Dr.,

Thank you for taking tim for my post. My question is do you believe intelligent life exists somewhere in the cosmos other than us on Earth?

I'm interested in your comments.

I have always felt there was no other life in the universe on the same level as us. My reasoning is that God, being all knowing and all loving, would somewhat be going against His nature by keeping civilizations apart and unknowing of each other and thus incapable of loving one another. What reason would he have to keep his children apart? We know Christ came to Earth to die for us, and only us. We also have no mention or suggestion in sacred scripture of other civilizations. However, it certainly seems possible that another civilization exists based on the sheer size of the universe. Many people I know, myself included I must confess, have a fear that maybe we are not as unique and special as we think we are.

Dear Ben,

You are making a few conjectures on how God might think. But consider this. Since God is infinitely perfect, he did not have to create the world or dozen worlds or a million worlds. None add to his perfection. So why did he create at all? We know he did create because we have our own world has evidence. But why would he bother to do even this? We do not know for sure because we do not have the mind of God. All that we can say that God did it and figure he did it out of love because he is love. Now in trying to read God's mind you conjecture that, since the universe is so large, there might be some other world around which we should know about because it seems that God would not create a lot of worlds in which intelligent creature did not know about each other. I suppose there is no law against us speculating or guessing. But it seems to me that we have enough mysteries to engage our minds for quite a while without creating some mysteries of our own that can't be settled. Certain revealed mysteries can be understood if we pay attention to what the Church has taught us as already certain. That should keep us busy enough, it seems to me. So I am not very enthusiastic about theories about the state of grace unknown intelligences might be in or out of, thus calling for redemption or not calling for it. The imagination can put all kinds of contradictions together and swallow them down to make an exciting science fiction story that does not bear up under any kind of analysis of either common sense or philosophy. Today there is too much substitution of clever imagining for sober intellect ion. I would like artistic imagination to be tied a bit closer to reality. We already live in an intellectual zoo where all kinds of crazies and running about with crazy messages and visions. That of course is my opinion. I like to save what intellectual energy I have for trying to figure out something real. But on this matter, let every one think for himself. I suppose there is a way of doing that. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had wide imaginations but also deep philosophical and theological knowledge. But I still prefer Flannery O'Conor.n Take it easy.

Dr. Geraghty

COPYRIGHT 2009

Click here to send this Question and Answer to a friend