One of my favorite movie series is Alien by Ridley Scott. In my opinion, these movies (starting with Alien which came out in 1979) are decades ahead of their time. And more recently, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant continue the thrilling saga as space explorers discover an ancient species and it’s war with an alien race.
Prometheus is one of my favorite movies precisely because it is so religious. The main character (archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw) wears a cross throughout the movie as she struggles with the conflict of faith and science. When she is asked about God and her faith, she responds with a “I’m not sure, but let’s find out” attitude. As a Christian who believes in a God-authored creation event, I felt like Prometheus was the first movie that really challenged the “faith or science” chasm.
As someone who was schooled through both a private, Christian school as well as a public, secular school, my science classes were often strict doctrine of purposeful, God authored creation or the theory of evolution, which I would describe as the coincidental, life supporting arrangement. The dramatic difference between these 2 views is that one is accidental, while the other is purposeful.
I recently began watching a television series about the creation of the earth. In this series, the shows cover all the granular details about how the earth supports life. From sandstorms in Africa to thunderstorms in the Amazon rainforest. From the creatures in the oceans which create oxygen. All of these actors play critical roles in the fact that our planet supports life. The earth is uniquely positioned away from the sun, so that it is not too hot, and also not too cold. Our atmosphere happens to have the right concentration of gases in order to protect humans and maintain a livable climate. Our earth spins on an axis so that we have seasons. Our moon just happens to be large enough and close enough to cause tides. During the series, many of the narrators commented about the extraordinary collection of life-supporting events. And while this leaves me thinking about God’s authorship of the earth and humans, the show touches upon (in a secular manner) the fact life is special and all of this is a testament to survive.
Now let’s open up to the book of Genesis, and I will only touch upon 1 verse:
“Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.”
Genesis 1:24
How did God get the land to produce living creatures? This is something I have thought about a lot, because when I think of God in Genesis, I think of something like this:
And honestly, am I so wrong? Genesis 1 mentions the “Spirit of God” hovering over the waters. It’s poetic. It’s beautiful. But maybe, just maybe, the God of Genesis could also be depicted as this:
Because after all, if God is a zoologist, as well as a geneticist. And Genesis depicts the formation of the water, the sky, land, and living creatures. Who is to say how those creatures were created.
All of that being said, the Bible speaks to the perfect creation of God, prior to sin entering the world. And in that sense, I don’t think comparing God to David from the Prometheus movie is in any remote sense accurate. But I do think that we know very little for us to have such strong opinions about the origin of life.
Ridley Scott’s series is thought provoking, because it brings to light that meeting our creator might not be everything you thought it would be. Maybe our creator doesn’t want to meet us, as detailed in the movie. And maybe we glossed over the fact that our creator is technically, an alien species.
As a Christian, through the gift of prayer, I know that God (alien or not) is connected to each and everyone one of us in a supernatural, spiritual way. And while so often the debate of evolution versus creation is ripe with insults for the “other”, I feel like we could be so much more constructive if we took that energy and explored the puzzling relation between the physical and the spiritual. For example, how does the human body respond to prayer? Why do church-goers live longer? Or another completely unrelated paradox, if speed distorts time, could it be that God is eternal in the that he exists at the speed of light? (I wish science fiction movies touched more on the relativity of time and space.)
And so I leave you with that. God is partly “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo as well as the Zoologist Robot David. God who came into our earth, and organized a bunch of stuff and created life. It might have been 7 days or 4 billion years. But we do know that somehow, miracle or not, our earth supports life. From the sandstorms in Africa to the thunderstorms in the Amazon. Some people will look at the stars and marvel at the coincidence of life. Others will thank God for the gift of life.