@ JW_Rouge:
Is life the same as intelligent life? I believe that you are correct that the org has not addressed the possibly of "unintelligent" life on other planets.
What is the org’s view on extraterrestrial life?
by My Name is of No Consequence 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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JW_Rogue
No. The Bible indicates that it is very unlikely that God at this point has created intelligent physical creatures on any planets other than our own
Very clever answer, "highly unlikely" so even if intelligent life were discovered they would try to come up with some "new light" to make it make sense.
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JW_Rogue
Is life the same as intelligent life? I believe that you are correct that the org has not addressed the possibly of "unintelligent" life on other planets.
No, and they will not bring it up because it is an argument that they will lose. I'd love to see that in an Awake "Was it designed?...Bacteria On Mars" LOL They ignore a lot of things that don't fit with their agenda. Just the other day me and my wife were watching a documentary on the Atom Bomb. In it they talked about how the Earth is filled with Uranium. My wife commented "I wonder what God's purpose was in that" I just shrugged "Who knows? There must be a good reason, right?"
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nicolaou
*** g73 5/22 p. 13 Is There Life Beyond the Earth? ***
Well, to this day, after many probes to Mars and thousands of pictures of it, there is not the slightest shred of proof that life exists on Mars or other planets in the solar system or on any other planets in the universe.
The Christian, particularly, knows that even a million landings on Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn or any of the planets and their moons will fail to reveal evolution of life. -
TheOldHippie
The view is that we do not know, probably there is no life, but IF there is, then Earth would still be the most important place in Universe because it was here that God's Son died for mankind and this has importance for all the Universe. So the reply goes "perhaps, but it is of lesser importance to us". -
nicolaou
Posted in wrong topic. Edited to remove. Apologies.
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JW_Rogue
The view is that we do not know, probably there is no life, but IF there is, then Earth would still be the most important place in Universe because it was here that God's Son died for mankind and this has importance for all the Universe. So the reply goes "perhaps, but it is of lesser importance to us".
That explanation would work unless we found life that was similar to our own or more intelligent if that happened then that argument would fall flat.
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Village Idiot
“We have finally said out loud what so many have thought for so long—that complex life, at least, is rare,” said Dr. Ward. Adds Dr. Brownlee..." (g00 8/8 p. 28 Watching the World)
This is a rare case of the Watchtower quoting someone halfway properly. But they failed to take in the big picture.
Proponents of the Rare Earth hypothesis believe that most stars are not conducive to life because they're too close together (.1 light years instead of 3 in our area.). That would cause perturbations in the orbit of some earth like planets which would cause the planet to extend a little further out than the life zone and send it into a deep freeze.
Such perturbations can also increase the amount of comets and asteroids that get dislodged from their orbits and crash into planets. Also, when supernovas explode they could fry anything alive for a distance of a few dozen light years which would include a lot of stars compared to our portion of the galaxy. We are in a small portion of the galaxy - the spiral arms - where stars are further apart and there are relatively few stars in our neighborhood out of the 100,000,000 in the whole galaxy. Not a lot of commotion in our neighborhood.
As a result, simple life might be common in our galaxy but those planets will have their life forms extinguished very frequently preventing them from evolving into more complex forms. The more complex the life form the more difficult it is to survive cosmic disasters.
By the way, Peter Ward, whom the Awake magazine quoted, is the author of the book shown below. He is certainly not a Creationist and he does believe that intelligent life might have sprung up in spite of the hurtles but he believes they would probably be a few dozen in our entire galaxy. He also believes that with the passage of time (hundreds of millions of years) more and more earth like planets in more benign areas of our galaxy will successfully bring forth intelligent life. The Awake magazine did not include that.
His conclusion is that our Earth might be amongst the first if not the first to have intelligent life.
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BluesBrother
An old quote dredged up from the recesses of my memory :
Wt 1965 11/15 p703 Questions From Readers
● In view of what is stated in the new book “Things in Which It Is Impossible for God to Lie,” is it to be understood that there definitely are living creatures on other planets?—R.B., U.S.A.
No, that is not what the book says. Paragraph 24, on pages 384 and 385 of that publication, reads: “To all eternity our earth will bear a distinction such as no other planet throughout endless space will enjoy. To all eternity, throughout all creation, it will be a glorious showpiece to Jehovah’s praise. Not that it will be the only planet that will ever be inhabited, but that it will be the only planet to which the Creator of all good things sent his only-begotten Son to become a man and die sacrificially to recover the planet’s inhabitants from sin and its penalty death. It will be the only planet on which Jehovah, by means of his Son Jesus Christ, will have fought the ‘war of the great day of God the Almighty’ to show his power over all his enemies in heaven and on earth and to vindicate himself as the Universal Sovereign.—Jeremiah 50:25; Psalm 140:7; Acts 4:24.”
The point being emphasized is this: Never again will it be necessary for God’s Son to die sacrificially to recover living creatures from sin and death. Never again will it be necessary for Jehovah God to vindicate himself as Universal Sovereign. These things will have been accomplished once and for all time at the earth. Even if the Creator should at some future time populate other planets—which is something that we do not know—there still would be no need for repetition of Jesus’ sacrifice and the vindication of Jehovah’s sovereignty. The issues involved will already have been settled forever.—Heb. 9:28; 10:12.
There has been much speculation by worldly scientists and others as to whether there is life on other planets at the present time. Little is known for sure. The Bible is definite in showing that there are vast numbers of spirit creatures in existence, but it does not reveal whether there are physical creatures on other planets.—Rev. 5:11; Matt. 26:53.
Christians, though, have no need to be disturbed over the speculations about present or future life on other planets. Man was placed on the earth, and we are told in the Bible that righteous men will continue to live here throughout eternity. (Ps. 37:29; 115:16; Eccl. 1:4) We can rest assured of that fact, no matter what God may reveal in the future about life on other planets.—See The Photo-Drama of Creation, page 96, paragraph 3, as published in 1914