We might never detect alien signals… Is this by God’s design?

In anticipation of his newest Alien franchise movie, director Ridley Scott has weighed in on whether he thinks extraterrestrial intelligence exists:

“I believe in superior beings. I think it is certainly likely.

“An expert I was talking to at NASA said to me ‘have you ever looked in the sky at night? You mean to tell me we are it?’ That’s ridiculous.

“The experts have now put a number on it having assessed what is out there. They say that there are between 100 and 200 entities that could be having a similar evolution to us right now.

“So when you see a big thing in the sky, run for it. Because they are a lot smarter than we are, and if you are stupid enough to challenge them you will be taken out in three seconds.”

I can’t help contrast his convictions with the latest opinion of Breakthrough Listen. Quite possibly the most aggressive search for extraterrestrial intelligence thus far, Breakthrough Listen is a $100 million initiative that uses three of the world’s most sensitive telescopes to look for alien signals from the 1 million closest stars to Earth and the 100 closest galaxies.

According to an April 26, 2017 article at NewScientist.com, we might NEVER encounter intelligent extraterrestrial life. According to the article, “even if half of our galaxy was full of alien noise, the average number of signals that we would be able to detect from Earth is less than one.”

To the Biblical exotheologian, this state of affairs reminds one if the opinion of C.S. Lewis, that perhaps Earth is under quarantine not for our own safety but for the well-being of the rest of the universe!

In Religion and Rocketry, Lewis suggested that:

“Perhaps of all races we only fell. Perhaps Man is the only lost sheep; the one, therefore, whom the Shepherd came to seek…

“We know what our race does to strangers. Man destroys or enslaves every species he can. Civilized man murders, enslaves, cheats, and corrupts savage man. Even inanimate nature he turns into dust bowls and slag-heaps. There are individuals who don’t. But they are not the sort who are likely to be our pioneers in space. Our ambassador to new worlds will be the needy and greedy adventurer or the ruthless technical expert. They will do as their kind has always done. What that will be if they meet things weaker than themselves, the black man and the red man can tell. If they meet things stronger, they will be, very properly, destroyed.

“It is interesting to wonder how things would go if they met an unfallen race. At first, to be sure, they’d have a grand time jeering at, duping, and exploiting its innocence; but I doubt if our half-animal cunning would long be a match for godlike wisdom, selfless valour, and perfect unanimity.

“I therefore fear the practical, not the theoretical, problems which will arise if ever we meet rational creatures which are not human. Against them we shall, if we can, commit all the crimes we have already committed against creatures certainly human but differing from us in features and pigmentation; and the starry heavens will become an object to which good men can look up only with feelings of intolerable guilt, agonized pity, and burning shame…
“But let us thank God that we are still very far from travel to other worlds.

“I have wondered before now whether the vast astronomical distances may not be God’s quarantine precautions. They prevent the spiritual infection of a fallen species from spreading.”

Food for thought.