Will religion end on Mars?

As you read this, Nasa���s Phoenix Lander is sitting near the Martian north pole after travelling 680 million kilometres from Earth. Its onboard instruments are examining samples of soil looking for, among other things, some key chemical ingredients such as carbon-based compounds, which might be preserved there.

It���ll help scientists evaluate whether the environment has ever been favourable for life. Later probes will establish if, indeed, life ever arose on Mars and then either died out afterwards or, perhaps, is still around.

If the place turns out to be barren, life on Earth will continue as if nothing much occurred. If not, there���s going to be at least one alleged aftershock to reckon with.

For example, some people are already writing off most major religions which are based essentially on an Earth-centric model, as never being able to recover from such a crippling body blow. (The Bible makes no mention of other planets or life on other planets.)

Their reasoning is that even if the type of life found is only microscopic in nature which existed many millions of years ago in the past, it would prove once and for all that life on our planet is not a one-off event requiring the services of a creator. In other words, discover life on Mars; prove evolution; disprove God.

But life, unfortunately, is not so simple. Firstly, although evolution is easily the most elegant, encompassing and predictive theory providing a unifying explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, it may not be the last word on the subject nor even the central principle of extraterrestrial biology.

Just like Newton was the last word only till Einstein came along. Also, forget carbon; ET may not be DNA-based at all. Thus its process of evolutionary development, if there is one at all, might be completely different from what we know happens here.

Secondly, proving evolution has no connection with the origins of animate matter anywhere because things like natural selection and mutation only come into existence after the fact.

The crunch that scriptural faiths will face, on the other hand, can loosely be termed decentralisation where the uniqueness of humanity along with Earth���s biosphere will no longer occupy centre stage as almost all belief systems have tried to sell us.

These religions would, therefore, have no choice but to modify their dogma to bring extra-terrestrial life into their creation beliefs.