Have you noticed how Americans are rather fanatical about science fiction, space, and everything that goes with those subjects? We can’t seem to get enough of Star Wars and Star Trek and even Star Gate on television. New documentaries are being produced on a daily basis about UFO sightings and even alien abductions! That’s right! Some people claim that they have actually been abducted or kidnapped by aliens, taken into outer space, and probed with all kinds of medical instruments by these strange looking creatures with huge black eyes and oval heads!

Well? What do you think? Do you believe in UFOs? If you don’t think our planet has been visited by strange creatures from other planets somewhere, do you think there might be “life” somewhere out there in the universe? And, if you do, what kind of life are we talking about? Scientists right now are hoping to find some sort of life on the planet Mars, even if it’s a lower form of life like a microbe or a single-cell animal of some kind. A few years ago, someone found a meteor in Antarctica and, after examining  it under a microscope, claimed it was from Mars. They also declared that there were signs of “life” on the rock! Later, they changed their minds about the “life” part. Actually, I never could understand how they knew this rock came from Mars originally but they said they had a way to figure that out.

Belief in life around the universe is varied depending upon who you are talking to. Some scientists, for example, say that the universe must be teeming with life and they base their theory on mathematics and probability. In other words, there are billions of galaxies and each galaxy has billions of stars like our sun and lots of those suns must have planets (seems logical) and at least some of those planets must contain life of some kind and a few of those with life must have life forms that are at least on the same level as us! They have all kinds of fancy math equations to prove they are right but, the fact is, to this day we’ve never found life anywhere outside of the planet earth. However in the last few years, other planets have been located in the Milky Way (that’s our galaxy) orbiting around a few stars. Scientists  believe that the discovery of these planets may be the first step in proving their theories are correct concerning finding life in the universe.

On the other side of the fence are people (mainly religious) who believe that life only exists on planet Earth because that’s the way God planned it. It’s interesting to note here that the famous evangelist, Billy Graham, believes that life does exist out there somewhere. The truth is, we just don’t know and I don’t think the Bible can help us on this subject although some religions use scriptures like John 10:16 to try to prove otherwise. “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” The Mormons have used this scripture to try and prove that Jesus did appear to the American Indians after His resurrection.

I really don’t know about other forms of life in the universe but let me talk to you a moment about UFOs. It would literally be a monumental task for any alien spacecraft  to get to our planet and here’s why: First of all, you must understand the mind-boggling distances that are represented in the universe. The closest star, for example, outside of our own solar system (our sun and the nine planets) is a star 4 light years away. What does that mean? Well, to reach that closest light you would, first of all, have to have a space ship that could travel at the unbelievable speed of light. Light travels 186,000 miles per second! So, you would have to get in your hot rod space ship and travel 186,000 miles every second, 24 hours a day, for four years to get to that closest star! Now, that’s just in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. If you wanted to cross our galaxy, you’d have to fly at the speed of light for more than 85,000 years just to get to the other side! Is this blowing your mind yet?

The Hubble Space Telescope has found galaxies that are over 14 billion light years from us. That’s right…to get there, you’d have to fly at the speed of light for 14 billion years! Who can fathom that kind of distance? These are some of the reasons that I struggle with the UFO phenomenon.

Oh, I know what some of you are thinking…maybe these other alien races have technologies that we don’t know about like traversing through worm holes or flying faster than the speed of light. I guess that’s possible even though Albert Einstein claimed that it was impossible to fly at the speed of light because mass increases with speed and by the time you approached the speed of light, you and your spacecraft would have gotten so large that there wouldn’t be an energy source in the universe large enough to propel your ship at that speed. Of course, that was just his opinion…he could be wrong!

While there could be life elsewhere in the universe, I like to just think that God created all those twinkling stars up there to bless us whenever we looked up into the night sky! Besides, when we get to God’s kingdom (heaven), we’ll need something to do for eternity (cause that’s a long time!) and what could be more fun than exploring an endless universe filled with wonders that we could only imagine?

I also don’t worry much about being abducted by aliens. I figure I’m too ugly for their purposes and, if I’m right, all you beautiful people out there need to watch out!

Until God chooses to reveal His total majesty to us, I’ll just keep on enjoying the Star Wars movies and reading a science fiction book from time to time. But, I have to tell you, I just can’t wait to get out there and find out for myself and I firmly believe that we’ll all have that opportunity sometime in the future.

If you’re nice to me, I might give you a ride in my spacecraft but you’ll have to wear a seat belt because it’s going to be mighty fast!

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