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Evolution on other worlds

Dealt with by our new ‘aliens’ documentary!

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First appeared in a CMI newsletter June 2017

Why on Earth would CMI produce a documentary about alleged creatures outside Earth? Many people asked the same question about the book Alien Intrusion back in 2004. However, science fiction involving aliens is an enormously influential cultural concept, with many all-time box office hits and its evolutionary-based ideas lead many astray. So what should Christians think about life on other planets, and fantastic reports of alien abductions?

Alien-intrusion-movie

The UFO topic reaches many science fiction fans who would not normally pick up a creationist or even a Christian book, as amply proved when the book reached the Amazon top-50 list. It clearly presented the Gospel and is still #56 in books about UFOs. Our movie will have the same aim.

I like the alien/sci-fi genre—I’ve watched every single episode of every Star Trek, Stargate, and Babylon 5 TV series and all their related films, as well as all the Star Wars films. Yet I am also a Ph.D. scientist, and know that the operative word in ‘science fiction’ is fiction, i.e. fantasy for both scientific and biblical reasons.

Aliens based on evolution

One major reason for belief in alien life is: since life evolved here on earth via chemical evolution, then it must have evolved elsewhere on the billions of planets that must inhabit this vast universe. However, this widely assumed belief has no basis in fact—one evolutionist even advised: “Pssst! Don’t tell the creationists, but scientists don't have a clue how life began.”1 Too late—we have long known about the intractable problems involving real science of chemistry and information theory!2 For example, one evolutionary biochemist admitted the problems with all theories in an article titled, “The RNA world hypothesis: the worst theory of the early evolution of life (except for all the others).”3

Some evolutionists, including Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA’s structure have admitted the intractable problems in both chemistry and information, so they appeal to aliens in another way. Aliens seeded life!4 So, such notions are now mainstream science! But then, how did the aliens evolve from non-living chemicals? It just displaces the intractable problems of chemical evolution to elsewhere in the universe.

Science fiction, not science fact!

One huge problem is the vast distances to any other stars. The closest star system to ours is Alpha Centauri, 4.37 light-years away. I.e. its light, although travelling at 300,000 km/s (186,000 mps) or ‘c’ takes 4.37 years to get here. One light-year is just under 10 trillion km (about 6 trillion miles). But how could we get there in human life-times?

The only answer is enormous speed. E.g., at third of light speed, it would take 13 years to reach the nearest star. This is about 10,000 times the speed our Saturn V moon rockets needed to escape the earth’s gravity. One of the most dangerous times of the Apollo moon missions was take-off. If the rocket had failed, then all the fuel would have exploded with the energy of 2 kilotons of TNT (compare the Hiroshima bomb of 15 kt). Our new movie interviews one of the pioneers of the heady days of the US space program, Dr Henry Richter. What an honour to have him fully on board with our project.

However, there is a huge problem that senior high-school physics students learn: several important quantities depend on the square of the speed. This includes the energy needed to reach that speed—and the energy of any collision at that speed, and the ‘lurching’ force when the craft turns.5

So, a starship of the same mass as the Saturn V (let alone the huge ships of sci-fi) would need 100 million times the energy—almost 400 times the energy that would be released if the total global nuclear arsenal exploded. And a collision with even a grain of dust would be like a ton of TNT exploding. Also, if the spacecraft had to turn even as gently as the diameter of the solar system, the lurching would mean fatal ‘g-forces’ on all the crew.

Aliens and the Bible

Many also say, the Bible doesn’t say that aliens don’t exist, and surely they must because the universe is so huge. However, our position is not an argument from silence, but a logical deduction from clear statements in the Bible, starting with Genesis.

For example, God gave mankind dominion over the rest of creation (Genesis 1:26–28)—not any alien life form. And when Adam fell, the whole creation was cursed (Romans 8:18–23)—which would logically include the Vulcan and Klingon home-worlds and Coruscant, for example. And this whole creation will be redeemed because God took on human nature in the Incarnation of Christ, expressly so humans could be saved (Hebrews 2:14). Christ became our ‘kinsman-redeemer’ (Isaiah 59:20), a fellow descendant of Adam. God never took on Vulcan or Klingon nature.

And the redeemed people will be one bride of Christ’s bride (Ephesians 5:22–33; Revelation 19:7–9). Christ will be monogamous, with only a human bride, not polygamous with Vulcan and Klingon brides as well.6 Hopefully you can see the very Gospel is at stake, and thus, why we need to deal with the phenomenon.

Alien encounters?

This ground-breaking film also interviews people that have had real experiences of some sort. Whatever they have encountered, make no mistake—they are far from the benevolent aliens of sci-fi, but are highly malevolent. Often these isolated people have nowhere to turn. However, the Bible reveals that there are evil and powerful spirits, and they have the ability to deceive. Fortunately, one group of people seems to be immune, as even secular ‘alien’ researchers admit: evangelical Christians. This is easy to explain: no evil spirit is a match for the indwelling Holy Spirit.

With your support, this documentary has the great potential for outreach unlike anything else in our apologetics arsenal. It greatly expands on the above points. Finally, it also shows the dramatic way that the Gospel transforms broken lives. I encourage you all to ‘get on board’ for what is sure to be an exciting ride when the movie is released.

Published: 10 August 2017

References and notes

  1. Horgan, J., blogs.scientificamerican.com, 28 February 2011. Return to text.
  2. Batten, D., Origin of life: An explanation of what is needed for abiogenesis (or biopoiesis), creation.com/origin-of-life, 26 November 2013; and the groundbreaking Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels book and DVD. Return to text.
  3. Barnhardt, H.S., The RNA world hypothesis: the worst theory of the early evolution of life (except for all the others), Biology Direct 7:23, 13 July 2012 | doi:10.1186/1745-6150-7-23. Return to text.
  4. See creation.com/designed-by-aliens. Return to text.
  5. Kinetic energy of a mass m with speed v = ½mv²; ‘lurching’ or acceleration for an object with a turning circle of radius 2 is v²/r. Return to text.
  6. See Did God create life on other planets? Return to text.