Should We Teach Kids Life Was Intelligently Designed . . . By Aliens?

What is Intelligent Design?

Intelligent Design (ID) is a broad movement composed of Christians, theists, and even some evolutionists. This movement claims that life is simply too complex to have evolved purely by naturalistic means. So they postulate a designer of some kind. But as we’ve pointed out before, the major flaw for Christians in the ID movement is that it doesn’t name the designer. The designer could be the biblical God, some other god, or even aliens. This is what happens when you view creation without God’s Word.

Aliens—a “Tenable Theory”?

In his article, Haqq-Misra starts by mentioning our world-class Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky. He writes,

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., with displays showing animatronic dinosaurs roaming through Eden, employs a pseudoscientific presentation of faith—and biblical text—as a counterweight to the voluminous scientific information supporting evolution.

So he clearly discounts biblical creation (what he calls an “incarnation of intelligent design” even though it’s radically different from Intelligent Design, and we’ve openly criticized the movement) as an option for how life and the universe came into being. Of course, in doing so, he ignores the vast amounts of evidence that support the biblical account of creation and earth’s history.

He goes on to say,

Modern science does offer a tenable theory of intelligent design, one that does not resort to religion or pseudoscience. . . . The concept that extraterrestrial intelligent designers are responsible for life on Earth. . . .

Directed panspermia is not the best explanation of the data available today, but it remains a scientifically grounded idea that implicates an intelligent designer as responsible for life on Earth. It makes no claims that attach it to any particular religion or creed. There’s no reason it couldn’t be taught in schools.

So believing that God created the universe is “pseudoscience,” but the idea that aliens brought life to earth is a “tenable theory” that is “scientifically grounded”? This is very similar to what Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” recently told me and a crowd of onlookers at the Ark Encounter. Secularists are happy to accept the idea that aliens brought life to earth even though there is absolutely no evidence for life in outer space—not even “simple” microbial life, let alone intelligent aliens capable of sending life to earth!

People simply do not want to admit that there is clearly a Creator so they invent all kinds of foolish ideas to explain away what they see.

But appealing to intelligent aliens doesn’t even solve the issue of how life originated; it merely pushes it back a step. So how did these “earth-seeding aliens” come about? Were they seeded by another set of intelligent aliens? And where did those aliens come from? Is it aliens all the way down the line? Secularists always ask, “Where did God come from?” All the while, they ignore Scripture that says God is eternal, and apparently don’t follow their own rhetoric when it comes to aliens.

What this idea of directed panspermia really shows is that, when it comes to creation and evolution, the evidence is not the issue—it’s a heart issue! People simply do not want to admit that there is clearly a Creator so they invent all kinds of foolish ideas to explain away what they see. The book of Romans sums this up well:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. . . . Who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 1:20–23, 25)

These secularists have exchanged the obvious truth of a Creator, who has revealed Himself to us in His Word, for a foolish lie about extraterrestrial life.

Yes—It’s an “Imaginative Exercise”!

At the end of his article, this scientist writes,

Let the students examine the evidence and decide for themselves which is more likely: origin of life on Earth, or origin from afar by extraterrestrial beings. Such an imaginative exercise will push students toward the frontiers of inquiry and inspire novel solutions toward a new, scientific theory of our origins.

Well he’s right about one thing—imagining life evolving by naturalistic processes here on earth or coming from a distant world is definitely an “imaginative exercise”! It’s a fairy tale. There is no scientific evidence that life can arise from nonlife here or anywhere else by natural processes—indeed this idea breaks a scientific law, the law of biogenesis that states life can only come from other life. And there is no scientific evidence for supposed aliens. These “exercises” are simply a figment of the imagination of evolutionists who are desperate for extraterrestrial life to show that earth’s not that special or to explain the complexity of life here on earth.

I find it interesting that the author thinks students should “examine the evidence and decide for themselves which is more likely: origin of life on Earth, or origin from afar by extraterrestrial beings,” but he certainly would be opposed to students examining the evidence for biblical creation for themselves! Instead he, like many other secularists, wants to censor the teaching of science only to include evolution so children never learn about biblical creation. Why is this? Well, I think it’s because they are scared that if kids are taught to think critically and examine the evidence for themselves, they won’t believe in evolution anymore!

Should Creation Be Taught in Schools?

Now, at Answers in Genesis we don’t advocate the mandatory teaching of biblical creation or even Intelligent Design in public school classrooms. One reason for this is that teachers would be unequipped to teach it, and many would probably not treat it fairly or would teach it in a mocking or deriding way. But we do believe students should be shown the many scientific problems with evolutionary ideas so they can critically think through the origins issue. Of course, secularists don’t want young people being exposed to the problems with evolutionary ideas because it’s clear that evolution fails to explain the incredible complexity of life on earth.

To get answers on the true history of the universe, I encourage you to visit our Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky. Learn more at CreationMuseum.org.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.