Comments on: Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

By: iman

iman — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:03:44 +0000

“The earth has its inhabitants, the water and the air contain many living beings and all the elements have their nature spirits, then how is it possible to conceive that these stupendous stellar bodies are not inhabited? Verily, they are peopled, but let it be known that the dwellers accord with the elements of their respective spheres. These living beings do not have states of consciousness like unto those who live on the surface of this globe: the power of adaptation and environment moulds their bodies and states of consciousness, just as our bodies and minds are suited to our planet.

(Abdu’l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 113)”

I find that the above quotation aptly sums up how vast the universe is and just how infinite the possibilities of life are, over and above “life” as we “know” it.

By: amy

amy — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:04:15 +0000

With intention of respect to the above respondents, I must confess I chuckle when I see one trying to define, confine, or in any way appraise the dimensions of the INFINITE universe, or any its INFINITE matter. In my present, though limited, explorations of Bahá’u’lláh’ writings, I find messages that exhibit Universal themes-beyond reason, laws or limits of any one people, place, time, religion… planet……His passages shift awareness to the truth of existence, which is grounding as much as abounding, “changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future.”

While I cannot offer all the answers, here is some food for thought:

“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”
-Carol Sagan

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination…I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research.”
- Albert Einstein

By: EzraSF

EzraSF — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:30:11 +0000

Given current technologies have placed the planet most similar to Earth as six times larger, we still have a long way to finding planets as small as Mercury or even dwarf planets such as Pluto or Ceres. We haven’t even conclusively found all the dwarf planets in our own Solar System.

By: Martijn Rep

Martijn Rep — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:37:17 +0000

That every planet has its creatures would in our own solar system indeed require a broadening of the term ‘creature’, or so it appears. I wonder what the arabic word is that Baha’ullah used. In any case, the image evoked is that the universe is very much alive and we are not the only freaks of nature with a mind on a lonely planet
That every star has planets seems to me a remarkable statement for the nineteenth century. As mentioned, that is something that is starting to be observed only very recently. I wonder what the understanding was among astronomists in the nineteenth century. Anyone care to investigate that?

By: James Nicholls

James Nicholls — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:50:14 +0000

I’ve always wondered how one is to understand the quote you cited from Baha’u'llah.
The first part he must be referring to the learned men of his time and place, as we know that they were completely wrong. The Unversie is 13.6 billion years old and the Earth is around 4 billion years old. And those men of learning didnt have the scientific method or any evidence to back up their claims hence the manifold divergencies that have resulted. I don’t know how we should understand the last part, because fixed star is a very old world term (Greek) referring to actual stars as appose to planets (known as wondering stars back then). But the difficulty is that we know that some observable fixed stars don’t have planets and some do. Perhaps we have to look from a deep time perspective and say that they once had planets or may do in the future? I don’t know. So far it seems that life is improbable on many of the planets in our own solar system. Perhaps the definition of creatures could include rocks and gas which I think is very profound as it would resonate with the idea that everything is alive and indeed that would make it very hard to compute.