On a dark, moonless night, look at the night sky. The stars are too many to count.  Chances are that each of these stars has one or more planets orbiting it. It is estimated that there are 250 billion stars in our own Milky Way galaxy alone. It is further estimated that there are 10 billion galaxies in the observable universe.  That’s a lot of real estate scattered about what appears to be an endless universe.

The universal question about all this real estate is – does life exist on other planets? More importantly, how does this impact our belief in God?

The Bible does not acknowledge extraterrestrial life forms, or even other planets. Those bright spots in the night sky were just thought to be particularly brilliant stars. But neither does the Bible deny the possibility of outer world life forms. The Bible also fails to mention dinosaurs, armadillos or kangaroos, but we know that they exist.

The Bible does state that God created the heavens and the earth, which pretty much covers any and all possibilities. So, let’s narrow it down.

Considering the enormous variety of life forms on planet earth, it is almost a certainty that some type of life form could develop on another planet. This thinking doesn’t even take into consideration the possibility of life forms that are based on another mineral or chemical combination that doesn’t exist on earth.

The true question – the question that is most important is whether “intelligent” life forms exist in the cosmos. If God created humans in His image – having self-awareness, free will, and a soul, could He have done the same for another life form?

If intelligent extraterrestrial life forms exist on other planets, and if those life forms have similar traits to humans, it is possible that among those traits are the territorial and warring urges that have plagued the human race for eons.

That might explain the reason that star systems and galaxies are separated by such vast distances, making it impossible for inter-world conflict to arise.

Today’s technology, as advanced as we believe it to be, still has not solved the dilemma of travel over such long distances. Those distances prevent us from conflict with beings of another world.

Perhaps more advanced extraterrestrial civilizations have learned to live in harmony in conjunction with their own advances in technology. Perhaps we too can reach that stage of wisdom.

Perhaps the vast separation was God’s plan all along.