Normally I wouldn’t bother posting on something like this.  I truly believe that everyone has the right to their own beliefs.  If you want to believe in Thor, Gozer, Cthulu, that alien spirits arrived among us millennium ago, or one of the more established religions, that’s your choice, just as it is my choice to ignore those choices if I wish.  Normally I just ignore what I consider the more foolish of the people who want to push their agenda on the rest of us.  I believe in live and let live for the most part, with the exception of terrorists and people who are willing to use force to make others bow down to their religious tenants, like at least one well known religion here on Earth.  I have friends on the far left, the far right, who don’t believe anything or are very strong in their particular faith.  I get along with all of them, which is sometimes quite the balancing act.  I consider myself a moderate who believes in science above all, the knowledge we have accumulated through time that has led to our understanding of the Universe, and our development of the technologies that allow us to live as we do.  I am open to learning, to changing my views if someone can give me the information to base that change on.  But there are others out there who believe what they believe, and no amount of evidence will change their minds.  Ken Ham is one such individual.  The self proclaimed champion of Creationism.  You might remember him as the guy who debated Bill Nye the Science Guy about Creationism.  Well, Ken dropped yet another bombshell onto the internet, like a turd from a seagull flying over the beach.

The first article I saw was posted on Facebook, from the internet journal, Raw Story.   I clicked on the article and read the humorous proposition that good old Ken put forth.  That if there was any other intelligent life in the Universe, it was doomed to hell because they had never received salvation.  Now first off, this seemed like a terrible proposition from a loving God.  I mean, who would make an intelligent species, only to doom them to suffer an eternity in an afterlife after they died.  Generation after generation, for thousands of years (of course, Ken only believes the Universe and Earth are 6,000 years old, despite the ton of evidence to the contrary).   From the Raw Story page I went in search for Ken’s own site and the original article, from the Answers in Genesis Blog.  Now, to be fair, Ken did not really say that all of the millions of alien races that probably populate the almost infinite Universe are going to hell.  He argues that there are no aliens, that the God he believes in (which was not the same one I grew up with by any means, though they have the same name) would not create any other life forms, because Earth was specially created, out of the trillions of trillions of planets orbiting the hundreds of billions of stars in the hundreds of billions of Galaxies in the observable Universe.  And in his wisdom he placed this special place around a mediocre star in a small subarm of one of the major galactic arms, of a mediocre Galaxy.  One would think the planet would be placed around a blue supergiant in the center of the largest galaxy of them all, a truly special place and a glory to its creator.  I know, a Supergiant only lasts for mere millions of years before going into supernova, but if the Universe is only 6,000 years old, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

So, he didn’t really say all aliens were going to hell.  What he said was there couldn’t possibly be any aliens, because we are so special and stuff.  And, most outrageous of all, he called for an end to the space program and the search for extraterrestrial life because his dogma didn’t believe in such.  Now, as I stated earlier, I really don’t care about the religious beliefs of others.  Well, in this case I do.  Why?  Because if science were based on his creationist views, we would not have any vaccines, satellites, air travel, computers, and all the other things we depend on today.  Sure, engineers and medical specialist constructed most of these modern miracles, but they were based on the solid science that a man such as Ham denies, even while he makes use of it to spread his message of there’s nothing new to learn in the Universe.  People like him would love to see us back in the Bronze Age, sacrificing sheep on fires so his God could get a whiff of the smoke.

I don’t know that there is alien life.  I also don’t think our world is special enough to be the only home to life in this enormous Universe.  I may be wrong, but once we search the last large rock in the Universe and find none (if I’m still alive, not even a starter) I will admit my belief is wrong.  I also believe that among what I think will turn out to be trillions and trillions of planets with life on them, there will be other intelligent life forms.  Someday we may meet them.  Hopefully we will be of equal or greater technology, because history has shown us what happens the the technologically inferior cultures in such meetings.  If they are superior we on’t have much choice as to the meeting ground.  And if we meet other intelligent life, then people like Ken Ham can tell us that they are demons or damned, because they are not special creations like we are.  Of course people like Ken Ham and his views of religion would probably not live more than a couple of generations past such a meeting, as the stronger culture also normally converts the weaker to its own belief system.