I've started reading "Mere Christianity" by C.S Lewis. For those who aren't into literature, he was the author of the Narnia books, and he was also an atheist who later converted to Christianity with the help of J.R Tolkien (Lord of the Rings). The latter was what interests me since I was curious as to how he became a convert. In one of the chapters, he used a thought mechanism which I call the "box philosophy"-- something that I use. In this chapter, he made a strong assertion that if an all-powerful God exists, he must be good, and he must be One. In other words, there can't be multiple "gods" as in, for example, the Greek mythology where you have Zeus, Athena, Hera, etc.
There are essentially two views of "good and evil." The first view is that "evil" is a corruption in a world of "good." The second view is that there are two independent powers (good and evil), and these two powers are behind everything that is good and evil and there is an endless war between them. This latter view is called dualism, and it's also similar to the Chinese Yin/Yang philosophy.
Now, the fundamental axiom is that evil cannot exist by itself-- that is, you can't do evil for evil sake, but rather, a person who is doing evil is a person who is trying to do good for himself, but in the wrong or immoral way (such as hurting others in the process). A concrete example is someone who robs a bank to obtain wealth for hiimself-- i.e. it's good that he wants wealth, but robbing others is the wrong way of reaching that goal. This axiom invalidates the duality theory because evil is now dependent on good--- i.e. there is no one who does evil just because it's evil.... or in other words, an evil action is good for somebody-- usually the evil-doer. This necessarily implies that pure evil is self-destructing, and cannot exist by itself.
Supposing now that there are two "gods"-- one is good and the other one is evil (as to which one is which is a matter of preference).... then in this case, the god that is doing evil is really someone who is misguided and has gone the wrong path. This realization implies that there's a higher moral standard under which the behavior of these two gods can be judged--- and this higher power is the real God. If you take a more concrete example-- lets say Zeus, a "god" from Greek mythology-- he is married to his wife Hera, who is also a "god." However, he had several affairs with other women, one of which is a mortal woman, and eventually gave birth to a son-- Hercules. By any man's standard, having an affair with another woman is a wrong thing to do... hence, this moral standard cannot possibly come from Zeus himself, who does the immoral act, but must come from a higher authority that is higher than Zeus. Therefore, this higher power is the real God, and Zeus is no more divine or morally superior that the average man.
I call this the "box philosophy" because its similar to fitting something abstract into a bigger box until you can measure some degree of truth. Suppose you're moving to a different house, and you need to move your belongings. How big a truck do you need to move all your stuff? One way is to measure the dimension of each posession you have, and compute their sums (gee, what's the dimension of my broom?). If you do that, you'll never get anything done. The fastest way is to put your belongings into boxes of known sizes, then simply count the number of boxes. You put the smaller box into a bigger box, until you have one big box that's measureable. Ultimately, that one big box is the truck that will carry your belongings.
When I was back in high school, I made an assertion that probably still stands even now: you must either believe in God, or believe in aliens.
What?
Consider this: the universe is either infinite, or is not. If the universe is not infinite, then there is a well-defined boundary which necessarily means that the boundary is created and designed. Why? In the movie, "The Truman Show" Jim Carrey attempted to sail the world, until his boat hits the wall... why is the wall there? clearly, the wall is there because someone put it there. A goldfish might ask, "why am I in a bowl?" The existence of the bowl proves the existence of its owner, and the fish knows that there's something beyond the bowl, beyond the boundary, but this is something that it can't reach. If the universe had an end, you might ask, well,... what is the "end" made of? if you had a spaceship, will your spaceship hit rubber material? or solid rock? but what is that made of? what's beyond this material that limits the universe? Lets start drilling and find out about this "bigger" reality -- e.g. maybe the universe is wrapped inside another universe that's even bigger? But if the universe was truly finite, there would be an absolute end. A piece of material where you can't drill through... this is where you find your maker... the creator of the wall... i.e. God, on the other side of the wall. This is the point where you realize that you're the fish in the bowl.
Now, if you consider the universe as infinite, with inifinite number of planets and stars.... if you had a spaceship and start travelling one way, your spaceship will never see any end. There's always more planets, more suns, more galaxies,... an endless number of them. In this case, you must necessarily believe in the existence of aliens. Why? consider the question: what is the probability of life in the universe? Whatever the answer is, it is greater than zero because we exist. If the universe is infinite, then it will beat that probability, no matter how small it is, and therefore, there must be life on another planet somewhere.
You could argue that perhaps the universe is infinite, but the number of stars are finite, however this is a self-defeating argument because what you're essentially saying is that the universe is vastly empty except for a super-micro section of it that contains life. It's as self-defeating as saying that the universe contains infinite number of stars, but we happen to be the only living things that ever existed in the universe. Logically and mathematically, these arguments doesn't make sense. To say that we're the only living forms to have ever existed in an infinite universe has the same profound implication as the Christian view of creation and in fact align itself to it. You could also argue that the universe does have a boundary, but no one built it--- however, this argument is as absurd and insane as a man walking into the Great Wall of China and believing that no one built it and that it always existed for no reason at all.
For Christians though, they needn't worry about the infinite because the number of stars in the sky is finite. God counts them and calls each star by name (Psalm 174:4), so the probability of aliens existing in our universe is much, much smaller! :)
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