What is the effect on our Christian faith if the Perseverance mission proves there was ancient life on Mars?
The Perseverance rover will be collecting geologic samples from the Jezero crater for 30 Mars days. Scientists believe the crater formerly held a lake in ancient times, when there was liquid water on the planet surface.The samples will be placed in the cleanest sample containers ever created on earth, and left on the planet's surface. The next Mars mission in 2026 to 2028 will be spear-headed by the European Space Agency to retrieve the samples. The mission will use the rover to collect the samples and place them in a rocket which will blast off from the planet's surface and return to earth. With the technological advances being made in robotics engineering, the entire mission is expected to be conducted Robotically, without any human astronauts. The samples will be analysed by renowned scientists from all around the world. However, it will be quite a few years yet before we know whether life ever existed on Mars.
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Asked February 20 2021
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Grant Abbott
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Tim Maas
God, of course, would know of the existence of life (in whatever form) that He created anywhere else in the universe, including whether that life was made by Him specifically "in His image" (as the Bible -- which for Christians is the ultimate source of God-given truth -- indicates that humans on earth originally were for the purpose of having a kind of fellowship with Him that no other creature on this planet has), as well as whether those life forms (unlike humans on earth) have retained that fellowship since their creation without falling into sin, and (if not) what provision God has made for their redemption. However, the Bible's characterization of the nature of Christ as God's "only-begotten Son", and the statement in John 3:16 of the purpose of His incarnation arising out of God so loving "the world" (not "worlds"), coupled with God's specific charging of humans to care for His creation (rather than tending to it Himself), and Jesus commanding His followers to go and teach the gospel to "all nations" (that is, limited to Earth), lead me to speculatively believe (without deriving or attaching any sense of "arrogance" or "hubris" from or to it) that we are unique. (However, I would also be the first to praise God if I were ever to be proven wrong -- whenever that might occur -- as well as the first to want to know all I could about His relationship to or with those other life forms.)
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