First of all mods, if this should be in IMHO, please move (after reading it a second time, it probably should be moved).
Secondly if this thread has been done before I apologize.
So lets get to my question, I read today that one of the rovers has pretty much confirmed that there was a “salt water” sea/ocean on the surface of Mars at one time. Even if tt was a few million or billions of years ago.
Now if one of the rovers was to flip a rock over and expose a fossil of a fish or shell, what would the scientific and theological ramifications be?
Would this be the greatest scientific discovery of all time?
What would “the church” say? What would their stand be?
Well it wouldn’t change a thing about any mainstream religion. Most are not specific enough in their creation stories as to say that earth is the only place with life. Plus there’s already a bunch of contradictions and plain fiction in these works and that doesn’t stop people from believing.
It would be THE scientific discovery of our time. To find evidence of life on mars broadens our horizons in terms of the possibilities for other planets in other solar systems to contain life.
It would also propell a more enthusiatic endevour to reach mars and find out more about our martian cousins. Questions about the very origins of life in our solar system may lie buried beneath martian soil
Well, given that it took nearly 4 billion years for life large enough to be seen with the naked eye to appear on Earth, and Mars’ salty sea probably lasted for much less time, I think it’s highly unlikely the rovers would be able to flip a rock to reveal a visible fossil. That said, any discovery of past life on Mars - microscopic or not - would be incredibly exciting to scientists. Expect a lot of renewed debate over whether life could have arisen independently on both Earth and Mars, arose on Mars first and was transmitted via space debris to Earth later, or came from somewhere outside of the solar system altogether (the panspermia hypothesis).
Not sure what you’re asking w/r/t “the church.” If you mean the Roman Catholic Church in particular… well, the current Pope seems to be pretty progressive with regard to scientific discovery, even if he is more reactionary in matters of dogma. I have no specific proof to offer, only an anecdote once told to me in a class on the origin of life. The professor teaching the class mentioned that he and a group of other scientists once approached the Pope, to find out whether their investigations would be considered inappropriate by the Church. According to the prof, the Pope told them that he thought it was fine for them to investigate anything they wished, as they were merely seeking to uncover the results of God’s work in the universe. The only thing he did not want them to do was attempt to investigate what came before the Big Bang, as this was part of the mystery of God.
I imagine different faiths/denominations might have differing takes on the word of such a discovery.
I guess what I was getting too when I said “the church” was Christians in general. Basically to my knowledge, the bible is only talking about earth, and the work that God did on it.
There is no other mention of any other “places” where God has done his stuff.
I always assumed God was based on earth, but I have never read the bible, so I’m not sure if that is a great assumption.
AiG has already begun bracing for impact; I saw a link to an article stating something like that there would definitely not be any life found on Mars, that’s just a lie that the evil atheists want you to believe, but if there is life on Mars, that it will prove that creationism was right all along, or some such wibble.
I’d still put it behind Watson & Crick as far as scientific discoveries go. Life exists on this rock, so the existence of life on other rocks would not be the most significant finding of our time, at least in this biologist’s eyes.
I’m afraid finding life on Mars doesn’t necessarily mean much in terms of the likelihood of the creation of life, because it would still be entirely possible that life began on Mars, and then transmitted to Earth through a meteor strike.
However, if we found more complex forms it would have implications for evolution and the likelihood that primitive life was likely to evolve into complex forms.
I, too, would not think that most flavors of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism would have theological problems with life on Mars.
There was both a Star Trek episode and an Alan Nouse short story dealing with God manifesting Himself as the local version of Jesus Christ on some other planet. I would think most of Christianity, believing as it does, would embrace that kind of image: the creation and salvation and redemption stuff applicable to Earth would be repeated for other worlds, to which God would give similar attention with no important differences, just variations in the unimportant details.
(Judaism and Islam would appear similarly able to incorporate new information into their schema, aside from which their believers and practitioners seem a lot less hung up on the kind of literalism that holds so much sway within Christianity. I have yet to hear or read anything from an Orthodox rabbi to the effect that “It says in the Torah that the earth had four corners, so four corners the world therefore has” or get riled up about how the world must be just a few thousand years old.)
However, a person could, just possibly, overestimate the degree to which fervent fundamentalist believers will exhibit behavior that seems rational in light of their professed beliefs. There’s no inherent reason why Christianity should have any theological problems with cloning humans, either – assuming artificial insemination doesn’t also bug them – but there sure are quite a few of them who are almost apoplectically upset about the possibility.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I knew many people from Campus Crusade for Christ in college and I can tell you that when Fundies encounter a fact they don’t like their usual response is to put the tinfoil hat on. Roll in the fact that the fossil will be found by NASA which is part of “big government” and you’ve got yourself an A1 grade conspiracy of the devil/atheists/govt./humanists/etc… Mainstream religions won’t be affected much though.
C.S. Lewis discussed this in one of his essays. He posits that we humans might be unique not because we’re better than the rest of creation, but worse. But whether the universe is filled with things that don’t need redemption, are redeemed already, or destined for eternal perdition isn’t something the Bible talks too much about. Our primary goal, for the time being, is to bring Humanity to God.
To paraphrase something Jesus said, “What concern is that of to you? Follow me.”
On the note of science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote an interesting one where the story of the Gospel is being reenacted all over the universe, and there’s this one athiest-type guy “chasing” Jesus across the galaxies trying to see Him for himself, except he only gets infinitesmally closer to the Ascention in a Zeno-esque paradox. Bradbury also wrote another one about some ministers who went to proselytize on Mars, only to discover that the beings there had already received the Truth and in fact were far more advanced in it than we mere humans were.
