Life on other worlds?

Is there life out there? In the words of the film Contact, it would be an awful waste of space.

However, at this point in our scientific understanding, we simply don't know if there is anything (or was) on Mars or the moons of Jupiter or anybody on some planet on a planet far far away. At this time, we have no evidence.

In my understanding of Christian theology, there would be no prohibition for life on Mars or anywhere else for that matter.

With all this Mars news, I dusted off my old copy of Contact and looked through many dog-eared pages. There is a wonderful quote, "Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe. I mean the real universe. All those light-years. All those worlds."

And indeed, I believe Christian theology does. Genesis was written down many millennia ago when knowledge of astronomy was limited to what the eye could see. Yet, to this day, the majesty of that simple ancient text still reads well in light of all we have learned.