With billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy and billions of galaxies, how are we to understand the Creator’s special interest in the Earth, a veritable grain of sand in the Universe? What might have prompted Him to send His Son, Christ, to Earth,
Why did the Incarnation take place a mere 2,000 years ago; a tiny blink of time in the near 14 billion year history of Creation since the Big Bang?
Was Christ possibly incarnated in other places in the Universe at other times? Will Webb possibly uncover
any evidence of this?
I hope greater minds than mine are considering the possible implications for Theology and Cosmology.
I will be anxious to hear from others who have pondered these questions.
Welcome! Good questions. I won’t be surprised if life, even intelligent life is found, à la C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. If you haven’t read them, you might enjoy them.
On the other hand, I think there is a distinct possibility that we are it. This is a favorite of mine, and it also speaks to what you are asking:
There are also a number of books that build on that theme, that where we are in the cosmos is very peculiar.
And when you consider God’s purpose in creating at all (and this is partly in response to YECism)…
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
4
Webb will, can uncover nothing qualitatively new. We are - forever - as Tantalus.
We must infer from the fact of eternity. That Earth is utterly mediocre. Therefore if God grounds being, He incarnates on every world where intentionality arises, from eternity.
Those are good questions. And as believers in various Judeo-Christian rooted traditions, we are given narratives from scripture that already anticipate how significantly tiny we are, both physically, but in other more important ways as well. “What is man that you are mindful of him? …” Ancient Greeks (well before Copernicus) were already geometrically aware of how tiny the earth must be compared to the cosmos at large. So the whole “pale blue dot” concept is not so radically new as we sometimes like to imagine. All we did was add even a lot more zeroes yet to the vast scale of things, so that the “grain of sand” that is the earth became just a more microscopic dot. (Our temporal significance is what actually took the much bigger hit. Empires or civilizations went from being a significant fraction of earth history to being a tiny blink.)
In any case, we worship a God that is not enamored only of “big” things. And in fact seems to show quite a bit of extra heart toward the “insignificant” among us in life. So why would this not apply to the cosmos as well? Do you enjoy a tiny flower less because its size is as nothing compared to a towering tree or climbing vine? Or love your infant child less because they are smaller than your older children? We’ve long known that size and importance do not well correlate with each other when it comes to value or especially Love.
For life to arise is highly unlikely in our universe, for intelligent life with consciousness even less likely. Perhaps it take an universe to produce one such product. Perhaps only a galaxy of stars to do so. It is still pretty amazing.
When these questions arise, one of the exercise I like to do is look at humanity and see if their are similar patterns. After all we are made in God image so it not unreasonable that thing we enjoy doing so would God. A few months ago, I helped @Combine_Advisor in a world building exercise trying to workout how a mushroom world could work. Now the specifics are un-importante, what is importants is we both put an effort in reasoning the small scientific details to make it work. Was it required for his story, strictly speaking I don’t think so and it quite likely that he will use only a small portion of the he will ultimately create but I had a lot of fun doing so. In general, I enjoy world building. Now if I enjoy world building why wouldn’t God ?
Well it had to happen at some point and God transcends time. For earth, we need a species capable of advanced communication and arguably test subject in Israël demonstrating our sinful nature.
I’ve known some Christians claim this. It does to an extent undermine the death of Jesus at the cross in the sens that his blood was only enough for humanity but not the other sentient beings in the galaxy. But in fairness, its quite possible we don’t understand it, after all, Jesus death is supposed to transcend time so it wouldn’t be completely unreasonable. It also possible that if we do go interstellar we are the ones that will bring the gospel to our peers species just like the Jew brought the gospel to us.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
8
The probability is 1. Here we are. The universe is strewn with wet olivine worlds with carbon dioxide by the many trillions, as the Earth is with sand, about the same ratio. Life is common. Intentional life less so. But in a galaxy of ten trillion worlds, we are not unique.
We should recognise this question as one for exploration, rather than for generating supposed ‘answers’. Resist the lure of ‘answer’.
The topic is explored in a Christmas carol “Every star shall sing a carol” written in the early 1960s by English folk musician Sydney Carter. You may be familiar with other hymns of his, such as “Lord of the dance” (first line “I danced in the morning when the world was begun”) and “One more step along the world I go”.
This carol has been included in several hymnals across the English-speaking world since then. I first encountered it as a youngster in the 1970s here in the UK.
Here’s a link to the text (although note that it is copyright, so be careful about onward copying): Traditional Christmas music and carols - Every Star Shall Sing A Carol (Aside: church musicians will note that its key on this website is rather low; it would usually be around a third higher.)
Dwell on the questions posed in the middle of the carol. Let your mind ponder them.
Why do we gravitate towards assuming our uniqueness? “Answers in Genesis” look far too over-simplistically to the Bible, but fail to ask themselves the obvious question: “By what means at all could the human (inspired, but human) authors of scripture, 3000-2000 years ago possibly be able to write down any so-called ‘answer’ to the question of extra-terrestrials life and/or its relationship to God?”
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
12
The question is answered by eternity. Resist the comfort of not knowing the obvious.
I don’t understand the point. Cancer begins in one of a trillion molecules in one of 30 trillion cells in the body. Small size has little bearing on significance.