UFO's, Extra-Terrestrial Life, and Aliens...

I saw a video recently on Facebook, another video showing a "UFO" being chased by several fighter jets. Now I'm not saying it was real, nor am I claiming it's fake. Rather, I want to look at the question of the possibility of other life in the universe. I often hear the opinion that there is not other life out there, or if there is we would have been visited by now. No visits equals proof that we are alone...

Let's look at the facts as we know them... Years ago while teaching some high school students this very issue came up. I walked to the whiteboard, some 4' x 8' long, and told them that this board represents all the knowledge in the entire universe. I reminded them that we are one small planet on the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, a galaxy that astronomers estimate consists of over a thousand million stars (or a billion, if you will), with an average of at least one planet per star. That's one galaxy. Scientists estimate that there are 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in our universe. I asked a student to come up and handed him a marker and asked him to draw a circle on the board representing all the knowledge humans have accumulated throughout our history in light of how much is left to learn in the universe. He paused a moment, the drew a tiny dot in the corner. I asked the rest of the class if they agreed and it was pretty much a consensus. Then I asked him to draw a circle on that dot representing how much of that accumulated knowledge he knew. He said he couldn't because it was too small to write.

We know less than a speck on a dot of what is in our universe, yet we are arrogant enough to believe we are alone. Perhaps we haven't been visited because we don't have anything to offer the larger picture (yet?). I, for one, have learned that the more I learn the more aware I am of how much knowledge is left to learn, and my own ignorance is magnified by what little knowledge I have. Ignorance is indeed bliss, for not knowing how incredibly uninformed we really must be a comfort. I believe that, at least on that day, some students became aware of how little we actually know, and to say with conviction that there is no other life in the universe is human arrogance at its greatest. With so much unknown out there how can anyone say we are alone?

Perhaps, one day after my Lord has come and restored His creation and His people, we will have the opportunity to explore our vast universe, to travel to galaxies and stars and planets that can only live now in our imaginations! How cool would that be?
Food for thought...