It's the question many are asking. In fact, scientists have been working feverishly -- spending billions of dollars, even -- in efforts to answer the question. Is it out there? Somewhere? Anywhere other than here?
While listening to a recent episode of "Star Talk Live", hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson, on my iPod, a thought came to me. Why haven't we figured this out yet? After all, since America put Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969, our computer technologies alone have advanced from being the size of your living room, to hand-held multi-functional devices. If we can do that, why can't we find life out "there" once and for all if it's out there?
So, I did what anyone with little expendable time would do. I Googled it. I was unable to uncover anything that confirmed life on other planets...or moons, or stars, etc. They all like to suggest the possibility (that's a crucial word) of life; but no life.
An article posted on "Signs of Life" suggests, "No one has come up with a complete definition of "life," but astrobiologists (the scientists who study the possibility of life beyond Earth) are narrowing the search to the type of life that's most familiar to us -- "life as we know it."
Life as we know it? What's that mean?
I also Googled the phrase, "What is life?" The American Heritage Dictionary seems to have a good handle on it (but scientists don't?): "The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism."
Astrobiologists have fancy titles and fascinating theories, but it seems scientists have missed this one in plain sight. Rather than coming to a conclusion about what life is, I wonder if they really want to answer what life is in the first place. In fact, I wonder if it is really in their best interests to answer it. Here's why.
For now, I'm going to leave God out of the equation. Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, our culture has launched an all-out assault on the very definition of life -- especially, but not solely, when life begins. Our culture wants to degrade the definition of life. Abortion alone is ugly enough, let alone the partial birth kind. But without accepting a definition of life, even partial birth abortion eventually becomes entirely acceptable to a society.
Here's where astrobiologists are going to cause problems for Roe. If they happen find some kind of "life" on, oh, let's say, Mars -- even something as simple as bacteria -- and if they're willing to call that bacteria (or whatever they may find) "life", then that means our definition of "life as we know it" also has to change. That means if scientists are willing to call single cell organisms on Mars "life", then the microscopic cells in the early stages of gestation in the womb must also be called "life".
In this regard, I hope scientists DO find life out there. Maybe that kind of discovery will finally encourage our society to fully defend the unborn. I'm skeptical that they will -- so, I'm sadly skeptical that society will either.