Mars is now getting a once-over from cameras and drills. Its planetary history is a prime target for NASA. Perseverance may disclose much.
Now that we are making a preliminary exploration of the surface of our next-door planet, we are entertaining the prospect that way back there were life-forms in what are now dried-out lakes and shore-lines. We are thinking not just globally but cosmically. That does not (yet) require us to conclude that there may have been intelligent life on Mars. It does, however, oblige us to review the possibility that we are not alone. Two possibilities open up. Either we enjoy the idea that we are unique in a crowded galaxy (crowded, that is, in terms of stars and planets, although most of space is empty) or we may come to terms with the possibility that we inhabit one of numerous similar planets or satellites. If that should be the case, we are separated by light-years from any knowledge of each other.
We do not know. And this is what we have to say when people ask what evidence of human activity is to be found in that part of the North Sea we call Doggerland, and what creatures inhabit the deepest oceans where darkness reigns. We just don’t know. Or perhaps it is better to say we don’t know much. Most likely we (the present generation, that is) never shall. But even that modest statement has to be regarded as provisional when we call to mind the great strides we have made so far in our approach to such questions. When we consider human physiology or psychology, for example, we are in possession of information and understanding about ourselves that would once have been out of the question.
We have to be, for the time being, content to remain ignorant. We accept the results of exploration high in the heavens and deep down. We also accept, if we take the Christian faith seriously, the record of revelation, particularly the record of the incarnation. When we recall that once we Europeans did not even know there was a New World and that until quite recently we knew next to nothing of the interior of Africa, we have to acknowledge the vast extent of our ignorance compared with what we have discovered in a couple of generations. We change our perspective as we discover more about our cosmic setting. The record of revelation remains. It is, like all serious literature, an appeal to the imagination as much as a bald account of events. We should be glad that in our best interests that is so.
(And if we are worried about the things we don’t understand, it may amuse us to look up what Palmerston said about the Schleswig-Holstein question. Sometimes ignorance is indeed bliss.)
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