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Charlie Traffas
Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com.
Religion
2006-07-01 09:38:00
What would be the religious explanation if life were found on other planets?
: If life were discovered on another planet, what would be the religious explanation?
ANSWER: I respond:    No problem!    The Creator of the universe has infinite power and is able to create an infinite variety of living things. Just think of the millions of humans, who have inhabited this planet, each one an individual person with varying talents and likes and dislikes, good and bad and in-between! There are thousands of different viruses to infect and harm these humans, along with trillions of mosquitoes, which I wish God would have omitted from his agenda. The National Geographic Magazine has published many articles about outer space and the infinite number of galaxies, many of them much larger than our small galaxy with its numerous planets revolving around the sun.   Thus it is not only possible, but quite likely, that God has created and continues to create new planets and galaxies, and individual plants and animals and humans to inhabit them, along with things we cannot even imagine.Life on another planet?  Such is probable and, as our knowledge expands during this and future centuries, our children’s grandchildren might have some experience of such living beings.   The Bible tells us that every human contracts original sin, i.e. the natural inclination to do evil.  (The Church believes that Jesus and his mother were exempt from that universal law of sin.)   But also we know that God is lavish in giving us his grace to do good.   And he has given every person a free-will to accept or to reject that grace, to follow or to restrain that inclination to evil.    So on another planet we might find human beings who have never sinned, or human beings who are completely sinful.   We might find that God, through his Son Jesus or in another manner, has redeemed some persons, while perhaps he has condemned others without any hope of redemption.  We simply don’t know what might be the condition of human life on another planet!   So far we have only our experience of life on this good planet Earth.   God may have reserved  for our descendants surprises, which we are unable even to imagine.Of this we can be certain: there is only one God, Who is all good and loving and merciful and just.  Being all powerful, he is able to expand his creation, and all the details therein, well beyond what we know at present. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches (para. 337): “God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity, and order.   The Bible presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine work, concluded by the rest of the seventh day.   On the subject of creation the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to recognize the inner nature, the value, and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”The Catechism continues in paragraph 338: “Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator.  The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, . . . by which the world was constituted and time begun.   Every creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection.    God loves all his creatures, and takes care of each one, even the sparrow.   Man is the summit of the Creator’s work. Through him, all creation is destined for the glory of God.”
 
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