Frames of Reference

Satan wants to cause FUD (a TLA [three letter acronym] known in the computer industry — standing for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) among God’s people. When the Israelites left Egypt traveling towards the promised land, just before they were to enter in they sent twelve spies to search out the land. Ten returned with bad news — there were giants in the land, and we are no match for them. Two of them said God is with us, it’s no problem, let’s go in and take it. But Israel succumbed to satan’s old trick, FUD. Therefore, they wandered for 40 years, and their children were the ones to enter into the land.

Sadly, one of the biggest areas of FUD in the church today surrounds baptism. Is it required for salvation? If so, sprinkled or dunked? Must a priest perform it to be valid? From what church? Is the water consecrated or not? Mention baptism and these are just some of the issues to be addressed; baptism can be a highly charged topic. Unfortunately, it has led to the division of many churches and people in Christianity — this ought not to be (some of the nastiest email we get is from Christians on this very subject).

The following can easily cause FUD in the church today.

Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38 KJV)

That’s it! You MUST be baptized to be saved. If you haven’t been baptized, you are not saved. Is this the correct interpretation of this passage? Does the Bible teach baptism is required for salvation? In order to understand the Bible’s teaching on baptism, we must first lay out a few “ground rules” for Bible interpretation.

Satan wants to cause FUD (a TLA [three letter acronym] known in the computer industry — standing for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) among God’s people. For example, when the Israelites left Egypt and traveled towards the promised land, just before they were to enter in they sent in twelve spies to search out the land. Ten returned with bad news — there were giants in the land, and we are no match for them. Two of them said God is with us, it’s no problem, let’s go in and take it. But Israel succumbed to satan’s old trick, FUD. Therefore, they wandered for 40 years, and their children were the ones to enter into the land.

This has important implications for today’s Christian. For what does the promised land represent? If you say heaven, you’re not quite right — there are giants to defeat, and many battles. No, the promised land represents the spirit filled life; some battles still remain.

Don’t we all want to have a spirit filled life? Then we must be able to resist the FUD of the enemy. Satan uses FUD to keep us wandering in the wilderness, unfocused and powerless to engage the enemy; satan is still up to his old FUD tricks today.

Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men; but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, neither in the age to come. (Matthew 12:31-32 KJV)

This causes concern for some Christians as they ask — have I done this? What if I’ve done it and not even known it? What if I did it before I became a Christian? Jesus says it is not pardonable. Does that mean I’m lost forever?

Previously we briefly introduced the Drake Equation which attempted to estimate the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy. Unfortunately, the parameters going into the formula are wildly speculative, and thus so is the final result. Nevertheless, Drake himself estimates the number at 10,000, and this is the estimate we shall use.

But for all man’s effort, we’ve discovered nothing. Why not? The disparity between the huge numbers of expected contacts and the reality of finding nothing raises the Fermi Paradox — the contradiction between the high (claimed) probability of abundant life elsewhere and our complete failure to find any traces of its existence, current or in the past.

Some argue in the inherent nature for civilizations to destroy themselves or others, and thus don’t last very long — as soon as a society becomes intelligent, it comes to a rapid end. Of course, we don’t have any data so it’s pure speculation. Others say we haven’t looked long enough, and sooner or later we’re bound to find something.

But all these theories ignore the basic issue — nothing has been found, and it should be.

You see, if evolution is true, life in the universe should be abundant (or at least we shouldn’t be alone). You can’t say various planets are inhospitable to life — to our life perhaps, but not life adapted to the unique circumstances on that planet. So where is this abundant life in the universe? It appears we’re all alone.

By now everyone has seen the shocking video of the planned, premeditated, brutal beating of a school girl by her peers. As the bizarre video continues to play across the airwaves, the question remains, what was the motive behind this savage act? That’s the shocking revelation in this story — it appears the only reason for the beating was to get video on the Internet; their 15 minutes of fame we guess.

Bizarre. We can’t (and won’t) comment on this specific case as we don’t know more than anyone else but what we’ve seen on the news. However, this trend continues to grow; another story about kids attempting to induce another student into a severe allergic reaction by secretly using peanuts (peanut allergies being no laughing matter) — after the student ends up in the hospital for days, it’s not funny (or maybe it was to them, but then that’s the point).

We’re beginning to see more and more of this as people lose their moral and ethical compass and descend into an abyss of behavior which is not only sick and twisted, but completely random and unexplainable as well. Yet what caused these twisted events? Is it preventable? Could there be a relationship between current events and past actions by society?

The Drake Equation originated in 1961 as an exercise to consider how many possible intelligent societies exist with the ability to communicate with us. It’s not so much an exact formula as a thought experiment — as we shall see many of the parameters are wild guesses, so just about any value is possible. Here’s Drake’s equation:

N = R_* ∙ f_p ∙ n_e ∙ f_l ∙ f_i ∙ f_c ∙ L

• R_* — The average rate of star formation.
• f_p — Fraction of those stars which have planets.
• n_e — Average number of planets which can support life (per star).
• f_l — Fraction of n_e which actually develop life.
• f_i — Fraction of f_l which actually develop intelligent life.
• f_c — Fraction f_i which communicate outside their planet into space.
• L — Length of time signals estimate from planet (or the time a society lives).

Current Values

According to the SETI League, Drake’s current estimates provide N=10,000 — a very large number which accounts for SETI’s ambitious attempts to find other life near us. But it’s obvious the actual number is a huge approximation — so much so the actual number N is meaningless (In fact, how you perceive N can reveal bias in critical thinking, but that’s a topic for another time).

Problems

Most of the parameters are wild guesses, so let’s simplify a bit with the star and planet parameters to get the following simplified version:

N = L/1000

Where “L” is the length of time a civilization exists. Let’s assume all the other parameters are known (and agreed upon) entities — what parameter do we put in for L? If you’re optimistic, a civilization could last a long time. But if you’re pessimistic, civilizations destroy themselves rather quickly. Since we have no concrete data on L, it’s a wild guess (and thus, so is N by extension).

But it’s not so much the value for N which is interesting, but Drake’s current estimate of 10,000. The question becomes why can’t we find any evidence for life anywhere else but earth? Forget communicating with any of the existing 10,000 other societies, why can’t we find any evidence of life, anywhere, anytime?

Why have we found nothing? We’ve stumbled into the Fermi Paradox which will be the subject of a future article, as well as how all this relates to the Bible, Christians and Evolution. The Drake equation itself isn’t very interesting (other than as a thought experiment) due to it’s huge approximation, but the problems and areas it leads to are — it’s an important concept leading to scientific and theological issues which we’ll discuss next time.

References

• Drake Equation Calculator
• Drake Plaque
• SETI

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