Intelligent Design on Mars

Is there life on the other planets? This is a question that humans have been asking for years. In fact, we have devoted incredible resources to searching for extra-terrestrial life. Before Congress ended the funding in 1993, NASA spent 2.5 million dollars per year searching for extraterrestrial life – only a tiny fraction of their budget, of course, but all paid by US tax dollars. Well, let me get back on topic. It turns out that an odd formation on Mars has excited some people. Perhaps there is evidence of life on the planet! Before proceeding, take a look at the stone circle that has some people confident of intelligent life on Mars:

It’s not a lot, but the circular formation of the rocks has a number of people wondering whether this isn’t a sign of intelligent life. Some believe that they were purposefully arranged that way; others wonder whether they are not the remains of some much larger structure that is buried beneath the surface.

Regardless of what you think about this stone circle, it doesn’t look completely random. Whenever we see order, our minds jump to the conclusion that there is an ordered. Whenever we see design, our minds jump to the conclusion that there is a designer.

Here is the astonishing thing: one circle of rocks has ignited a discussion about whether their is intelligent life on Mars. Many of these same people, living in a world filled with much more obvious indications of design, will deny that there is a designer. Think about it: if you come across a cell phone, someone had to make it. A single celled organism is astonishingly more complex. It’s obvious that an intelligent designer created it.

Unfortunately, while we have much more evidence than a circle of rocks to prove the existence of an Intelligent Designer, there is something in our moral nature that refuses to accept the obvious. It is the fact that humans naturally have ‘foolish hearts’ that refuse to accept the truth. We can’t bear the thought that we might be responsible to such a God.

St. Paul described the dilemma well: “…His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:20-23).