NASA recently sent two probes to Mars to look for water. Finding water on Mars is important because believers of the evolutionary church understand that life is not possible without water. They must either find existing life, evidence of past life, or conditions that allow life to evolve outside of earth if they hope to convince unbelievers that life on earth evolved from nonliving chemicals by chance. Finding life outside of earth would bring instant fame, money, Nobel prizes and the thanks of the congregation who believe in the triune god of evolution—time, chance and natural selection.

The homily goes like this: Earth is not unique. It is a small speck orbiting an ordinary star in a galaxy of billions and billions of stars that must also have planets orbiting them just as earth orbits our sun. Thousands if not millions of planets just like earth must exist in the vastness of space, and surely the conditions that gave rise to life here on earth must be present many places in the universe. If life on earth has had time to develop to the point we can explore nearby planets, then it is certain that this has also happened by evolution on other planets. In fact life must be common in the cosmos. Or so the argument goes.

Thinking people may ask, if this story is true then where is all the life? Everywhere we look and as far as we can sense with our best instruments, there is no life. There are elements, energy, even water—but no life. Where would E.T. call when he phones home? Where is the catalog of earth-like planets with conditions that would have allowed for life to start and evolve? There isn't one. If faith is the substance of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen (Heb. 1:1), then the faith of evolutionary believers is as immense as the heavens. They are sure that the life they hope to find is really there, even though they have absolutely no evidence that it exists.

Recently a new evolutionary sect has developed which recognizes that wherever in space we look there is no life. But, rather than questioning their belief in evolution, they turn the problem on its head. In the book entitled Rare Earth, Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee¹ suggests that the conditions necessary for complex life to evolve are more rare than the conditions necessary for "simple" life to arise. Therefore we would not expect to easily find signs of complex life. So our inability to contact life outside earth does not mean that life is not there. This simply begs the question and does not change the fact that there is so far no evidence to support their belief. Is life common or rare in the universe? The evolutionary church allows you to have faith in either idea as long as you don't challenge the fundamental doctrine of life beyond earth. But unfortunately so far for E.T., there is no one home to take his call.

Endnote 

1 Ward, P.D. and Brownlee, D. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. Copernicus. Springer-Verlag, 2000.