Alone in the Universe?
This article is based on a talk first given by David Couchman at Portswood Church, Southampton, on Sunday 2nd December 2007. It may be reproduced in print or on other web sites, subject to the copyright notice below.
I wonder if you've seen M. Night Shyamalan's film 'Signs,' starring Mel Gibson?
If you haven't seen this film, it tells the story of a farmer called Graham Hess (played by Gibson), and his son and daughter. One morning, they wake up to find the dogs going wild, and a mysterious pattern of crop circles in their cornfields.
As the film goes on, through a series of weird and creepy events, the director builds up a growing sense of paranoia. Huge numbers of crop circles appear all over the world. Then people start seeing UFOs in the skies all round the world. In the film, we never actually see the UFOs – we only see television reports about them. Then we see a report about an alien. Finally, aliens appear in the neighbourhood of the Hess's farm, and one tries to kill Hess's son Morgan.
On the face of it, 'Signs' is all about crop circles and alien abductions. But as you go on, you discover that it's really about something else: it's about losing faith and finding it again.
Graham Hess is someone who used to have faith. In fact, he had been the minister of a church. But then his wife was killed in a horrific car crash, and he was there when she died. Because of this (like so many people in real life) he loses his faith. When someone in the film calls him 'father,' he replies:
'Please stop calling me father.'
When he needs to pray, he won't. He shouts at his family:
'I am not wasting one more minute of my life on prayer! Not one more minute!'
And as they're waiting for the aliens to attack, Hess tells his son:
'There is no one watching out for us. We are all on our own.'
As you watch 'Signs,' it asks some quite deep questions: 'Is there anyone there?' Is it all down to blind chance? Are we alone in the universe, or is there someone watching out for us? Is there a God? And is there any way we can choose between these two? Is it just a case of personal preference? You choose whatever 'works for you,' because nobody can really know anyway.
But as well as asking 'Is anybody there?' 'Signs' also asks, 'What kind of people are we?' At one point in the film, Hess says there are two kinds of people. Some believe in luck. They think everything is down to blind chance. Others believe in signs. They think there is someone up there who is watching out for them – and this fills them with hope. Hess asks his brother:
'What kind of person are you?'
I'd like to say that it isn't just a matter of personal preference. It isn't a matter of what kind of people we are – as if some people just naturally have faith, and others don't. Just like some people have freckles and some don't, or some are naturally athletic, while others are not. Rather, it's a matter of looking carefully at the evidence. So in the next few minutes I want to encourage you to look at two kinds of evidence, and to think carefully about them:
(1) Evidence in the natural world itself
The Bible says that the natural world points us towards the reality of God. So for example, it says:
The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
(Psalm
19 verses 1-2)
And in another place it says:
'... ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature.' (Romans chapter 1 verse 20)
So the Bible's claim is that the Universe carries God's signature. We might think that the evidence in creation isn't so persuasive these days. Perhaps we are all here because of the Big Bang, or a long process of blind chance? It's the 'Signs' question.
But in recent years scientists have been surprised to discover many unexpected ways that the Universe is 'just right' for us to live in – and it need not have been that way.
For example, if the forces inside the nucleus of atoms were just a tiny tiny bit different, either there wouldn't be any hydrogen atoms at all - or else the Universe would be all hydrogen atoms. But either way, you and I wouldn't be here. It's very finely balanced so that our lives are possible.
One author lists more than twenty remarkable 'coincidences' like this in the way the Universe is made. The chance of all these things being 'just right' for us is much less than the chance of the same person winning the lottery ten times in a row. An article in New Scientist magazine says,
'The Universe we live in seems to be a very unlikely place. Random processes and statistical fluctuations could easily have made it quite inhospitable to life.'
This article goes on to ask:
'Are we just lucky? Or is there some deep significance to the fact that we live in a Universe just right for us?'
And the Bible's answer is, 'Yes, there is some deep significance to it.' It's God's signature.
Many scientists who aren't followers of Christ now agree that there is a huge amount of evidence for God in the physical Universe. In his book 'The Cosmic Blueprint', the astronomer Paul Davies says:
'The evidence for design is overwhelming.'
Another astronomer, George Greenstein, says:
'As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency… must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a supreme being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially created the cosmos for our benefit?'
Well, the Bible's answer is 'Yes, it was.'
OK. I could have quoted a number of other scientists, but they're all saying the same thing, and I don't want to bore you.
