Faith In The Far-Fetched While Skeptical Of The Sure
“Shall the voters for the City and County of Denver adopt an initiated
Ordinance to require the creation of an extraterrestrial affairs commission
to help ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of Denver
residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions
with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles, and fund such
commissions from grants, gifts, and donations?” Yes___ No ___
Jeff Peckman, a Denver resident, was able to secure ten thousand signatures and get this ballot title drawn for next year’s elections. Peckman created the Extra Terrestrial Commission to be a “welcome wagon” when the aliens show up in the Mile High city.
This is not a joke. At least, I am not joking with you.
This raises a question that is intriguing. How many people in this nation believe there are extraterrestrial beings out there and/or down here? What is the basis for their faith? We have seen TV specials or magazines or photos of alleged space ships or aliens. People claim to have been abducted or to have had close encounters with them. Some even suggest that aliens are responsible for the creation and design of this planet and its inhabitants (dodging, though not artfully, the tough question of how the aliens came into being). Some, though I dearly hope a scant minority, earnestly believe there are “extraterrestrial intelligent beings” out there.
A growing number seem strident in their denial of what the Bible proposes. The Word of God gives a simple, logical explanation for our origins. It explains the purpose of mankind on this earth. It speaks of a God in heaven and an eternal future either with Him or separated from Him. People scoff away such a possibility, ridiculing the intelligence and sanity of those who trust this to be true. They can be the butt of jokes.
The proposed alternative to special creation by an uncaused, eternal, and intelligent being is uncaused, eternal matter giving rise to design, intelligence, morality, procreative abilities, and much more. How did that dust get here? How did it grow more complicated? How did some of it gradually become a fern or a hippopotamus or a barnacle or a rock or a human being? How did an octillion more things happen to get us from that power-packed, uncaused mass of stuff to the boundless, ordered universe in which we now live, breathe, and comprehend?
The most reasonable explanation involves a loving God who created man in His own image, who created for mankind a world fit to be inhabited–complete with food and water and the other essentials to make life perpetuated from generation to generation. Not only does it best explain design, the cosmos, morality, intelligence, and the like, it makes reasonable the idea that such a Being, God, could communicate His thoughts, intentions, and will through scripture and superintend the process of revelation that gives us, even today, precisely what He wanted us to know.
Mindless chance, aliens, or a loving, limitless God. What seems most reasonable?
=-Neal Pollard