Is faith in God unique to humankind?

Q: When I scan photographs in periodicals like Astronomy Magazine, and Sky and Telescope, I am in awe of the magnitude of the universe that our Creator has made. Photos of nebula, globular clusters and galaxies that spiral light years apart just astound me. Then I wonder, where does God reside in this vast universe? It looks like a very lonely place. Would this brilliant being want or actually have company where He resides? Can there be other beings that are engaging friends, or ones that rival our Creator's intellect and power? When I read scriptures like Psalm 82 or Amos 9:5-6, I wonder what reality is in relation to my conjectures. I would appreciate your thinking on these questions. I also want to say how much our entire family enjoys reading the God Squad column. We appreciate the warmth, thoughtfulness, and wisdom of your responses. Thank you! -- R from Sacramento, Calif.

A: Hard to believe that over all these years I never got a question about other intelligent life in the universe, but here goes. Beam me up, Scotty! The scientific question about alien lifeforms is way above or below my pay grade, depending on your views about science and religion. But the theological issues are fascinating. Remember that the interesting questions concern fully-developed intelligent alien lifeforms on other planets, not merely the possible existence of microbes living on some remote planet under an ocean of ice. And by the way, the phrase alien lifeforms is unfortunately humanocentric because we humans would certainly be alien lifeforms to them. Anyway, here we go.

The first theological question is whether or not God made them. The answer to this has to be yes. We believe that God is the creator of the entire universe, not just the lifeforms on our little planet. Although the Bible is relatively silent on the topic of little green men, nevertheless the first words in the first verse of Genesis gives us some grammatical divine guidance. The proper translation of those Hebrew words, bereshit barah elohim et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz, is not "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth," as we find it in the King James Version, but rather, "In the beginning of God's creating this heaven and this earth." Our Bible is a record of our belief about God's creation of life here on planet earth. When translated properly the Bible is clearly teaching that there were and there are many other creations of many other heavens and earths that, according to Psalm 19 wordlessly declare the glory of God and reveal God's handiwork.

The more interesting question to me is whether other intelligent lifeforms, if they exist, also believe in God. Is faith in God unique to our species? Obviously they would not have our Bible as a record of God's revelations, but would they have found it necessary in their spiritual evolution to posit a Creator God who gave them life and to whom thanks and love are due for that immense gift? I believe they would also have reached out to God, who would in love also have reached out to them. The reason for my belief is the overwhelming sense of order in the cosmos and the obvious corollary belief that such order logically requires an Orderer.

I also deeply wonder if intelligent life on other planets would have developed a moral code that shares our moral values. Again, I think so. My reason here is the evidence on earth of cultures from widely disparate regions of the earth that had no contact with each other, and yet they all have in their sacred texts almost the exact same version of the Golden Rule. It is almost as if doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is an inescapable and universal moral belief. Of course, I could be wrong about all of this and these other intelligent life forms might be vicious and ruthless like the monsters in the "Alien" and "Predator" movies.

The evidence of telescopic spectrographs proves to us that the carbon here on earth is identical to the carbon at the farthest edge of the universe, and so it seems eminently reasonable to me that the God here on earth is identical to the God at the farthest edge of the universe, and life there, just like life here is in God's hands.

One thing I feel deeply certain about is that if there is indeed intelligent life on other planets in the universe ... they will also have cookies. Life without God is improbable, but life without cookies is inconceivable!

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