These scientists aren't Christians. They aren't believers. They aren't reading the Bible or anything. They're looking at the natural world, and they're saying that the evidence tells us that God is real. We aren't alone in the Universe.
When non-believing scientists are making remarkable comments like this, based on the evidence in the natural world, you have to sit up and take notice, don't you?
(2) Evidence in history
So OK, the scientists are looking at the natural world and telling us that it carries God's signature. We live in a Universe that shows overwhelming evidence of having been designed. It has been remarkably 'fine-tuned' so that it is just right for us to live in. Apparently, believing in God isn't such a crazy idea.
But even so, how can we know anything about this God?
Some people say: 'Maybe there is a God. Maybe there isn't. We can't know one way or the other. There's no way we can find out if God exists.'
And that would be OK, if it was up to us to discover God somehow. But if there really is a God who made the Universe, and made us, isn't it possible that he's interested enough in us to communicate with us? To let us know something about himself?
And this is exactly the central claim of the Christian message: that the God who made us has spoken to us, and made himself known to us. He hasn't left us in the dark.
And He hasn't just spoken to us from a distance, in signs that we don't understand or some message that we have to struggle to decode. He's spoken by becoming one of us.
He became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ. And the evidence for this claim is rooted in history. It is something that either happened in history, just as much as, say, the D-Day landings, or it didn't happen at all. So in the Bible, Peter says in one of his letters:
'We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.' (2 Peter 1:16)
And Luke writes at the beginning of his Gospel:
Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples. Having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I also have decided to write a careful account for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can be certain of the truth of everything you were taught. (Luke 1:1-4)
Luke is concerned with history – and he knows the difference between history and fiction.
People sometimes talk as if Jesus is on a par with Robin Hood, or Father Christmas. But the facts about Jesus are some of the best attested facts of history.
There is more evidence for the life of Jesus than there is for the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, who lived about the same time. No-one doubts that Caesar lived, so why should anyone doubt that Jesus was a real person?
Many of Jesus's first followers were put to death by the Roman authorities because they believed in him. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be willing to die for something unless I was pretty confident that it was true. (Of course, this doesn't prove that they were right, but I think it proves that they really believed the Christian message, right from the start.)
What seems really odd is that we are so willing to believe in crop circles and alien abductions – for which there is really very little evidence at all – and so reluctant to believe in a God who made us and who became one of us in Jesus Christ, for which there is a mass of evidence in the natural world and in history.
I said earlier that 'Signs' is about losing and finding faith. Through most of the film, Hess believes that his existence is an accident, and everything is a matter of blind chance. It's up to him to look after his family, because no-one else is going to.
But at the end of the film, the alien attacks Hess's son Morgan with some kind of poison gas, and tries to kill him. But because Morgan has asthma, he can't breathe, so he doesn't inhale the poison gas.
So in the film, they are saved, and the alien is killed. And it seems as if this creates another crisis for Hess – this time it's his unbelief that's challenged. Maybe he was created for a purpose.
Maybe the things that happen – even the horrible things - aren't just coincidences. So he sees that his son Morgan had asthma for a reason. He says 'It can't be luck.' Maybe there is a God who is looking after them after all. So when Morgan asks him
'Did someone save me?'
he replies,
'I think someone did.'
And in the last scene of the film you see him wearing a dog collar again. He has got his faith back, and has gone back to the church.
So as I said, the film isn't really about aliens and crop circles. It's about losing faith and finding it again. Now I'm not sure that the reason why Hess lost his faith was a good one, and I'm sure that the reason he got his faith back wasn't a good one – but then, hey, this is only a film. In real life, we need something a bit more solid to base our faith on. And what we've done in the past few minutes is to say that there is good evidence so we can put our faith in God – evidence in the natural world that God has made, that carries his signature, and which is just right for us to live in, and evidence in history, in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. We aren't alone in the Universe.
The challenge is, what will we do about it? Will we ignore the evidence, or will we let its truth shape our lives?
And that's a challenge that comes to all of us: are we willing to look at the evidence sincerely? Are we willing to find out for ourselves, and to act on what we find out?
Copyright notice
You may use this article in print or on a web site, subject to the following limitations:
- The article is reproduced in its entirety, without variation.
- There is a link back to this site.
- There is a copyright notice crediting Focus Radio for this article, and including these conditions.