With President Donald Trump set on releasing the UFO files, the old speculation on whether or not we're alone has once again surfaced in a big way. "Are we alone?" is one of the most asked questions that's common among humanity, and it's no wonder. We are a social species, and social questions are often attached to almost any topic we discuss at great length.
It's an important question to ask, too. In a universe so vast and capable of life, why haven't we heard from anyone else? We even have a name for this social question: the Fermi Paradox.
My friend and colleague, Ward Clark, wrote his thoughts on the matter, and I recommend reading his piece before or after this one, but to sum up his take, he thinks that no, we haven't had any alien visitors, with the ability to traverse the vast distance that is the black nigh impossible without technology we can imagine but can't begin to fathom:
First, any race capable of navigating interstellar distances, either through superluminal travel or just sending out probes with lifespans of centuries, would be advanced beyond our ability to imagine. To them, we may be little more than the equivalent of a kid's science fair project, like a petri dish full of an interesting mold; something to be examined with mild curiosity - or neutralized with Lysol.
Read: Trump Orders Full UFO File Dump, but Would Real-Life Aliens Even Want to Visit Us?
I agree with Ward. Space isn't what is depicted in "Star Wars" or "Star Trek," where it's a fun jaunt from habitable planet to habitable planet, each with its own quirks and adventure. Space is cold, unimaginably vast, and unforgiving. Even if we do advance to the point of interstellar travel, a simple system accident can cause you to be lost in the darkness of the universe without help or hope, with no one ever finding any trace of you ever again. It'd be like losing a bolt in the ocean. You're never getting it back, and elements will have it destroyed sooner than later anyway.
But I think that there is life out there, and they know how to traverse the black with little to no difficulty. In fact, they can hop from system to system, galaxy to galaxy, as if it were just a matter of flipping on the hyperdrive and enjoying the swirly blue screensaver. I'm even of the opinion they know we exist.
So why haven't they come knocking on our door? Why not bring us new technologies and invite us into the brotherhood of galactic civilization? The reasons would be many, and many have debated the reasons, but my theory delves into the theological.
For starters, we have to establish the existence of God. As I've discussed previously, the odds that our universe just came to being from absolutely nothing naturally are pretty much zero. As I've covered in the past, even if you do have a universe like ours, the odds of life coming out of it are so improbable as to be impossible, and the odds that multicelled life comes out of that are even more improbable:
Oxford Physicist Sir Roger Penrose (not a Christian) did the math and came to the conclusion that the odds for a life-sustaining universe to exist are 1 in 10¹⁰¹²³. I can't write that number out, because your browser would crash from the weight of the digital load of zeroes.
Even the odds for the formation of a singular protein are astronomical. Director of the Biologic Institute and Maxwell Professor of Molecular Biology at Biola University Douglas Axe calculated the odds that a singular protein — the building block of life — arising from non-life at 1 in 10⁷⁷, or 1 followed by 77 zeroes.
That's just for one singular protein. A living organism requires hundreds at once, and all of them working together in sync.
Read: Christianity Is an Intellectual Practice
You don't roll the dice that many times and get a win. It's just not happening. A creator is the only explanation.
With a creator established as a statistical fact, we can move on to the creation. I can safely assume the creator is the Christian God due to a lot of evidence of Christ's existence being a confirmed reality at this point, so I can then assume that the Bible is therefore a real account. If that's the case, then so is the story of our fall.
We are a fallen species. Even some of the elohim (ancient Hebrew usage of the term was plural, and is not the name for God, the Father) meant to guard us and help guide us are also fallen.
Sin is discordance with the creator. It's the free will to reject and defy the God of all, and something that entered into the human condition through Adam, according to Romans 5:12. David, in Psalm 51:5, notes he was born with sin, as if it was passed down to him, almost like a hereditary defect.
Paul, in Romans 7:14-25, speaks of his sin in a very interesting way. If you were to put it into a modern context, it would sound like he's discussing a mental illness:
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
I've made this case before. We are insane, to a degree, and we don't know it because our insanity is so common among us. We don't understand what we do, and sometimes we feel as if our own actions and thoughts are out of our own control. We know that control exists. We practice it in our better moments, but our struggles with our own heart and mind are colossal.
So, thanks to some math, a touch of logic, and a bit of historical evidence, I can only assume three answers to the Fermi Paradox.
1. We aren't alone. There's an entire universe out there teaming with life, but we aren't allowed to interact with them, and they aren't allowed to interact with us, because we fell and they didn't. Interacting with us doesn't help them or us, and God has made it clear that, for everyone's benefit, we are to be quarantined until our discordance with Him is resolved. Their influence wouldn't help us with our insanity. Breeding with us (if that's even a possibility) is out of the question because this madness sounds like it's hereditary, and the only doctor that can save us from this insanity is Jesus Christ. We can't rid ourselves of this genetically.
2. We aren't alone, and everyone has fallen just like us. Whether we all fell in some way on our individual worlds, and God had to send His son to find ways to cure each race, or we are at the epicenter of the universe's discordance, and Christ's sacrifice had to happen here, I don't know.
3. When we fell, our world was split off into a pocket dimension, and our universe is one big copy of the real universe where our sin cannot infect other worlds and cause discord throughout creation. It's possible that what C.S. Lewis calls the "Shadowland" (our physical world) is actually dimensional containment by relegating us to the 4D environment of physical 3D space plus time.
I think two is the least likely, but I'm not entirely sure one and three are standalone reasons either. The answer may be a combination of one and three.
The idea that other species that are Imago Dei in the universe could exist isn't impossible. Debatable, but not impossible. And if they do exist and maintain their connection with God without the discordance of sin, then they likely have been guided toward interstellar travel, or even interdimensional travel. The idea of God creating what He did and it not being given to his creations for exploration, would be an odd one.
So, in short, I think we're quarantined. That's my guess to answer the Fermi Paradox.
