If evolution were true, why didn't life develop on any other planet in our galaxy, or the know universe?

Answer 1

The "known universe" is really, really big, and we have only explored a miniscule fraction of it. To say there is no other life out there would be like opening your desk drawer, finding no bugs in it, and concluding there is no life on Earth.

Answer 2

Evolution IS true, it's practically been observed happening. What creationists often seem to forget (or more likely never bothered trying to understand in the first place) is that evolution does not cover the formation of life, only what that life does once it appeared. The inability to answer that question does not invalidate the whole theory of evolution, any more than the fact that Newton's theory of gravitation could not explain the precession of Mercury's orbit stopped his equations being used in other areas: they worked for those conditions. Evolution can't explain where life arose, but it CAN explain the variety we see and the distribution of that variety, and does it very nicely thank you.

Creationists would do well to remember that picking holes in a theory does not invalidate it totally. It means it is incomplete, and maybe it really is wrong, but that is not enough to dismiss it unless you can prove conclusively that it IS wrong. Newtonian mechanics is based on a flawed understanding, but the equations work very nicely for Earth-based situations, so we continue to teach them in school. Evolution may not be prefect, and there may be things the theory can't explain, but it works very well for the majority of situations.

As for life elsewhere, who says there is none? The universe is HUUUUUUUGE! We have only just sent a small, unmanned probe to Pluto and the Kuiper belt. Even so we haven't conclusivly shown there is or has been no life on any of the planets and moons in our neighbourhood. There may be abundant life out there, but it's too far away for us to see or chat with over coffee.

Answer 3

1. Enviromental Factors, atleast that would prevent life from evolving in the same way that we have/would/could have.
2. Aside from Earth what other planets have we actually explored? Mars yes, but as far as we know/assume Mars could have been a life supporting planet further back in time.
--- Truth be told there could actually be life in Venus, it would just have to exist differently.
3. Basically, we haven't really explored enough to say that there isn't life on other planet. The Galaxy is Huge; Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune (sorry Pluto) are just our Solar System.
4. As far as the Known universe, we can only call it that because it is there..... it has yet to be explored.

Answer 4

Our exploration of space barely allows us to believe that we are probably the only life in our own solar system. It's way too premature to make any suppositions about life in the rest of the galaxy, or farther. We don't know, but life could be abundant in the cosmos. The reason it seems to be taking so long to discover is because of the distances involved. Finding out anything quickly over such immense distances is highly unlikely.
Organic life is the only kind of life we know about. And it makes sense, as carbon is the most chemically versatile element, most able to scaffold huge, complex molecules. Carbon-based organisms need several things to exist, especially liquid water. Perhaps a system using liquid methane as a solvent might work, but because it would have to be very cold, evolution would proceed extremely slowly compared to what has happened on earth. Liquid water in the necessary amounts to support life has not been found elsewhere in the SS. Europa might have a lot of it under the ice crust, but it isn't known whether any life might exist there.
The fact that we haven't found life elsewhere is a very flaccid argument for creationists to use. But I have seen worse ones used successfully.

Answer 5

First, evolution does not mean that life will appear on a planet. Evolution means that species will change, because the most fit individuals will spawn offsprings that are better suited to deal with their environment. Evolution only indicates that species change, not that they will appear on a lifeless planet.
Second, we know very little about the universe. We recently send probes to Mars, and that's as far as we have gone. The milky way has thousands of solar systems and we know almost nothing on them, so no one can say there is no life out there yet. In other words, the known universe is almost nothing compared to the whole.

Answer 6

We don't know that it hasn't. Astronomers have only found 243 extrasolar planets up to this point, and the Milky Way alone is estimated to contain at least 200 billion stars. There is a strong possibility that life does exist somewhere else in our galaxy, not to mention in the other 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. We have found no evidence if it to this point, but it is probable that in a universe of this size, there is life elsewhere than on Earth.

Answer 7

How do you know for a fact that there isn't life anywhere else in the universe? Even more critical, why do we assume that life must be identical to that on Earth?

If only one planet in each galaxy we have identified has life (assuming the same kind of diversity of life forms we see here on earth), that would mean that there would be trillions of life forms out there -- possibly even some intelligent ones. But that deosn't mean that they'd be more advanced than we are, or that they'd have detected us or tried to contact us . . .

So really, nobody knows if there is life anywhere else!

Answer 8

Who's to say that we are alone in this mind-blowingly huge universe? How do we know that life hasn't developed somewhere else, and we just haven't found it? Or maybe they just don't want to be bothered by us.

To the person who posted the question: Before you can phrase it in such a way, we'd need to prove that evolution is wrong, and we'd also need to prove that life truly hasn't developed anywhere else.

The way the question is worded implies religious undertones, and doesn't have to do with the study of space as much as evolution vs. creationism.

Answer 9

We know too little about conditions in other planetary systems, even within our own galaxy, to be able to say whether life similar to ours exits there or not. In any case, evolution is true, except that things did not come into being on their own accord, as postulated by the Darwinians. There can be no effect without cause and the cause in this case is the Engineer-in-chief of the universe. Call it Nature, call it God, call it whatever name suits you, there is no way our human brains could have developed in an attempt to come to grips with this mystery without the Chief Architect behind it.

Answer 10

Maybe it did. Do you have proof that it didn't? We have not ever seen any planet outside our solar system close up, so we really have no way of knowing that there is no life on other planets. We only know there is no life on the planets in OUR solar system. But our Sun is only one out of billions in the galaxy. You would have to land on every planet on all those billions of stars to prove there was no life anywhere else in the galaxy. And then you would have to land on every planet orbiting every star in all the other billions of galaxies in the universe to prove we were truly the only life in the universe. Actually doing that is impossible, so it is impossible to prove we are the only life in the universe. Lack of proof of life in space is not proof of lack of life in space.

Answer 11

First, you are assuming it is life as we expect it. If it is a different planet, then it is a different development of life. Second, we have not explored all the planets sufficiently enough to say there is no life there.
Third, conditions are just right to have things advance here at the rat it did. This does not imply it should advance as fast in other planets.