Shi'ar empire?

Ha! Nerd!


Of course, I know what you're talking about, so...

 

[automan]

You people obviously do not understand, the universe was put together to impress us,
it is important that we are impressed, of all the animals we are the chosen ones, we look
up to the sky and see the stars the other animals just look up to the sky and see nothing,
so we must be the chosen ones, everything was put in place for us to act out a roll here on earth,
we may disagree with each other what that roll is but we must be here for some reason,
after all we are special, it is unthinkable we are here for no reason at all.

What I have just written is of coarse crazy but there are people who believe it to be true.

 

[HumanisticJones]

This reminds me of an email my family sent out showing the range of sizes of stars and how the largest stars made our sun look like a spec. As I looked at it I thought to myself, the people who wrote all the myths of all the lands of earth had no idea how big things were. All the stories of creation cannot begin to grasp the totallity of what really is out there. And as I get to the end, more secure in my disbelief than before, I see the ending line.

"Look at how amazing your God is!"

How bleak an answer to the majesty of the universe. Stars so large they would devour our solar system out to Saturn without noticing and all that can be said is "proof that goddidit". With all that is out there, I do not think we can just settle with the accounts of a few desert people who could only see enough stars to fill out to 200 lightyears.

 

[AV1611VET]

What I want to know is why are they there? What explanation in the Biblical mythos would account for their existence?

That's an interesting question.

After poking around on the net, I'm not satisfied that any of their answers are specific enough.

So here's my guess on why God created the planets.

Science is in the Bible in extremely simplistic terms. I believe that's because God's Word was written so that even a little child can understand It.

Just like starting out at one end of a long hallway, and walking forward, you first see a picture of a "stick house", then a simple drawing of a house, then more and more detail of the house until you reach the end of the hallway and see it in great detail; the Bible is the same way.

Tell a 5-year-old child that God stretched the heavens, and she'll say, 'Ooooh, neat!'

Later, when she grows up, she learns that the universe is expanding, she thinks, 'I heard that somewhere before'.

Anyway, to answer your question, I believe as we eventually learned to view the cosmology of each of the planets, they each individually tell us the same story:

• God works on the anthropic principle.

Mercury, for instance, shows us what earth would be like if the temperature was too high.

Venus shows us what would happen if we kept the same side toward the Sun.

Mars shows us what the earth would be like if it was just a "tad" further out in space.

Jupiter shows us what the earth would be like if gravity was greater than 1G.

Et cetera.

[bible]Psalm 8:3-4[/bible]

 

[Allister]

Without Jupiter the Earth would probably have been pounded by comets and asteroids so it is serving a purpose and maybe its immense gravitation helps stabalise the orbits of Mars and the asteroid belt?

Mars is a barren world waiting for our future selves to colonise and terraform.

Maybe with future technology all planets will serve a function.

 

[birdan]

Tell a 5-year-old child that God stretched the heavens, and she'll say, 'Ooooh, neat!'

Later, when she grows up, she learns that the universe is expanding, she thinks, 'I heard that somewhere before'.

Tell a 5-year-old child:

37And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. 38And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.
39And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.
40And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle.
41And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.

and she'll say, 'Ooooh, neat!'

Later, when she grows up and takes up cattle breeding, she thinks, 'I heard about a technique somewhere before'. And ends up in bankruptcy court.

 

[AV1611VET]

Tell a 5-year-old child:
and she'll say, 'Ooooh, neat!'

Later, when she grows up and takes up cattle breeding, she thinks, 'I heard about a technique somewhere before'. And ends up in bankruptcy court.

Cute, aren't we?

 

[birdan]

Cute, aren't we?

Nope, just making a point.

 

[CACTUSJACKmankin]

Now your perspective is that of the emperess of the Shi'ar empire?


I'll remember to step lively around you!

awww, Someone beat me to the x-men joke.

 

[Lilandra]

Now your perspective is that of the emperess of the Shi'ar empire?

I'll remember to step lively around you!

Hmm...that may be a good idea.

 

[Lilandra]

Ha! Nerd!

Of course, I know what you're talking about, so...

My sons are named Logan and Xavier if that gives you an idea of what a closet nerd I am.

 

[Lilandra]

Without Jupiter the Earth would probably have been pounded by comets and asteroids so it is serving a purpose and maybe its immense gravitation helps stabalise the orbits of Mars and the asteroid belt?

I think of Jupiter as a consequence of the formation of our solar system. Any beneficial effects to our planet to me are coincidental.

Mars is a barren world waiting for our future selves to colonise and terraform.

My friend says that Mars lacks a magnetosphere. So even if they were able to warm it up and change the atmosphere, the planet would still get bombarded by the Sun.

Maybe with future technology all planets will serve a function.

Even w/that possibility, the function is man-made. They would exist regardless whether we ever use them or not.

 

[Lilandra]

double post