God created the world in six days and on the seventh, he rested. But at the discovery of life beyond Earth, the foundations of many faiths may find a lack of enlightenment.
NASA’s Kepler telescope has been periodically releasing data as it captures images of the cosmos, continuously staring into space. As well as finding the most compact planetary system ever found, featuring six worlds – Kepler 11, it has found 1,235 planets with possible habitable conditions for life.
Finding developed and intelligent life may be a little far-fetched, but even the discovery of very basic life forms would no doubt challenge and undermine the ancient texts of religion.
Scientologists would presumably welcome such findings, but how would religions such as Christianity and Islam react, considering their devotion to texts that define the creation of man in such explicit description?
If Jesus is the saviour of the human race, was he also the saviour upon a planet in a different solar system? Did God create man and then go on to breathe life elsewhere within the universe?
Science and religion have never seen eye to eye, so lets spare the debate on Darwinism. But a discovery of this magnitude would no doubt rock the boat of faith.
If life were found elsewhere, would God not have betrayed us? We could no longer claim to be the apple of his eye, his quite flawed creation.
Religious or not, science has proven we’re not the centre of the universe, and our existence might not be as extraordinary as we think. And God or no God, we might not be the only delivery of life.
By Sam Clements