The Search for Alien Life

Outer space is filled with signs of intelligent life—everything from exploratory probes to space capsules. But despite predictions of up to 38,000 intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy alone—and there are over 100 billion other galaxies—every sign of life originates from earth.1 Why do we even bother seeking out alien life?

For an evolutionist, the search for alien life is the search for his own origins. “We are conducting the most profound search in human history—to know our beginnings and our place among the stars,” declares the SETI Institute, which has spent more than $100 million so far in public and private funds to comb space looking for alien communications.2 Most wealthy governments are spending millions more on other programs looking for extraterrestrial life.

NASA, for example, spends some $500 million each year on exploratory missions to Mars and other planets and moons where, among other goals, they hope to find evidence of life.3 Recently the European Space Agency’s proposed spending $700 million on a Darwin telescope array (the name was no coincidence) to hunt for “the most likely places for life to develop” though the initiative was eventually scrapped.4

Yet as we keep exploring deeper and deeper into space, we are not finding any signs of alien life. As physicist Enrico Fermi quipped, “Where is everybody?” If life evolves under the right conditions, why haven’t we found anything?

The Bible shows us that God’s plan revolves around earth. God created the heavenly bodies for the sake of mankind (Genesis 1:14) and completed Creation Week by forming Adam and Eve. When these two earthlings sinned, their actions affected the entire universe, which fell into “the bondage of corruption” (Romans 8:21). Christ became a man (not an alien) and died once (Hebrews 10:10)—to redeem mankind. He has since been seated at the right hand of the Father (Luke 22:69), not ministering on alien worlds.

The message of the heavens is that there is intelligence, found in our Creator God (Romans 1:20), not evolution.