Out of this world

Would proof of extraterrestrial life cause a crisis of faith?

For millennia, people have gazed into the night sky and wondered, “Are we alone?”

Now the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a nearby dwarf star, Trappist-1, has brought us not just a step, but a leap closer to answering that question, according to the scientists who announced it in a February press conference recorded by NASA.

“The discovery gives us a hint that finding a second Earth is not just a matter of ‘if ’ but ‘when,’ ” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA.

It’s the first time so many Earth-sized planets have been found around one star; three of them, within the so-called “habitable” or “Goldilocks” zone where liquid water could form on the surface and support life, according to NASA.

Proof of extraterrestrial life on one of any of the planets orbiting Trappist-1 would answer the big question of whether we are alone in the universe. But it also would raise many more — some, with theological implications.

“I have always seen the search for life elsewhere to be an opportunity to understand basically the way we relate to the universe — sort of our location,” said the Rev. Lucas Mix, an Episcopal priest and astrobiologist who has a doctorate in evolutionary biology.

“My greatest hope would be that we find life somewhere else because when we find life somewhere else, we can start to talk about what it means to be alive and not what it means to be us.”

Throughout the history of theology, Mix said, Christians have swung between the idea that Earth can be the only inhabited planet because God favors humans, and its counterpart, that to assume Earth is the only inhabited planet is the height of human pride because God is limitless and all-powerful.

The astrobiologist-priest doesn’t see the existence of life on other planets as a challenge to the idea God loves humans and created them on this planet.

Neither do people in other traditions.

Survey says ...

A survey of more than 1,300 people of all faiths and no faiths presented at the 2011 Mutual UFO Network Symposium by Ted Peters — research professor emeritus at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. — found most don’t believe proof of extraterrestrial life would cause them a crisis of faith. That number is highest among Buddhists (94 percent) and lowest among Catholics (83 percent).

“In Islam, the God incarnate issue does not exist, so the existence of such species would not pose fundamental problems,” said Nidhal Guessom, professor and interim head of physics at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, who has spoken about the implications finding extraterrestrial life would have for Muslims.

Leaves possibility open

Muslims interpret Scripture in different ways on that possibility, ranging from believing God created only humans as intelligent and spiritual beings to believing God created other species more intelligent and spiritual than us, said Guessom in an email to RNS. And different questions would be raised by different kinds of life, by bacteria or a super-intelligent species.

But “brief, intriguing, and inconclusive” references in the Quran leave the possibility open, the Algerian astrophysicist said.

As for Jewish and Christian Scriptures, Brother Guy Consalmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory, said: “It’s important to realize that Scripture is really clear only about one thing when it comes to creation: that God did it.”

The idea that humans are special came not from Christianity, but from the Enlightenment — from humanists interested in putting humans in God’s place, according to Consalmagno, who addressed questions raised by extraterrestrial life in a book he co-wrote titled “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: … and Other Questions from the Astronomers’ In-box at the Vatican Observatory.”

Still, he said, the fact that planets orbiting Trappist-1 could support life isn’t even the most exciting part of their discovery; there probably are a “zillion” planets in the universe that could be habitable.

More exciting to him is the fact the planets are so close to the star they orbit “we have no idea how that’s even stable,” he said.

That’s going to tell scientists more about how planets form. In that way, science and religion are more alike than different.

“People get really, really excited about apparitions of saints and the Virgin Mary or whatever sounds spectacular, but in real life, your ordinary prayer life is frankly much richer and much more important than any presumed apparition that may or may not have occurred,” he said.

“That’s the way it is in science. Really, the everyday, stepby-step progress in the long run is much more exciting.”

NASA / JPL / Caltech In this illustration, the Trappist-1 star — an ultracool dwarf — is orbited by seven Earth-size planets.

NASA / Getty Images An artist’s concept allows us to imagine what it would be like to stand on the surface of the exoplanet Trappist-1.

NASA / Getty Images Astronomer Nikole Lewis of the Space Telescope Institute presents research findings during a briefing on the Trappist-1 star at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

NASA / Getty Images An artist’s concept of the Trappist-1 star and the seven Earthsize planets orbiting it. The system has been revealed through observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.