An Earthlike Planet Found

In the past I have engaged in e-mail debates with some of the Christianist faculty at Pat Robertson's religious Regent University concerning the inerrant and the literal application of the Bible. The position of these religious zealots was that the Bible controlled on a literally applied basis across the universe and would be binding on any other life that might be found to exist on other planets. I'm sure readers are not surprised that I disagreed with this hubris. Any reading of the Bible will quickly demonstrate that it is an earth and human centric work whose authors - whoever they were - lacked any knowledge of modern astronomy, modern medical knowledge and zero knowledge of modern mental health knowledge. Indeed, the Catholic Church tried Galileo as a heretic for arguing that the earth revolved around the sun rather than vice versa. Now, as Time reports, an earth like planet has been discovered that seems to have the ingredients to support life. The nature of such life is unknown, but the odds of there being no other intelligent life somewhere in the universe seem nonexistent. When the existence of such life is ultimately confirmed, we can expect a huge crisis in the Christianist world. And it will be delicious fun to watch- especially if humans turn out to be the less evolved form of life. Here are highlights from the Time article:
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[O]n Wednesday, a team of astronomers announced that it had found two more planets circling the star, bringing the total to six. And one of them, assigned the name Gliese 581g, may be of truly historic significance.
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For one thing, the planet is only about three or four times as massive as our home world, meaning it probably has a solid surface just like Earth. Much more important, it sits smack in the middle of the so-called habitable zone, orbiting at just the right distance from the star to let water remain liquid rather than freezing solid or boiling away. As far as we know, that's a minimum requirement for the presence of life.
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None of this proves that there is water on Gliese 581g. "Those are things we just have to speculate about," says Vogt. But he goes on to point out that there's water pretty much everywhere else you look. "There's water on Earth," he says, "and on the moon, and Mars, and on Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, and in interstellar space. There's enough water produced in the Orion Nebula every 24 seconds to fill the Earth's oceans."
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It's not hard to imagine, in other words, that Gliese 581g might have plenty of water as well. "It could have quite a good ocean," Vogt says. Certainly, it could be a sterile, nonbiological ocean. But unlike any planet found until now, there's nothing to rule out the idea that it could be teeming with life.
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I continue to believe that those who preach that the Bible is inerrant and demand a literal application of the Bible will ultimately be the death of Christianity. And best of all, their critics will be the ones to have the last laugh.