The God Squad: Should we colonize other planets?

Question: If the human race ever finds a way to reach and colonize another planet, do you think we should do it? The reason I ask is that some religious people I know say God would not want us to settle other worlds. They say that if God wanted us on other planets, God would have put us there already. Some of these people don’t believe that humans ever walked on the moon or that the international space station even exists. — B., Westbury, N.Y.

Answer: I think you need to hang out with a better class of religious people. The idea that the moon landing or space station are just hoaxes is ridiculous. However, your question does raise the important issue of the relationship between religion and science.

One of the first obstacles to the development of medical science, for example, was the religious objection that God made us sick to punish us for our sins, and therefore it’s a sin against God to heal the sick. Galileo had trouble convincing the church that a heliocentric solar system was not a violation of the teachings of Genesis.

If religion opposes scientific advancements, it will become irrelevant, like the Luddites who smashed machines in England in an attempt to stop the industrial revolution. God wants us to use our minds to make the world a better place. A spirit of exploration, whether it involves crossing an ocean to discover the New World or crossing space to discover new habitable planets, is a gift from God to expand our vision of the world God has created.

In fact, the first verse of Genesis, properly translated from the Hebrew, does not say that in the beginning God created THIS heaven and THIS earth but rather: “In the beginning of God’s creating this heaven and this earth.” This means that God may have created many other worlds, and possibly other civilizations.

God is the God of the whole universe, not just our own planet, and someday perhaps our vision of God’s magisterial creation will expand as we “boldly go where no one has gone before.” The conflict between religion and science is absolutely real when science violates the moral law, but it’s not real when people try to limit our minds and our impulse to discover what God has wrought.

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