The successful landing of the one-ton automobile-sized Curiosity on Mars was a great testimony to American ingenuity and to the future of the NASA space program. It seemed more like Star Wars than NASA. But the largest and most expensive spacecraft ever produced ($2.5 billion) isn’t for war, it’s designed to seek out (but not to destroy) life on Mars. This is a fundamental quest of human existence: are we alone in the universe? Existence is not only a science question; it is also a religious question. If evidence of life is found on Mars, what would that say about God?
Evidence for life on Mars would go a long ways to validate a popular view of how life also came to be on earth. Many scientists think that our building blocks were forged over billions of years in the fiery furnaces of the stars. When the stars reach the end of their lives, some turn supernova and explode, spreading their debris throughout the cosmos. That debris carrying the seeds of life spread to our solar system, forming the raw materials of the earth and Mars. In the presence of water and energy, perhaps the building blocks evolved into life as we have it today.
Mars at one time was warm and wet, that much is well known from the previous Mars missions, Spirit and Opportunity. It is also close enough to the sun to support life. The only missing ingredient, then, is some kind of basic carbon building block. If those are indeed found on Mars, then that might explain how they arrived in our world.
Obviously this thinking is a threat to religions who believe life was specifically created by God on earth. A particular example is conservative Christians who hold to a strict seven-day creation theology. But for those who understand Christianity according to its rich 2,000-year diversity, the discovery of life on Mars poses few problems. Some of the church fathers such as Augustine and the scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas promoted such a faith, as well as many others. In fact, they would celebrate this finding. The existence of life anywhere only demonstrates Divinity. For life is a miracle of God however and whenever it occurs.
