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You Call This Living?
Welcome to issue 4.8!
I suppose about the biggest story in the news this past month has been the Mars
landing. Yes, I have been there.... well, at least I went to N.A.S.A.'s official
web site and saw the pictures. I thought it was remarkable! Mars is much too
cold for my tastes, though it does get colder here in northern Illinois in the
winter than it was there during the "heat" of the day... a scorching five
degrees above zero.
No one has announced the discovery of life there as yet. Well, almost no one.
They do believe that a huge subterranean body of water at one time broke through
to the surface and scattered rocks this way and that on the surface. One
commentator said that proved there was life, because where there is water, there
is life. But it takes more than water to produce life. The galaxy could be
filled to the brim with water and still there would need to be something
additional for life to exist.
Several months ago, we were told that evidence of life was found in rocks from
Mars that had been deposited here on earth by some catastrophic event. But we
really do not know if those rocks are from Mars. In fact, the "evidence" for
life could also be explained by several inorganic natural processes as well. I
think that the idea that these rocks contained any proof at all of life on Mars
has been pretty much discounted.
If they are not careful, some of the more inventive seekers for life on Mars are
going to start looking a little silly. When every little thing found suggests to
them that life exists or once existed on Mars, they will begin to look like one
of the supermarket tabloids. I recall one last year had enlarged a photograph of
some rock formations on the surface of Mars that, if you looked hard enough,
resembled a crude picture of a man's face. Proof that intelligent life had been
there and was sending a visual signal. Well, I am glad there is intelligent life
somewhere.
I do not expect that life will be found on Mars unless we send some up from
earth. I do wonder if some bacteria may have already landed there on board one
of the probes we have sent. If life is found there, it will not disprove
anything the Bible says about God and creation, because the Bible is silent
about physical life elsewhere in our universe.
However, if life is not found there, and all the ingredients that are supposed
to have produced life spontaneously on earth are found there, then the theory of
organic evolution will be dealt a serious problem, but one that I am sure can be
explained away by those who insist on a godless universe.
This is not just because I say so. Dr. Harold Klien, chief biologist of the
earlier Viking probes sent to Mars, said that if that mission failed to find
life there, that "it would drastically change man's theories of evolution and
the origin of life on earth." (Of course, he underestimated the power of these
theories to withstand negative evidence since the probes did fail to find life
but the theory is as strong as ever). He remarked that evolutionists were so
sure that conditions were right for life to evolve on Mars that if they failed
to find any that the "prevalent theory of chemical evolution here on earth would
need another looking at" and "the process should have gotten started (there) if
the theory is correct." He said that, I didn't.
Life is not the result of cosmic accident or random chance. Its origin is due to
the creative acts of God. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." (Genesis 1:1). If life is found there, it will be because God put it
there. If He didn't, then there will not be any native Martian life to be found.
By Jon W. Quinn
The Front Page
From Expository Files 4.8; August 1997
