{"id":382,"date":"2015-09-29T17:32:43","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T17:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/?p=382"},"modified":"2015-09-29T17:32:43","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T17:32:43","slug":"nasas-mars-announcement-and-the-irony-of-our-search-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/?p=382","title":{"rendered":"NASA’s Mars announcement, and the irony of our search for life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mars\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He fidgeted in his chair, hardly able to contain his excitement. It was like watching a child try to sit still on a long car ride to Chuck E. Cheese.
\n\u201cDo you realize how big this could be?\u201d my co-worker seemed to ask the room in general just minutes before NASA\u2019s announcement Monday that evidence of salt water was found on the planet Mars.
\nThe news conference was teased earlier in the day, so the content of the big reveal wasn\u2019t a surprise. It was more the anticipation of the reaction.
\n\u201cFinding water means there is a chance we could find life. A single-cell amoeba or anything to prove there is life beyond our planet. How exciting!\u201d he exclaimed.
\nAnd it dawned on me at that moment just how ironic the situation had become. How scientists were blown away just to find circumstances that would be suitable for life. Finding some salt water was grounds for celebration. I can\u2019t even imagine what would have happened if they did happen to locate an amoeba or two. It is possible the scientific world would implode from sheer jubilation alone.
\nI\u2019m not trying to downplay science. There is a definite place for that in our lives. God gifted certain individuals with an amazing talent for exploring His handiwork. God gave certain people the unmistakable curiosity it takes to drive lifelong searches for medical advances, life-changing inventions and, yes, the search for new species and potential life beyond what we currently know.
\nI grew up a science-centric kid. My favorite subject in school was biology by a large margin over anything else. I went to college and immediately jumped into senior-level virology, botany and anatomy\/physiology classes in my freshman year. I took pride in learning all I could about God\u2019s creation and everything scientific and mathematical surrounding it.
\nI remember feeling especially excited during one college course when I figured out a formula to determine the density of non-typical geometric objects a full month before we got into studying that portion of our advanced calculus curriculum.
\nI understand the excitement of scientific discovery. I understand the rush of finding something new. In fact, I was giddy earlier this year to find a dead star-nosed mole in our garden. It led to research on the strange little mammal as my family and I explored what was basically, to us at the moment, the unknown. Of course a dead mole may not compare with potential life on Mars, but the excitement of discovery was still there.
\nHowever, the irony lies in the obsession of certain scientists \u2013 and the general public, like my co-worker \u2013 to find and celebrate any glimmer of a chance of life on Mars or elsewhere in the cosmos. That passion for finding life is so extreme that just finding some salt water on another planet is reason for celebration.
\nMeanwhile, many of the same individuals support abortion.
\nThey find it OK to argue when life officially begins in the womb. Is it at conception? Is it after the first trimester? Somewhere in between? When does that \u201cblob of cells\u201d become more important than a single-cell amoeba in space? When is that \u201cblob\u201d worth protecting and celebrating more than some salt water on a distant planet?
\nWhy is it that we\u2019re grasping at every straw in hopes of finding the simplest form of life elsewhere when certain people try to discount, second-guess and even destroy some of the earliest stages of life here on Earth?
\nUltimately, I\u2019m not trying to undermine the recent NASA discovery \u2013 just finding myself stuck on the irony of how inconsistent we are when it comes to discovering and fostering the simplest, most innocent forms of life \u2013 regardless of whether they are on Mars or in the womb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He fidgeted in his chair, hardly able to contain his excitement. It was like watching a child try to sit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[325,326,327,322,4,330,329,331,319,328,320,332,324,323,321],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christian-walk","tag-abortion","tag-amoeba","tag-biology","tag-discovery","tag-featured","tag-innocent","tag-irony","tag-life","tag-life-on-mars","tag-mars","tag-nasa","tag-protection","tag-scientists","tag-space","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":385,"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crosshairscommunity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}