Faith Related Ramifications of Life on Other Planets

Based on problems we have seen arise in the past, I believe that we Christians need to think about the possible ramifications of future scientific discoveries. One of these possible future discoveries is that I think we should be thinking about (and discussing) is that of the discovery of life on other planets. I cannot say that I am certain that life will be found on other planets, but with the number of new planets being discovered, it definitely doesn't seem impossible. It does seem unlikely that we will not at least find some earth-like planets soon and it does not seem out of the question that life will be found on one of them.

The current NASA mission of the spacecraft called Kepler (named after the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler) has already found 1,235 planet candidates as of February 2nd, 2011. To put this into some perspective, Kepler has only been actively searching for planets since May of 2009 and it is planned to keep looking for new planets for at least 3.5 years total (expandable to 6 years). Given the rate of discover of new planets now taking place, it is my (humble) opinion that an earth-like planet will be discovered within the next few years (we'll just say 3 years). For reference, I am defining earth-like in basically the way NASA talks about it - as a planet that is half to twice the size of Earth and in a habitable zone where liquid water could possibly exist.

Not too long ago most Christians believed that there was no way God would ever let any of his created organisms go extinct. All creation is precious in God's sight and that means that there is no way he could let any of it simply disappear of the face of the earth. However, when the bones of  things like Mastadons and Giant Ground Sloths were discovered, people finally had to come to grips with the fact that there were organisms that had once existed on the earth and were now completely extinct. God had, in fact, let many of his created species disappear of the face of the earth and today we know that somewhere upwards of 90% of all species that ever existed have subsequently gone extinct. To many people, this was proof that the God of the Bible could not possibly exist or at least not be who we thought he was.

Like I have already said, I'm certainly not going to guarantee that NASA will find life on other planets or anything, but I think we should be ready for the possibility. From our current perspective, we can see that the issue of extinction did not need to pose the threat to faith that Christians of the time thought it did, but then we commit ourselves to beliefs that could create exactly the same problems for us. Where in the Bible does it tell us that this planet holds the only life God created? Why should it threaten our beliefs to think that maybe there is life somewhere else in the universe that we have never even considered (especially when we think of all the things right here on our own planet that we haven't considered yet)?

Immediately Jesus reached out
his hand and caught him.
“You of little faith,” he said,
“why did you doubt?” - Matthew 14:31

If there is a contradiction between science and the Bible, I believe that the Bible wins simply by nature of the fact that it is the inspired Word of God. We, as Christians, should not simply surrender to everything that science proclaims as true. After all, we are commanded to have faith and not to love the world, but to love the Father. However, if the Bible doesn't talk about something, that doesn't mean it can't exist. The Bible doesn't tell us about the millions of microorganisms that live inside each of us and which we would be unable to live without, but does their presence contradict the Bible? If it does, I'm definitely not seeing it.

What I'm really trying to get across here is this; would the discovery of life outside Earth cause you to question your faith? I'm not saying necessarily that it shouldn't, but I do want to suggest that if you think it would, think about why. What about a discovery like that would cause you to question what the Bible tells you? What about the discover of other life in the universe would make you think that God isn't who you thought he was (or that he doesn't exist)?

Nature vs. Nurture Fallacy

When I hear the phrase "nature vs. nurture," what I almost immediately think of is the debates that sprung up over the past years about the "cause" of homosexuality in humans. I would like to start by saying that although this may be relevant to those debates, I do not intend this to be my entry into those arguments (though, feel free to use it for that purpose).

It is important to note that when people talk about "nature vs. nurture," there are specific meanings behind these words and the phrase as a whole. These specific meanings are important for understanding the argument and the issues as a whole.

Firstly, it is important to understand that what is being asked about with this phrase is the cause of some behavior or attribute. For instance, we could look at the texture of chocolate chip cookies or the foraging behavior of honey bees. Does the nature of the cookie (the ingredient recipe behind it) or the nurture (how it was mixed and baked) determine the texture of the resulting cookie? In the same way, we could ask whether it is the nature or the nurture of honey bee workers that cause them to be foragers.

Secondly, the word nature is used to refer to the physical origin of something or the material that actually makes something up. In the case of the chocolate chip cookie, the nature of the cookie would be the set of ingredients that go into the batter to make it. In the case of the honey bees, the nature would be the genetic information that told the cells and rest of the body what to do.

The word nurture is used to refer to the circumstances involving the development of the subject to its current state. The nurture of the cookie would be the process used to mix the ingredients and bake it. The nurture of the honey bees involves all of the things that influenced it as it was being born and raised in the colony as well as all the interactions it has with other bees, it's environment, and other organisms.

The actual issue here is the fact that people use evidences of the effects of nature and nurture as proofs of what caused certain behaviors and traits. One of the most commonly used incorrect phrases goes something like the following: "There is a gene for ________ (a phenotype)." This statement implies that there is no environmental component in the existence of the particular trait within the individual. Another commonly misused phrased is as follows: "Behavior/trait __________ is a learned behavior/trait." This statement implies that there is no genetic component to the development of the particular trait within the individual. The point here is that traits themselves cannot be attributed to either nature or nurture alone. There is no scientific or logical way to say that one is the cause without any effect from the other.

To go back to our cookie example, it would be completely improper to say that the chewy nature of a particular cookie is the result of how it was baked. How could you say that when there are so many factors that go into how a cookie is made? Who is to say that the ingredients of the cookie had nothing to do with the chewy nature of it? If you say that the baking is what made it chewy, why wouldn't I be able to say that that peanut butter in it is what makes it chewy (and be equally right)? Well, logically, you can't say that the chewy nature is due to any one factor because if you took out all the other factors (isolating your single variable), you wouldn't even have a cookie anymore.

What we can do is look at two cookies that have different textures (maybe one chewy and one crunchy) and define what the cause of the difference is. If we do some experiments and rule out other factors by controlling the ingredients and mixing techniques (and other things), we can determine definitely that baking is the cause for the difference between two cookies. The same thing goes for traits within animals (including humans, of course).

If interest is shown in this post, I will consider posting more extensively about this topic in the future. There are tons and tons of studies that could be discussed with respect to the nature vs. nurture fallacy and how we actually look at differences between individuals.

Computer Display Issue

I have no idea what caused this issue to occur or even exactly what the issue was, but it seemed interesting to me because I've never seen it happen before. I was simply browsing a website I go to frequently and all of a sudden the screen went black and then came back up. When it came back, it looked very odd and the error message was on in the middle of my screen as you can see in the pictures.

Since it is probably hard (or impossible) to read, this is what the error message says: "The ialmrnt5 display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog will be displayed giving you a chance to upload data about this failure to Microsoft."

I hope it is possible to see in some of the pictures, but the most interesting thing about this error to me was what the screen looked like afterward. The resolution and proportions of things had completely changed and the coloration was not simply different, but was very weird. Instead of the colors of things being the simply changed, things that are normally uniform color, were no longer.  As you can hopefully see in the pictures, the task bar and everything at the bottom of the screen are completely discolored and crazy looking.

This is not an informative post at all, but simply an interest thing. I was really fascinated by what happened to my computer screen and wanted to share that with the wider world. For what it's worth, the problem went away as soon as I restarted my computer and I have had no further problems with this display error.

In case anyone is interested, here is what I'm running on:

Toshiba Satelite A105 S4004

Windows XP - SP3

Intel T2300 @ 1.66 GHz - 1GB RAM